"Carrie, we'll have to take care of our project a little later. Sorry," Lucy said. She added," I assume you've met Benton Wesley. This is Dr. Kay Scarpetta, my aunt. And this is Carrie Grethen. "

"A pleasure to meet you," Carrie Grethen said to me, and I was bothered by her eyes.

I watched her slide into her chair and absently smooth her dark brown hair, which was long and pinned back in an old-fashioned French twist.

I guessed she was in her mid-thirties, her smooth skin, dark eyes, and cleanly sculpted features giving her face a patrician beauty both remarkable and rare. As she opened a file drawer, I noted how orderly her work space was compared to my niece's, for Lucy was too far gone into her esoteric world to give much thought to where to store a book or stack paper. Despite her ancient intellect, she was very much the college kid who chewed gum and lived with clutter. Wesley spoke.

"Lucy? Why don't you show your aunt around?"

"Sure." She seemed reluctant as she exited a screen and got up.

"So, Carrie, tell me exactly what you do here," I heard him say as we walked away. Lucy glanced back in their direction, and I was startled by the emotion flickering in her eyes.

"What you see in this section is pretty self-explanatory," she said, distracted and quite tense.

"Just people and workstations."

"All of them working on VI CAP

"There's only three of us involved with CAIN. Most of what's done up here is tactical" -she glanced back again.

"You know, tactical in the sense of using computers to get a piece of equipment to operate better. Like various electronic collection devices and some of the robots Crisis Response and HRT use." Her mind was definitely elsewhere as she led me to the far end of the floor, where there was a room secured by another biometric lock.

"Only a few of us are cleared to go in here," she said, scanning her thumb and entering her Personal Identification Number. The gunmetal-gray door opened onto a refrigerated space neatly arranged with workstations, monitors, and scores of modems with blinking lights stacked on shelves. Bundled cables running out the backs of equipment disappeared beneath the raised floor, and monitors swirling with bright blue loops and whorls boldly proclaimed "CAIN." The artificial light, like the air, was clean and cold.

"This is where all fingerprint data are stored," Lucy told me.

"From the locks?" I looked around.

"From the scanners you see everywhere for physical access control and data security."

"And is this sophisticated lock system an ERF invention?"

"We're enhancing and troubleshooting it here. In fact, right now I'm in the middle of a research project pertaining to it. There's a lot to do." She bent over a monitor and adjusted the brightness of the screen.

"Eventually we'll also be storing fingerprint data from out in the field when cops arrest somebody and use electronic scanning to capture live fingerprints," she went on.

"The offender's prints will go straight into CAIN, and if he's committed other crimes from which latent prints were recovered and scanned into the system, we'll get a hit in seconds."

"I assume this will somehow be linked to automated fingerprint identification systems around the country."

"Around the country and hopefully around the world. The point is to have all roads lead here."

"Is Carrie also assigned to CAIN?" Lucy seemed taken aback.

"Yes."

"So she's one of the three people."

"That's right." When Lucy offered nothing further, I explained, "She struck me as unusual."

"I suppose you could say that about everybody here," my niece answered.

"Where is she from?" I persisted, for I had taken an instant dislike to Carrie Grethen. I did not know why.

"Washington State."

"Is she nice?" I asked.

"She's very good at what she does."

"That doesn't quite answer my question." I smiled.

"I try not to get into the personalities of this place. Why are you so curious?" Defensiveness crept into her tone.

"I'm curious because she made me curious," I simply said.

"Aunt Kay, I wish you'd stop being so protective.

Besides, it's inevitable in light of what you do professionally that you're going to think the worst about everyone. "

"I see. I suppose it's also inevitable, in light of what I do professionally, that I'm going to think everyone is dead," I said dryly.

"That's ludicrous," my niece said.

"I was simply hoping you'd met some nice people here."

"I would appreciate it if you would also quit worrying about, whether I have friends."

"Lucy, I'm not trying to interfere with your life. All I ask is that you're careful."

"No, that isn't all you ask. You are interfering."

"It is not my intention," I said, and Lucy could make me angrier than anyone I knew.

"Yes, it is. You really don't want me here."

I regretted my next words even as I said them.

"Of course I do. I'm the one who got you this damn internship." She just stared at me.

"Lucy, I'm sorry. Let's not argue. Please." I lowered my voice and placed my hand on her arm. She pulled away.

"I've got to go check on something." To my amazement, she abruptly walked off, leaving me alone in a high-security room as arid and chilly as our encounter had become. Colors eddied on video displays, and lights and digital numbers glowed red and green as my thoughts buzzed dully like the pervasive white noise. Lucy was the only child of my irresponsible only sister, Dorothy, and I had no children of my own. But my love for my niece could not be explained by just that.

I understood her secret shame born of abandonment and isolation, and wore her same suit of sorrow beneath my polished armor. When I tended to her wounds, I was tending to my own. This was something I could not tell her. I left, making certain the door was locked behind me, and it did not escape Wesley's notice when I returned from my tour without my guide. Nor did Lucy reappear in time to say goodbye.

"What happened?" Wesley asked as we walked back to the Academy.

"I'm afraid we got into another one of our disagreements," I replied.

He glanced over at me.

"Someday get me to tell you about my disagreements with Michele."

"If there's a course in being a mother or an aunt, I think I need to enroll. In fact, I wish I had enrolled a long time ago. All I did was ask her if she'd made any friends here and she got angry."

"What's your worry?"

"She's a loner." He looked puzzled.

"You've alluded to this before. But to be honest, she doesn't impress me as a loner at all."

"What do you mean?" We stopped to let several cars pass. The sun was low and warm against the back of my neck, and he had taken off his suit jacket and draped it over his arm. He gently touched my elbow when it was safe to cross.

"I was at the Globe and Laurel several nights ago and Lucy was there with a friend. In fact, it may have been Carrie Grethen, but I'm really not sure. But they seemed to be having a pretty good time." My surprise couldn't have been much more acute had Wesley just told me Lucy had hijacked a plane.

"And she's been up in the Boardroom a number of late nights. You see one side of your niece, Kay. What's always a shock to parents or parental figures is that there's another side they don't see."

"The side you're talking about is completely foreign to me," I said, and I did not feel relieved. The idea that there were elements of Lucy I did not know was only more disconcerting. We walked in silence for a moment, and when we reached the lobby I quietly asked, "Benton, is she drinking?"

"She's old enough."

"I realize that," I said.

I was about to ask him more when my heavy preoccupations were aborted by the simple, swift action of his reaching around and snapping his pager off his belt. He held it up and frowned at the number in the display.