My blood freezing in my veins. Pete facedown on the floor, red mushrooming from some unseeable wound.

30.

AN AMBULANCE ARRIVED. RYAN HELD ME IN HIS ARMS AS TWO paramedics worked on Pete. Boyd whined and scratched on the far side of the pantry door. I shared his fear. The kitchen seemed awash in blood. Could anyone survive the loss of so much?

Though I asked question after question, I was repeatedly ignored. After furious manipulation involving tubes and wound packing, Pete was strapped to a backboard, placed on a stretcher, and whisked away.

Two Isle of Palms uniforms arrived and asked a lot of questions. Their name tags read CAPER and JOHNSON. At one point Caper asked about the bruise on my arm. I described the previous Thursday's bottle-throwing incident. Caper put it in his notes.

Ryan told the cops he was on the job, showed his badge, and tried to deflect the interrogation. Caper and Johnson said they understood, but needed to file an incident report.

Tersely, I outlined what Pete was doing in Charleston. Caper wanted my thoughts on who might have shot him. I suggested he interrogate Herron and the GMC clinic staff. Caper's expression suggested that was unlikely to happen.

"Probably a beach prank," Johnson said. "Damn kids sneak Daddy's gun, get wasted, start firing bullets into the air. Happens every long weekend."

"Someone get drilled every long weekend?" Ryan asked.

I too knew that explanation was stupid, but I wasn't in the mood to argue. I was anxious to follow the ambulance.

An hour after the shooting Ryan and I were in the emergency room waiting area at the MUSC hospital. This time we'd entered on the Ashley Street side. The life side. I prayed Pete would be exiting through the same door.

An hour crept by. Another. Pete was in surgery. That's all they would tell me. He was in surgery.

The ER was chaos, the staff pushed to its limits by the full onslaught of an American holiday. A family of six burned in a barbecue grill explosion. A child pulled from a backyard pool. A drunk trampled by a horse. A woman beaten by her husband. A man shot by his lover. Drug overdoses. Dehydration. Sunburn. Food poisoning. It was a relief to be moved to the surgical waiting area upstairs.

We were entering our third hour when a doctor approached, face tired, scrubs spattered with blood. My heart seized. I tried but couldn't read the doctor's face.

Ryan took my hand. We both stood.

"Dr. Brennan?"

I nodded, afraid to trust my voice.

"Mr. Petersons is out of surgery."

"How is he?"

"I removed the bullet and fragments. There's some damage to his right lung."

"Don't lie to me."

"He lost a lot of blood. The next twenty-four hours will be critical."

"Can I see him?"

"He's been moved to the ICU. A nurse will take you."

The ICU was a sharp contrast to the bedlam downstairs. The lights were low, the only sounds the squeak of an occasional heel or the hushed murmur of a distant voice.

Exiting the elevator Ryan and I followed our guide to a configuration of four glass-walled units. A nurse sat in the middle, monitoring the occupant of each bed.

Tonight, the glass quadrangle held three patients. Pete was one of them.

If the sight of Emma in the ER had caught me off guard, that paled in comparison with the shock of seeing post-surgical Pete. Despite his six feet, powerful shoulders, and boundless energy, the Latvian Savant looked ashen and shrunken in his bed. Vulnerable.

Tubes ran from Pete's nose and mouth. Another from his chest. A fourth from his arm. Each was taped with adhesive. An IV tree at the head of his bed dangled several bags. Machines surrounded him, pumping and whirring and sucking. A monitor displayed an undulating series of peaks and valleys, and blipped a constant rhythm.

Ryan must have heard my sudden intake of breath. Again, he enveloped my hand in his.

I felt my knees buckle. Ryan's arm went round my waist.

Pressing a palm to the glass, I closed my eyes and conjured up a long-abandoned childhood prayer.

Disregarding hospital regs, I called Katy's cell. Got a recording. What message to leave? "Katy, it's Mom. Please call me as soon as you can. It's very important."

Go or stay? The nurse assured me Pete would neither hear nor see during the night. "Go get some rest. I'll call if anything develops."

I took her advice.

Lying in bed that night, Ryan voiced the questions I'd been asking myself.

"Do you think Pete was the target?"

"I don't know."

"That bullet might have been meant for you."

I didn't say anything. I thought the shooter had been close enough to distinguish male from female, but perhaps he'd aimed at a silhouette.

Ryan pushed his point. "No one was thrilled to see us at that clinic. If you're closing in on something, folks could be getting antsy."

"The IOP cops weren't impressed. It's America. It's Memorial Day. People fire guns."

"What's that developer's name?"

"Dickie Dupree." Ryan was thinking along lines I'd considered. "A strange car shows up. Someone beans you with a beer bottle. All around the time you're digging Dupree's site."

"The bottle could have been totally unrelated to the shooting."

"Dupree threatened you."

"Dupree could be a bottle thrower, but not a shooter or employer of shooters. That's too big-time for him. Besides, my report to the state was already in. What does he gain in having someone take a shot at me? Everything happened after we found Willie Helms's bones on Dewees. Maybe Helms is the triggering factor."

"Maybe it's Montague."

