In the dorm she hesitated outside her door, just as she and George had done outside his earlier. Being attacked in her room the previous night made her paranoid. She didn’t know how the men had gotten into her room.

Repeating what she and George had done, after silently unlocking her door, she opened it suddenly, prepared to flee if needed. She also carefully checked her bathroom to make certain it was empty. It was.

With a warmer, rain-resistant coat and an umbrella, Pia set off on her way to the subway. She had put the Geiger counter in another shopping bag to make it easier to carry. She checked the time. It was almost four, so if she was going to make it to the OCME before it closed, she had to get moving.

Walking quickly in the darkening day, Pia passed the Black building. She went another fifty feet along West 168th Street when she saw two hospital security police up the street, walking toward her. She stopped. She couldn’t see them well in the fading light with mist rising off the pavement, but she could see their uniforms well enough. They were the same uniforms her attackers had worn the previous night. To make matters worse, they seemed approximately the same height and build.

Fighting the urge to flee, Pia stopped dead in her tracks. Ahead to her right was a porte cochere for the hospital. Pia considered racing to it and into the hospital where she could vanish into the crowds, but she’d hesitated too long. She’d have to pass the security guards before she got to the entrance.

She looked behind her and saw there were surprisingly few people on the street. She thought about dashing back to the Black building but thought that if the men wanted to catch her, they probably could before she got inside. Turning back around, she eyed the approaching guards. They seemed to be staring intently at her. She froze, suddenly remembering a similar scene imbued with the same fear and dread.

She was thirteen at the time and had been at the Hudson Valley Academy for Girls for maybe a year. The stress of constantly being on guard, the fear of being attacked at any time, wore on Pia. A couple of times she’d cracked and tried to run away from the school, and she did so again. This time she got lost and had to spend a harrowing moonless night in the woods surrounding the school grounds. The night wore on and on and hummed with threat. Pia tried and failed to make her way back to the academy in the hope of breaking back in before anyone realized she was gone.