During the early hours of Christmas morning, chief medical
examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta receives a chilling call. The Phantom
Slasher has struck again.
The serial killer has terrorized Northern Virginia for months. His
pattern is to stalk with a sophisticated technology that enables him to
invade his victims' homes and watch their every move. They wake up to a
ghost-like hologram before being murdered in their beds.
Scarpetta is summoned to Mercy Island, the site of a
notorious psychiatric hospital where two people have been brutalized,
one of them from Scarpetta’s past. It soon becomes apparent that
she could be next…