We drove to my home on streets barely touched by traffic. The late night was perfectly still, snow covering the earth like cotton and absorbing sound. Bare trees were black against white, the moon an indistinct face behind fog. I wanted to go for a walk, but Wesley would not let me.

'It's late and you've had a traumatic day,' he said as we sat in his BMW, which was parked behind Marino's car in front of my house. 'You don't need to be walking around out here.'

'You could walk with me.' I felt vulnerable and very tired, and did not want him to leave.

'Neither of us needs to be walking around out here,' he said as Marino, Janet and Lucy disappeared inside my house. 'You need to go inside and get some sleep.'

'What will you do?'

'I have a room.'

'Where?' I asked as if I had a right to know.

'Linden Row. Downtown. Go to bed, Kay. Please.'

He paused, staring out the windshield. 'I wish I could do more, but I can't.'

'I know you can't and I'm not asking you to. Of course, you can't any more than I could if you needed comfort. If you needed someone. That's when I hate loving you. I hate it so much. I hate it so much when I need you. Like now.' I struggled. 'Oh damn.'

He put his arms around me and dried my tears. He touched my hair and held my hand as if he loved it with all his heart. 'I could take you downtown with me tonight if that's what you really want.'

He knew I did not want that because it was impossible. 'No,' I said with a deep breath. 'No, Benton.'

I got out of his car and scooped up a handful of snow. I scrubbed my face with it as I walked around to the front door. I did not want anyone to know I had been crying in the dark with Benton Wesley.

He did not drive off until I had barricaded myself inside my house with Marino, Janet and Lucy. Tucker had ordered an around-the-clock surveillance, and Marino was in charge. He would not entrust our safety to uniformed men parked somewhere in a cruiser or van. He rallied us like Green Berets or guerrillas.

'All right,' he said as we walked into my kitchen. 'I know Lucy can shoot. Janet, you sure as hell better be able to if you're ever gonna graduate from the Academy.'

'I could shoot before the Academy,' she said in her quiet, unflappable way.

'Doc?'

I was looking inside the refrigerator.

'I can make pasta with a little olive oil, Parmesan and onion. I've got cheese if anybody wants sandwiches. Or if you give me a chance to thaw it, I've got le piccagge col pesto di ricotta or tortellini verdi. I think there's enough for four if I warm up both.'

Nobody cared.

I wanted so much to do something normal.

'I'm sorry,' I said in despair. 'I haven't been to the store lately.'

'I need to get into your safe, Doc,' Marino said.

'I've got bagels.'

'Hey. Anybody hungry?' Marino asked.

No one was. I closed the freezer. The gun safe was in the garage.

'Come on,' I told him.

He followed me out and I opened it for him.

'Do you mind telling me what you're doing?' I asked.

'I'm arming us,' he said as he picked up one handgun after another and looked at my stash of ammunition. 'Damn, you must own stock in Green Top.'

Green Top was an area gun shop that catered not to felons, but to normal citizens who enjoyed sports and home security. I reminded Marino of this, although I could not deny that by normal standards I owned too many guns and too much ammunition.

'I didn't know you had all this,' Marino went on, half inside my large, heavy safe. 'When the hell did you get all this? I wasn't with you.'

'I do shop alone now and then,' I said sharply. 'Believe it or not, I am perfectly capable of buying groceries, clothing and guns all by myself. And I'm very tired, Marino. Let's wind this up.'

'Where are your shotguns?'

'What do you want?'

'What do you have?'

'Remingtons. A Marine Magnum. An 870 Express Security.'

'That'll do.'

'Would you like me to see if I can round up some plastic explosives?' I said. 'Maybe I can put my hands on a grenade launcher.'

He pulled out a Glock nine-millimeter. 'So you're into combat Tupperware, too.'

'I've used it in the indoor range for test fires,' I said. That's what I've used most of these guns for. I've got several papers to present at various meetings. This is making me crazy. Are you going into my dresser drawers next?'

Marino tucked the Glock in the back of his pants. 'Let's see. And I'm gonna swipe your stainless steel Smith and Wesson nine-mil and your Colt. Janet likes Colts.'

I closed the safe and angrily spun the dial. Marino and I returned to the house and I went upstairs because I did not want to see him pass out ammunition and guns. I could not cope with the thought of Lucy downstairs with a pump shotgun, and I wondered if anything would faze or frighten Gault. I was to the point of thinking he was the living dead and no weapon known to us could stop him. In my bedroom I turned out lights and stood before the window. My breath condensed on glass as I stared at a night lit up by snow. I remembered occasions when I had not been in Richmond long and woke up to a world quiet and white like this. Several times, the city was paralyzed and I could not go to work. I remembered walking my neighborhood, kicking snow up in the air and throwing snowballs at trees. I remembered watching children pull sleds along streets.

