“Sure. Let’s go!” George picked up the wet towel from Pia’s desk and gestured toward her with it. Pia shook her head. George took the towel into the bathroom while Pia changed from her pajama pants into sweats. She also quickly downed more Advil.

Gathering up her notes and heading for the door, Pia paused and looked back. She’d experienced a flash of anxiety. Although her room was where she’d been attacked, she still felt safer there than outside. Her attackers were lurking out there somewhere. Perhaps they really were watching her, as they’d threatened. George sensed her trepidation and put an encouraging hand on Pia’s shoulder and squeezed lightly. They exchanged a reassuring glance. Pia breathed deeply and walked out of the room, shutting off the light as she went.

“Let’s take the stairs,” Pia said, and she and George descended the four flights, walked along the corridor, but then stopped in front of George’s door. Both had the same thought: If they knew about George, they probably knew his room number.

“What do you think?” he asked. It wasn’t crazy to imagine that the two men might have it in their mind to pay George a visit too.

“Now I think we’re being paranoid,” Pia said.

“But as you correctly said, even paranoid people have real enemies. Wait there!” George unlocked the door and pulled it fully open. He and Pia were prepared to flee if anything looked amiss. Nothing did. George entered his room, making sure nothing had been disturbed before throwing open the bathroom door. “All clear,” he said with a sigh of relief.

“Let’s get to work,” Pia said.

George booted up his laptop and checked the wireless signal before giving up his desk chair to Pia. He went and sat on the bed. His room was a mirror image of hers.

Pia quickly went online, typed “hair loss” and “chloramphenicol” into the search engine and scrolled through the results for a few minutes. “There’s nothing that lists hair loss among chloramphenicol’s side effects. Actually, there are some alternative healers who sell chloramphenicol to reverse hair loss. Wow, De Silva was so wrong when she said chloramphenicol might be the cause of the hair loss.”

Pia continued surfing. “Springer attributed it to fever and stress,” she said as she read. “It seems that stress can cause hair loss. But I don’t think it could be involved in this case. I mean Rothman and Yamamoto were certainly being stressed with their fevers and all, but for stress to cause hair loss I think it has to be over a period of months, not hours.”