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“You’ll come back,” said Amalthea.
Maura did not look at her, did not even glance over her shoulder as she walked out of the room. As she heard Amalthea call out behind her: “Maura! You will come back.”
In the visitors’ locker room, Maura stopped to reclaim her purse, her driver’s license, her credit cards. All the proof of her identity. But I already know who I am, she thought.
And I know who I am not.
Outside, in the heat of a summer afternoon, Maura paused and took a deep breath. She felt the day’s warmth cleanse the taint of prison from her lungs. Felt, too, the poison of Amalthea Lank wash out of her life.
In her face, her eyes, Maura wore the proof of her parentage. In her veins flowed the blood of murderers. But evil was not hereditary. Though she might carry its potential in her genes, so too did every child ever born. In this, I am no different. We are all descended from monsters.
She walked away from that building of captive souls. Ahead was her car, and the road home. She did not look back.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TESS GERRITSEN left a successful practice as an internist to raise her children and concentrate on her writing. She gained nationwide acclaim for her first novel of medical suspense, the New York Times bestseller Harvest. She is also the author of the bestsellers Life Support, Bloodstream, and Gravity, as well as The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Si