“She’s coming down. I don’t know who I’d rather deal with if I were you, the dean or the Thirty-third.”

Winston showed George and Pia into a small side room and closed the door. George was too agitated to speak; Pia started pacing around the room. She couldn’t sit still. After what seemed like an age but was in fact thirty minutes, the door opened and a tall, dark-haired woman in sweats and a ski jacket came in and shut the door behind her. Her name was Helen Bourse. She had been dean of students for almost a decade and was well liked but hardly a pushover.

“What the hell did you think you were doing? You two have made me cash in more favors than I actually own, stopping Mr. Winston from having you arrested. I want you to convince me I did the right thing.”

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Bourse,” George said. He took one look at Pia’s defiant face and decided he should speak for the both of them.

“We’re very sorry.”

“So what in God’s name were you doing there? In a lab that was sealed and potentially contaminated.”

“The only part that might have been contaminated was the biosafety unit,” Pia said, interrupting George, who’d started to respond. “We took the necessary precautions. I wanted to look for myself. I just can’t understand how Dr. Rothman managed to get infected, knowing him as I do.”

“So you weren’t picking up your stuff as you told Mr. Winston. And what, you’re suddenly epidemiologists? We had a team of actual epidemiologists check out the lab today both from here and from the CDC. They combed the place, including the biosafety unit.”

“What did they find?”

“Nothing, but that’s not the point.”

“I’ve been working in there on and off for over three years. I wanted to check it out. If something was different, I might have been able to see it, probably better than strangers from Atlanta.”

Some of Bourse’s vinegar lost its acid. She realized that Pia had a point. Still, it didn’t justify what these two otherwise gifted students had done, something totally foolish and out of character. After a pause she asked, “Well, what did you find?”

“Nothing, but we were interrupted. Do you have a report from the epidemiologists?”

“Certainly not from the CDC. Not yet. But I spoke to the head of our own team. Apparently nothing was found amiss.”