"Investigator Robillard?" Scarpetta is saying.

Nic is startled by the sound of her own name. Her focus returns to the cozy, dark dining room and the cops who fill it.

"Tell us what you'd do if your phone rang at two a.m. and you'd had a few drinks but were needed at a bad, really bad, crime scene," Scarpetta presents to her. "Let me preface this by saying that no one wants to be left out when there's a bad, really bad, crime scene. Maybe we don't like to admit that, but it's true."

"I don't drink very much." Nic instantly regrets the remark as her classmates groan.

"Lordy, where'd you grow up, girlfriend, Sunday school?"

"What I mean is, I really can't because I have a five-year-old son…" Nic's voice trails off, and she feels like crying. This is the longest she's ever been away from him.

The table falls silent. Shame and awkwardness flatten the mood.

"Hey, Nic," Popeye says, "you got his picture with you? His name's Buddy," he tells Scarpetta. "You gotta see his picture. A really ass-kicking little hombre sitting on a pony…"

Nic is in no mood to pass around the wallet-size photograph that by now is worn soft, the writing on the back faded and smeared from her taking it out and looking at it all the time. She wishes Popeye would change the subject or give her the silent treatment again.

"How many of you have children?" Scarpetta asks the table.

About a dozen hands go up.

"One of the painful aspects of this work," she points out, "maybe the worst thing about this work-or shall I call it a mission-is what it does to the people we love, no matter how hard we try to protect them."

No heat lightning at all. Just a silky black darkness, cool and lovely to the touch, Nic thinks as she watches Scarpetta.

She's gentle. Behind that wall of fiery fearlessness and brilliance, she's kind and gentle.