Book of the Dead by Patricia Cornwell Read Free Book Online Page A

ever worried about my cheating on you? Knowingly.”
         No sound but their footsteps on stone, their labored breathing.
         “Knowingly,” she repeats, “because the one time I was with someone else was when I thought you were…”
         “Dead,” he says. “Right. So you’re told I’m dead. Then a minute later you’re fucking some guy young enough to be your son.”
         “Don’t.” Anger begins to gather. “Don’t you dare.”
         He is quiet. Even after the bottle of wine he drank all by himself, he knows better than to push the subject of his feigned death when he was forced into a protected witness program. What Benton put her though. He knows better than to attack her as if she’s the one who was emotionally cruel.
         “Sorry,” he says.
         “What’s really the matter?” she says. “God, these steps.”
         “I guess we can’t seem to change it. As you say about livor and rigor. Set. Fixed. Let’s face it.”
         “I won’t face whatever it is. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no it. And livor and rigor are about people who are dead. We’re not dead. You just said you never were.”
         Both of them are breathless. Her heart is pounding.
         “I’m sorry. Really,” he says, referring to what happened in the past, his faked death and her ruined life.
         She says, “He’s been too attentive. Forward. So what?”
         Benton is used to the attention other men pay to her, has always been rather unperturbed by it, even amused, because he knows who she is, knows who he is, knows his enormous power and that she has to deal with the same thing – women who stare at him, brush against him, want him shamelessly.
         “You’ve made a new life for yourself in Charleston,” he says. “I can’t see your undoing it. Can’t believe you did it.”
         “Can’t believe…?” And the steps go up and up forever.
         “Knowing I’m in Boston and can’t move south. Where does that leave us.”
         “It leaves you jealous. Saying ‘fuck,’ and you never say ‘fuck.’ God! I hate steps!” Unable to catch her breath. “You have no reason to be threatened. It’s not like you to feel threatened by anyone. What’s wrong with you?”
         “I was expecting too much.”
         “Expecting what, Benton?”
         “Doesn’t matter.”
         “It certainly does.”
         They climb the endless flight of steps and stop talking, because their relationship is too much to talk about when they can’t breathe. She knows Benton is angry because he’s scared. He feels powerless in Rome. He feels powerless in their relationship because he’s in Massachusetts, where he moved with her blessing, the chance to work as a forensic psychologist at the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital too good to ignore.
         “What were we thinking?” she says, no more steps, and she reaches for his hand. “Idealistic as ever, I suppose. And you could return a little energy with that hand of yours, as if you want to hold mine, too. For seventeen years we’ve never lived in the same city, much less the same house.”
         “And you don’t think it can change.” He laces his fingers through hers, taking a deep breath.
         “How?”
         “I suppose I’ve entertained this secret fantasy you’d move. With Harvard, MIT, Tufts. I guess I thought you might teach. Perhaps at a medical school or be content to be a part-time consultant at McLean. Or maybe Boston, the ME’s office. Maybe end up chief.”
         “I could never go back to a life like that,” Scarpetta says, and they are walking into the hotel’s lobby that she calls Belle Époque because it is from a beautiful era. But they are oblivious to the marble, the antique Murano glass and silk and sculptures, to everything and everyone, including Romeo – that really is his name – who during the day is a