When Pia woke up her head hurt like hell, and she couldn’t move her limbs. She understood why: She was duct-taped to her chair, her arms bound behind her and her ankles fixed together. Pia’s eyes were barely open, but she could make out one of the men coming toward her, his arm moving back and then quickly forward. She flinched, then took a face-full of cold water that the man had thrown over her using the Tupperware container she sometimes fixed oatmeal in.

“That’s what you do when I say do nothing stupid, huh?” The man’s concealed face was very close to hers. His blue eyes bored into Pia’s. She tried to speak, or at least snort.

“You are a good fighter, but we are more experienced, and there are two of us. We have respect for you because we are family men. But we know some young men who are less, what is the word? Civilized. They are, in fact, animals. If they were here now and not us, then God help you.”

The man was speaking in a whisper. The fight and the overturned furniture that resulted had prompted the upstairs neighbor to bang on her floor to ask for quiet. The men didn’t want to try the neighbor’s patience.

“I say this only once. We are here to give you a message. Stop what you are doing. Stop asking questions. Your doctor was careless and got himself and the other doctor infected, and he put the whole medical center in a compromised position. It will be dealt with quickly and quietly and everyone will move on.”

Pia was rocking back and forth in her chair, her eyes wide with fury. It was her rebelliousness surfacing.

“Stop rocking!”

Pia didn’t stop. The man slapped her in the face, not hard but well placed enough to make her jaw throb even more severely than it had been. Pia sat still.

“You will be watched. Not by us, by our friends. If you keep meddling, if you call the police, our other friends, the animals, will come and take you away and you will ask them to kill you after a couple of days. You will beg them. You understand?”

Pia stared at the man. He moved even closer than before and the rough material of the balaclava touched her skin. She could feel his hot breath through the damp wool. He spoke in barely a whisper.

“You understand?”

Pia waited a beat, then nodded.

“You will tell no one we were here. If you talk with anyone here, like that boy you are with, they will be killed too. If you go to the police or the medical authorities, you will be killed. It’s easy. Just stop, go about your life, and all this goes away.”