Now it was the same. They looked toward him once and returned to their conversation, continuing on a path roughly parallel to his, about twenty steps behind.

He nodded. They returned the gesture and kept walking, heads down.

Garry thinking: Why the hell did I go to that party in the first place?

I should have been studying.

He didn’t regret coming to Italy. He loved the country. He loved the people and the culture and the food. But now he was looking at the whole adventure as a mistake. I could have gone anywhere. But, no, I had to be the big famous world traveler, show everyone from a punk-ass suburb in middle America that I was different. I was special.

Garry observed the two Albanian prisoners moving slightly faster. They would catch up with him in the shadow of the children’s climbing wall—in a small area where prisoners could play with their children and visit with their wives on Sunday.

But he ignored them and thought again of the party at Natalia’s. He never should have left Frieda on the roof. But seeing her drowsy eyes and feeling her head on his shoulder…and feeling nothing down below, he’d had to flee. It never occurred to him that she’d been drugged and would be at risk.

What a mess…

The Albanians were now closer. Ilir and Artin, he believed, were their names. They claimed to have been wrongly arrested simply for helping refugees flee oppression. The prosecutor’s charges were a bit different: that they spirited young girls away from their homes and set them up working in brothels in Scampia, a grim suburb of Naples. The altruistic argument they made—that they were saviors of the oppressed—fell on deaf ears, as most of the girls they “rescued” came not from North Africa but from the Baltic states and small towns in Italy itself, lured by their promise of modeling careers.

Garry didn’t like that the men had sped up and were just a few steps behind. He diverted, hoping to avoid them.

But it was too late.

The squat, swarthy men lunged and flung him to the grass.

“No!” Gasping, his breath knocked from his lungs.

“Shhh. Quiet!” Ilir—the smaller—raged in Garry’s ear.

His brother looked around to see there were no guards or other prisoners present and drew a long, thick piece of glass from his pocket, a shiv. The base was wrapped in cloth, but six inches of razor edge glistened.

“No! Please! Come on, I haven’t done anything!” Maybe they thought he’d been with the prison police, just now, informing on them. “I haven’t said anything!”

Artin smiled and eased back, letting Ilir hold him down. In thickly accented English, he said, “Now, here. Here it is. Yes? Here is what is going to happen. You are knowing Alberto Bregia?”

“Please! I haven’t done anything to you. I just—”

“Now, now. You are answering me. Yes, there you go. Answer me. Do not baby-cry. Answer me.”

“Yes, I know Bregia.”