“What’s this?” asked Silver.

“This is the sketch I made at the postmortem. It’s a tattoo on the dead man’s back.”

Silver rotated the paper to face him. “A scorpion?”

“Yes.”

“So are you going to explain to me why this is significant? Because I’m willing to bet there are more than a few men walking around with scorpion tattoos.”

Conway reached for the sketch. “You said this was on his back? And we don’t have any ID on this dead man?”

“Nothing came back on his fingerprints.”

“I’m surprised he doesn’t have prints on file.”

“Why?” asked Silver.

Gabriel looked at him. “Because there’s a good chance this man is military.”

“You can tell that just by looking at his tattoo?”

“It’s not just any tattoo.”

“What’s so special about this one?”

“It’s not on his arm, it’s on his back. In the marines, we call them ‘torso meat tags’ because they’re useful for identifying your corpse. In a blast, there’s a good chance you’d lose your extremities. So a lot of soldiers choose to get their tattoos on their chest or back.”

Silver grimaced. “A morbid reason.”

“But practical.”

“And the scorpion? Is that supposed to be significant?”

“It’s the number thirteen that catches my eye,” said Gabriel. “You see it here, circled by the stinger. I think it refers to the Fighting Thirteenth.”

“That’s a military unit?”

“Marine Expeditionary. Special ops capable.”

“You’re saying this dead man was an ex-marine?”

“You’re never an ex-marine,” Conway pointed out.

“Oh. Of course,” Silver corrected himself. “He’s a dead marine.”

“And that leads us to the detail that bothers me most,” said Gabriel. “The fact his fingerprints aren’t in any database. This man has no military record.”

“Then maybe you’re wrong about the significance of this tattoo. And the duplex ammo.”

“Or I’m right. And his fingerprints were specifically purged from the system to make him invisible to law enforcement.”

There was a long silence.

Silver’s eyes suddenly widened as he realized what Gabriel was implying. “Are you saying one of our intelligence agencies purged his prints?”

“To conceal any black ops missions within our borders.”

“Whom are you accusing? CIA? Military Intelligence? If he was one of ours, I sure wasn’t told about it.”

“Whoever this man was, whoever he was working for, it’s now obvious he and his associate showed up in that hospital room for only one reason.” Gabriel looked at Conway. “You’re on the Senate Intelligence Committee. You have sources.”

“But I’m totally out of the loop on this one,” said Conway, shaking his head. “If one of our agencies ordered a hit on that woman, that’s a serious scandal. An assassination on US soil?”

“But this hit went very wrong,” said Gabriel. “Before they could finish it, Dr. Isles walked in on them. Not only did the target survive the hit, she took hostages. Now this is a huge media event. A black ops screwup that’s going to end up on the front pages. The facts are going to come out anyway, so if you know, you might as well tell me. Who is this woman, and why does our country want her dead?”

“This is pure speculation,” said Silver. “You’re following a pretty thin thread, Agent Dean. Extrapolating from a tattoo and a bullet to a government-sponsored assassination.”

“These people have my wife,” Gabriel said quietly. “I’m willing to follow any thread, however thin. I need to know how to make this end without someone getting killed. That’s all I want. That no one gets killed.”

Silver nodded. “It’s what we all want.”

Darkness had fallen by the time Maura turned onto the quiet Brookline street where she lived. She drove past familiar houses, familiar gardens. Saw the same redheaded boy heaving his basketball at the hoop over his garage. Missing it, as usual. Everything looked as it had yesterday, just another hot summer’s evening in suburbia. But tonight is different, she thought. Tonight, she wouldn’t be lingering over her glass of chilled wine or her latest issue of Vanity Fair. How could she enjoy her usual pleasures, knowing what Jane was enduring at that moment?

If Jane was still alive.

Maura pulled into her garage and walked into the house, grateful for the cool breath of central air-conditioning. She would not be staying long; she’d come home only to grab a quick supper, to shower, and change clothes. For even this brief respite, she felt guilty. I’ll bring back sandwiches for Gabriel, she thought. She doubted the thought of food had even crossed his mind.

She had just stepped out of the shower when she heard her doorbell ring. Pulling on a robe, she hurried to answer it.

Peter Lukas stood on her front porch. Only that morning, they had spoken, but judging by his wrinkled shirt and the tense lines around his eyes, the hours since then had taken a toll. “I’m sorry to just show up here,” he said. “I did try to call you a few minutes ago.”

“I didn’t hear the phone. I was in the shower.”

He gaze dropped, just for an instant, to her bathrobe. Then he looked past her, focusing on a spot over her shoulder, as though he was uncomfortable staring directly at an undressed woman. “Can we talk? I need your advice.”

“Advice?”

“About what the police are asking me to do.”

“You’ve spoken to Captain Hayder?”

“And that FBI guy. Agent Barsanti.”

“Then you already know what the hostage takers want.”

Lukas nodded. “That’s why I’m here. I need to know what you think about this whole crazy setup.”

“You’re actually considering it?”

“I need to know what you’d do, Dr. Isles. I trust your judgment.” His gaze finally met hers and she felt the heat rise in her face, found herself tugging her robe tighter.

“Come inside,” she finally said. “Let me get dressed, and we’ll talk about it.”

As he waited in the living room, she hunted in her closet for clean slacks and a blouse. Pausing before the mirror, she winced at the reflection of smeared eye makeup, tangled hair. He’s only a reporter, she thought. This isn’t a date. It doesn’t matter what the hell you look like.

When she finally walked back into the living room, she found him standing at the window, gazing out at the dark street. “It’s gone national, you know,” he said, turning to look at her. “Right this minute, they’re watching it in LA.”

“Is that why you’re thinking of doing this? A chance at fame? The fact you could get your name in the headlines?”

“Oh yeah, I can see it now: ‘Reporter gets bullet in brain.’ I’m really crazy about that headline.”

“So you do realize this is not a particularly wise move.”

“I haven’t decided.”

“If you want my advice-”

“I want more than just your advice. I need information.”

“What can I tell you?”

“You could start by telling me what the FBI is doing here.”

“You said you spoke to Agent Barsanti. Didn’t you ask him?”

“I’ve heard there’s an Agent Dean involved as well. Barsanti wouldn’t tell me a thing about him. Why would the Bureau send two men all the way from Washington, for a crisis that would normally be handled by Boston PD?”

His question alarmed her. If he already knew about Gabriel, it would not take long for him to learn that Jane was a hostage.

“I don’t know,” she lied, and found it hard to meet his gaze. He was watching her so intently that she finally had to turn away and sit down on the couch.

“If there’s something I should know,” he said, “I hope you’d tell me. I’d like to know ahead of time what I’m walking into.”

“By now, you probably know as much as I do.”

He sat down in the chair facing her, his gaze so direct she felt like a pinned butterfly. “What do these people want?”