"Maybe it's that clinic." I sat bolt upright. "Oh my God. I was so upset about Pete I forgot."

Throwing back the covers I dashed downstairs, Boyd at my heels.

The contents of Cruikshank's second envelope lay scattered across the den. Snatching up the papers and the crime book, I raced back upstairs, Boyd matching me tread for tread.

"Ever heard of William Burke and William Hare?" I asked when I was once again under the blankets.

Ryan shook his head.

"Burke and Hare were responsible for sixteen murders spanning a period of less than a year."

"When and where?"

"Edinburgh, 1827 to 1828. At that time, under British law, only the bodies of executed criminals could be used for dissection. Demand exceeded supply for the fresh corpses needed to teach anatomy and surgery, and grave robbing became common."

"Gotta admire those Scots. Entrepreneurial. Even the criminal set."

"Bad news, Ryan. Burke and Hare were Irishmen who moved to Scotland to work on the Union Canal. Both ended up living in a boardinghouse owned by Maggie Laird. Helen MacDougal also roomed there, and the four became drinking buddies.

"In 1827 one of Laird's boarders fell ill and died owing back rent. On the day of the funeral Burke and Hare robbed the coffin and sold the man's body to Robert Knox, an anatomy professor at the Edinburgh Medical School."

"How much?"

"Ten pounds seven shillings. Big bucks back then. Seeing an income stream of easy money, the dynamic duo made a career change into the cadaver supply business. When another boarder fell ill, Burke and Hare suffocated him by pinching off his nose and mouth. That became their MO, and the origin of the modern term "burking."

"Next came a relative of Helen's, a street busker, a string of prostitutes. Eventually, Burke and Hare grew lazy, or complacent, and started taking victims close to home. The neighbors began to notice that locals were disappearing, and Dr. Knox's students began to recognize faces on their tables. The downfall came with the murder of a hooker named Mary Docherty.

"When arrested, all four turned on each other. Burke and Helen MacDougal were charged and tried, Hare and Maggie Laird turned king's evidence. Helen won a verdict of not proven, Burke was found guilty and sentenced to death. Before his hanging, Burke admitted to a total of sixteen murders."

"Why risk murder? Why not read the obits and buy a good shovel?"

"These guys were slugs. Digging a grave was too labor intensive."

"Cruikshank was collecting articles on Burke and Hare?"

"Lots of them." I held up the papers.

Ryan considered this for several seconds.

"You think someone at the GMC clinic is knocking patients off for their corpses?"

"Cruikshank must have been considering the possibility."

"OK. Suppose that's it. Why? Where's the profit?"

"I'm not sure. Wait. Maybe they were harvesting skeletal parts to sell for medical purposes. Remember that scandal involving a funeral home and a number of tissue procurement companies?"

Ryan shook his head.

"The funeral home was removing bone from corpses without permission, and replacing it with polypropylene pipe. Alistair Cooke was reported to be one of the victims."

"You're not serious."

"It was all over the news. The stolen bone was sold to companies that supply hospitals with tissue. Cadaveric bone is routinely used for grafting."

"But bone doesn't make sense. Helms was buried. Montague was tossed into the ocean. Their skeletons were intact."

"Maybe their bones turned out to be unsuitable for some reason."

"Such as?"

"I don't know. OK. Maybe it wasn't a problem with the bones. Maybe the perp got spooked, the drop-off was spotted, the cleaning apparatus broke down. A thousand things could have gone wrong."

"What about the cut marks?"

What about the cut marks? Lower back. Pelvic and abdominal area.

Think outside the box, Brennan. Outside the bones.

My mind tossed up a gruesome possibility.

"But you're right about one thing," Ryan was saying. "Helms lived in a scrap-yard trailer. Montague was homeless. Aikman was mentally ill. Teal was unstable and lived on the streets. Who else is missing? Hookers. Druggies. Those on the fringe, those no one notices. The same people who fell victim to Burke and Hare."

It couldn't be. The idea was too terrible to contemplate.

"But there's no proof anyone's dead except Helms and Montague." Ryan's voice was barely registering. "So what have we learned? Cruikshank was digging into Burke and Hare. Cruikshank was staking out the GMC clinic. Helene Flynn worked there. Montague and Teal were patients there. But we don't even know that Teal is dead."

"Cruikshank sure is," I said. "Because he uncovered something that got him killed. Ryan-"

"Shh."

"No. Listen."

Clicking off the light, Ryan pulled me to him. When I tried to protest, he hugged me tighter. I fell silent and we lay together in the dark. Sometime later, Birdie hopped onto the bed. I felt him circle, then curl at my side.

Tired as I was, sleep wouldn't come. My mind kept offering up the same dreadful suspicion. Kept repeating the same horrified response: It can't be. It can't be.

I refused to think about my appalling hypothesis. To calm myself I chanted silently. Tonight, rest. Tomorrow, pursue.

It didn't work. My thoughts raced from topic to topic. I kept seeing the rigging and tubes pumping to keep Pete alive. I relived mopping Anne's kitchen floor, pictured my tears falling and mingling with his blood. I went cold at the prospect of telling Katy that her father was dead. Where was Katy?