After reminding each other about the deaths, they’d each regressed into their own worlds. They walked in silence until beyond the 168th Street hospital entrance. Pia wondered what Will might say if she told him what she now knew. She thought he probably wouldn’t believe her.

“I was surprised to see you,” Will said. “Did you come out of the subway like I did?”

“I did,” Pia admitted. She tried to think of what to tell him if he asked where she’d been, so she changed the subject. “Have you seen George at all today?”

“Wilson? No, but I haven’t been around since lunch. Lesley and I still haven’t found a home for our month’s research elective. I took the opportunity to do a little shopping.” He held up a shopping bag.

Pia spotted a police cruiser heading in their direction along 168th Street. She tilted down the edge of her umbrella to keep her face from being seen, which Will noticed immediately as it bumped into his forehead. She had reacted reflexively. She wouldn’t have been surprised if the police were looking for her. Although being picked up by the police was surely not something she wanted to happen, at least not yet, she was the first to admit it would be far better than being confronted by her attackers again.

“What, are you a fugitive from justice?” Will quipped, unknowingly interpreting Pia’s gesture correctly.

“Hardly,” Pia said with a fake laugh. Another police car was coming, so she kept the edge of the umbrella angled down.

They reached Fort Washington Avenue and waited for the traffic light to change. There were only another couple of hundred yards to the dorm. Pia relaxed a degree. They had not seen any men in Columbia Medical Center security uniforms. She was looking forward to getting to the relative safety of George’s room.

Genti was the first to spot Pia and Will coming around the corner heading right for them, backlit by the corner streetlight.

“There, in front, fifty yards.”

“Both of them!” Prek voiced with delight. “Fantastic! D-day. Wait for my word. You okay, Neri?”

“Sure!” Neri said with more bravado than he felt. He slipped off the safety on his pistol and pulled on his balaclava as Prek and Genti did the same.

Neri looked out the van’s rear window to see if anybody was coming in the opposite direction.

“Wait!” he said. “Who’s this coming from the dorm? Is that him?”