Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta has returned to Virginia as the chief medical examiner. After just weeks on the job, she's called to a crime scene by railroad tracks that are unnervingly close to her own historic neighborhood. At the same time, a catastrophe occurs in a top-secret laboratory in outer space, endangering at least two scientists aboard. Scarpetta is summoned to the White House and tasked with finding out what happened. But even as she remotely works the first potential crime scene in space, an apparent serial killer strikes again very close to home.