“Which friend?”

“That developer. Zanetti!”

“He’s not my friend.”

“You two seemed pretty cozy.”

Alana crosses her arms. “What the hell are you talking about, Justine? What has he done?”

“He cleared the construction site. Every last trace.”

“What? You couldn’t find any rats?”

“Find any? It’s like rats never existed in Genoa. Our first visit there, I found two piles of droppings within five minutes. This time I couldn’t find so much as a single hair after hours combing the site.”

Byron shakes his head. “Zanetti stalled us with a court injunction long enough for his team to sanitize the site.”

“Why would he do that?” Alana wonders aloud.

“Because he’s corrupt as sin!” Justine cries.

“Even so,” Alana says. “If Yasin Ahmed really was spreading the plague at the construction site and other places across the city, why would Zanetti need to cover it up?”

“He obviously ordered the cleanup before he heard about the other cases,” Byron says.

“Besides, crime scenes aren’t usually helpful for condo sales,” Justine says. “Try selling your house after someone’s been iced in the bedroom.”

Alana ignores the morbid joke. “So you don’t expect to find any live rats at the site?”

“I’m more likely to find a brontosaurus stomping around,” Justine says. “They did a very thorough job.”

“Can you prove Zanetti did it?” Alana asks.

“How do you prove something that no longer exists? Someone covered up the evidence. No question.”

Alana remembers her first visit to the construction site. “There was this monk from the old monastery. I saw him there my first day. Zanetti told us he loitered at the site. Emilio mentioned him, too. What was his name? Brother . . .” She snaps her fingers. “Brother Silvio. Yes, that’s it . . . Silvio.”

“How can he help us?” Justine asks.

“Not sure,” Alana admits. “I assume he lived there a long time. He might know things about the site. Also, it sounds as though he was chatty with Emilio. Maybe he talked to Yasin, as well?”

Justine rolls her eyes. “Oh, this sounds like a sure bet.”

“Do you have a better idea?” Alana asks.

Before Justine can respond, Alana feels her phone vibrate again. This time the slow staccato tells her that it’s from her boss. She pulls out her phone and looks at the screen. The message from Olin only contains a single hyperlink and no other text. Alana clicks on it and her screen fills with an online article. The headline screams: “Plague outbreak linked to terrorism!” On the next line down, the subhead reads: “Authorities searching for fugitive Yasin Ahmed.”

Alana turns the screen around and holds it out to the other two. “What the fuck, Byron?”

Chapter

Twenty-Three

Mamma tells Rosa that Papà has gone to live with the angels. Rosa doesn’t understand what she means. Why would Papà live with the angels when they moved into such a nice house with Nonna? And besides, Papà promised to take her to the park on Saturday. The big swings. Papà always keeps his word.