Dr. Kay Scarpetta is working a suspicious death scene in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when she receives a text message with a video link that seems to be from her niece Lucy. But how can it be? It's clearly a surveillance film of Lucy taken years ago.

As Scarpetta watches she comes to grips with frightening secrets. That first clip and others sent soon after raise dangerous implications that isolate Scarpetta, leaving her confused and not knowing whom she can tell--not her FBI agent husband, Benton Wesley, or her investigative partner, Pete Marino. Not even Lucy.

Cornwell launches these characters on a psychological odyssey that includes the bizarre death of a Hollywood mogul's daughter, wreckage on the bottom of the sea in the Bermuda Triangle, a grisly gift left in a crime scene truck, and videos from the past that threaten to destroy Scarpetta's entire world. The diabolical presence and singularly "depraved heart" behind what unfolds seems obvious--but not to the FBI, who begin building a case against Lucy that could send her to prison for the rest of her life. . . .