I wiped fog off the glass and was too sad to tell anyone my feelings. Across the street, holiday candles glowed in every window of every house but mine. The street was bright but empty. Not a single car went by. I knew Marino would stay up half the night with his female SWAT team. They would be disappointed. Gault would not come here. I was beginning to have an instinct about him. What Anna had said about him was probably right.

In bed I read until I fell to sleep, and I woke up at five. Quietly, I went downstairs, thinking it would be my luck to die from a shotgun blast inside my own home. But the door to one guest bedroom was shut, and Marino was snoring on the couch. I sneaked into the garage and backed my Mercedes out. It did wonderfully on the soft, dry snow. I felt like a bird and I flew.

I drove fast on Gary Street and thought it was fun when I fishtailed. No one else was out. I shifted the car into low gear and plowed through drifts in International Safeway's parking lot. The grocery store was always open, and I went in for fresh orange juice, cream cheese, bacon and eggs. I was wearing a hat and no one paid me any mind.

By the time I returned to my car, I was the happiest I had been in weeks. I sang with the radio all the way home and skidded when I safely could. I drove into the garage, and Marino was there with his flat black Benelli shotgun.

'What the hell do you think you're doing!' he exclaimed as I shut the garage door.

'I'm getting groceries.' My euphoria fled.

'Je-sus Christ. I can't believe you just did that,' he yelled at me.

'What do you think this is?' I lost my temper. Tatty Hearst? Am I kidnapped now? Should we just lock me inside a closet?'

'Get in the house.' Marino was very upset.

I stared coldly at him. 'This is my house. Not your house. Not Tucker's house. Not Benton's house. This, goddam it, is my house. And I will get in it when I please.'

'Good. And you can die in it just like you can die anywhere else.'

I followed him into the kitchen. I yanked items out of the grocery bag and slammed them on the counter. I cracked eggs into a bowl and shoved shells down the disposal. I snapped on the gas burner and beat the hell out of omelets with onions and fontina cheese. I made coffee and swore because I had forgotten low-fat Cremora. I tore off squares of paper towel because I had no napkins, either.

'You can set the table in the living room and start the fire,' I said, grinding fresh pepper into frothy eggs.

'The fire's been started since last night.'

'Are Lucy and Janet awake?' I was beginning to feel better.

'I got no idea.'

I rubbed olive oil into a frying pan. 'Then go knock on their door.'

'They're in the same bedroom,' he said.

'Oh for God's sake, Marino.' I turned around and looked at him in exasperation.

We ate breakfast at seven-thirty and read the newspaper, which was wet.

'What are you going to do today?' Lucy asked me as if we were on vacation, perhaps at some lovely resort in the Alps.

She was dressed in her same fatigues, sitting on an ottoman before the fire. The nickel-plated Remington was nearby on the floor. It was loaded with seven rounds.

'I have errands to run and phone calls to make,' I said.

Marino had put on blue jeans and a sweatshirt. He watched me suspiciously as he slurped coffee.

I met his eyes. 'I'm going downtown.'

He did not respond. 'Benton's already headed out.'

I felt my cheeks get hot.

'I already tried to call him and he already checked out of the hotel.' Marino glanced at his watch. 'That would have been about two hours ago, around six.'

'When I mentioned downtown,' I said evenly, 'I was referring to my office.'

'What you need to do, Doc, is drive north to Quantico and check into their security floor for a while. Seriously. At least for the weekend.'

'I agree,' I said. 'But not until I've taken care of a few matters here.'

'Then take Lucy and Janet with you.'

Lucy was looking out the sliding glass doors now, and Janet was still reading the paper.

'No,' I said. 'They can stay here until we head out to Quantico.'

'It's not a good idea.'

'Marino, unless I've been arrested for something I know nothing about, I'm leaving here in less than thirty minutes and going to my office. And I'm going there alone.'

Janet lowered the paper and said to Marino, 'There comes a point when you've got to go on with your life.'

'This is a security matter,' Marino dismissed her.

Janet's expression did not change. 'No, it isn't. This is a matter of your acting like a man.'

Marino looked puzzled.

'You're being overly protective,' she added reasonably. 'And you want to be in charge and control everything.'

Marino did not seem angry because she was soft-spoken. 'You got a better idea?' he asked.

'Dr. Scarpetta can take care of herself,' Janet said. 'But she shouldn't be alone in this house at night.'

'He won't come here,' I said.

Janet got up and stretched. 'He probably won't,' she said. 'But Carrie would.'

Lucy turned away from the glass doors. Outside, the morning was blinding, and water dripped from eaves.

'Why can't I go into the office with you?' my niece wanted to know.

'There's nothing for you to do,' I said. 'You'd be bored.'