Sara administered the drug, keeping an eye on the monitor.

"Flat line," Hare reported.

"Again." Sara reached for the paddles. "Three hundred," she ordered.

Again, she shocked the woman. Again, there was no response. Sara felt a cold sweat come over her. "Epi."

The sound of the box popping open was like a needle in Saras ear. She took the syringe, pushing the Adrenalin directly into the woman's heart one more time. They all waited.

"Flat line," Hare reported.

"Let's go to three-sixty."

For the fifth time, a charge went through the woman's body with no response.

"Goddamnit, goddamnit," Sara muttered, resuming compressions. "Time?" she called.

Hare glanced at the clock. "Twelve minutes."

It had seemed like two seconds to Sara.

Lena must have sensed from Hare's tone of voice where he was going with this. She whispered under her breath, "Don't let her die. Please, don't let her die."

"She's in prolonged asystole, Sara," Hare said. He was telling her that it was too late. It was time to stop, time to let go.

Sara narrowed her eyes at him. She turned to Ellen. "I'm going to crack her chest."

Hare shook his head, saying, "Sara, we don't have the capabilities here."

Sara ignored him. She felt down the woman's ribs, cringing as she made contact with the one she had broken. When Sara's ringers reached the bottom of the diaphragm, she took a scalpel and sliced a six-inch opening into the upper abdomen. She slipped her hand into the incision, reaching under the rib cage and into the woman's chest.

She kept her eyes closed, blocking out the hospital as she massaged the woman's heart. The monitor showed false hope as Sara squeezed, manually circulating the woman's blood. A tingling came to her fingers, and in her ears she could hear a slight piercing tone. Nothing else mattered as she waited for the heart to respond. It was like squeezing a small balloon filled with warm water. Only this balloon was life.

Sara stopped. She counted to five seconds, eight, then up to twelve, before being rewarded with spontaneous beeps from the heart monitor.

Hare asked, "Is that her or you?"

"Her," Sara offered, letting her hand slip out. "Start a lidocaine drip."

"Jesus Christ," Lena muttered, hand to her own chest. "I can't believe you just did that."

Sara snapped off her gloves, not answering.

The room was quiet but for the beeps of the heart monitor and the in and out of the ventilator.

"So," Sara said. "We'll do a darkfield for syphilis and a gram stain for gonorrhea." Sara felt her face flush over this. "I'm sure a condom was used, but make a note to follow up in a few days for pregnancy." Sara was conscious of a waver in her voice that she hoped Ellen and Lena did not pick up. Hare was another matter. She could hear what he was thinking without even looking at him.

He seemed to sense her nervousness and tried to make light of it. "Good God, Sara. That's the sloppiest incision I've ever seen."

Sara licked her lips, willing her own heart to calm. "I was trying not to upstage you."

"Prima donna," Hare offered, wiping perspiration from his forehead with a pad of surgical gauze. "Jesus Christ." He laughed uncomfortably.

"We don't see much of this around here," Ellen said as she packed surgical towels into the incision to control the bleeding until it was closed. "I can call Larry Headley over in Augusta. He lives about fifteen minutes from here."

"I would appreciate that," Sara said, taking another pair of gloves from the box on the wall.

"You okay?" Hare asked, his tone casual. His eyes showed his concern.

"Fine," Sara answered, checking the IV. She told Lena, "I guess you can find Frank?"

Lena had the decency to look embarrassed. "I'll go see." She left the room, her head down.

Sara waited until she was gone, then asked Hare, "Can you take a look at her hands?"

Hare was silent as he examined the woman's palms, feeling the bone structure. After a few minutes, he said, "This is interesting."

Sara asked, "What's that?"

"Missed all the bones," Hare answered, rotating the wrist. When he got to the shoulder, he stopped. "Dislocated," he said.

Sara crossed her arms, suddenly cold. "From trying to get away?"

Hare frowned. "Do you realize how much force it would take to dislocate your shoulder blade?" He shook his head, unable to accept it. "You'd pass out from the pain before you'd-"

"Do you realize how terrifying it is to be raped?" Sara's gaze bored right into him.

Pain registered in his expression. "I'm sorry, honey. Are you okay?"

Tears stung the back of her eyes, and Sara had to fight to keep her voice even. "Check her hips, please. I want you to do a full report."

He did as he was told, giving Sara a curt nod after the examination. "I'm thinking there's some ligature damage in the hip, here. I need to do this when she's awake; it's fairly subjective."

Sara asked, "Can you tell anything else?"

"All the bones in her hands and feet were missed. Her feet were speared between the second and third cuneiforms and the navicular. That's very precise. Whoever did it knew what he was doing." He paused, looking down at the floor to regain his composure. "I don't see why someone would do this."

"Look at this," Sara said, pointing to the skin around the woman's ankles. They both had angry black bruises around their circumference. "Obviously there was a secondary restraint to hold the feet down." Sara picked up the woman's hand, noticing a fresh scar at the wrist. The other had the same mark. Julia Matthews had attempted suicide at some point during the last month. The scar was a white line slashing vertically across her small wrist. A dark bruise put the old wound in stark relief.

Sara did not bring this to Hare's attention. Instead, she offered, "It looks to me like a band was used, probably leather."

"I'm not following."

"The piercing was symbolic."

"Of?"

"Crucifixion, I would imagine." Sara put the woman's hand back by her side.

Sara rubbed her arms, fighting the chill in the room. She walked over, opening drawers, looking for a sheet to cover the young woman. "If I had to guess, I would say that the hands and feet were nailed back from the body."

"Crucifixion?" Hare dismissed this. "That's not how Jesus was crucified. The feet would be together."

Sara snapped, "Nobody wanted to rape Jesus, Hare. Of course her legs were spread apart."

Hare's Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed this. "Is this what you do at the morgue?"

She shrugged, looking for a sheet.

"Christ, you've got more balls than I do," Hare said, breathing heavily.

Sara tucked the sheet around the young woman, trying to comfort her. "I don't know about that," she said.

Hare asked, "What about her mouth?"

"Her front teeth were knocked out, I imagine to facilitate fellatio."

His voice rose in shock. "What?"

"It's more common than you think," Sara told him. "The Clorox removes trace evidence. I imagine he shaved her so we couldn't do a comb for his pubic hair. Even during normal sex, hairs are torn out. He could have shaved her for the sexual thrill, though. A lot of attackers like to think of their victims as children. Shaving the pubic hair would fuel that fantasy."

Hare shook his head, overcome with the nastiness of the crime. "What kind of animal would do this?"

Sara stroked back the woman's hair. "A methodical one."

"Do you think she knew him?"

"No," Sara answered, never more sure of anything in her life. She walked over to the counter where Lena had left the evidence bag. "Why did he give us her driver's license? He doesn't care if we know who she is."

Hare's tone was incredulous. "How can you be so sure?"

"He left-" Sara tried to catch her breath. "He left her in front of the hospital where anybody could've seen him dump her." She put her hand over her eyes for just a second, wishing that she could hide. She had to get out of this room. That much she was certain of.