Body Double

We are all descended from monsters.

Even divorce, she thought, cannot erase all the bonds forged by years of marriage. Long after the papers are signed, decrees notarized, the ties still remain. And the most powerful tie of all is written in a child's flesh and blood.

The one man you most want to sleep with may be the worst choice of all.

Maybe it's because I can't have him that I feel safe wanting him. He's beyond my reach, so he won't hurt me.

We are not as impervious as we think we are. - Dr Maura Isles

She siged, a sound of regret for childhood transgressions, for all the lessons learned too late.

Be aware every morning that you may not last the day, And every evening that you may not last the night.

A ROW OF SKULLS glared from atop a wall of intricately stacked femurs and tibias. Though it was June, and she knew the sun was shining on the streets of Paris sixty feet above her, Dr. Maura Isles felt chilled as she walked down the dim passageway, its walls lined almost to the ceiling with human remains. She was familiar, even intimate, with death, and had confronted its face countless times on her autopsy table, but she was stunned by the scale of this display, by the sheer number of bones stored in this network of tunnels beneath the City of Light. The one-kilometer tour took her through only a small section of the catacombs. Off-limits to tourists were numerous side tunnels and bone-filled chambers, their dark mouths gaping seductively behind locked gates.