Her eyes close as soon as her head touches the pillow.

The alarm jolts her out of a deep dreamless sleep just before six o’clock. As she groggily pats the nightstand, she hears the loud clunk even before she feels the stabbing pain in her shoulder. Suppressing a scream, she grabs her wrist with her other hand and forcibly rotates the arm away from her body until the bone pops back into the socket. The immediate relief is welcome, but she wishes the agony of each dislocation would lessen after so many episodes.

Still breathing heavily, Alana climbs out of bed. She turns on the TV and half listens to it while she dresses. The international coverage of the raid on the terrorists’ lair competes for airtime with the update on the spread of the plague in Genoa. None of it is news to Alana, until a reporter appears on-screen standing in front of a mosque. One of its walls has been spray-painted with dripping red letters, and several of the arched windows above are shattered. Disheartened, she switches off the TV and heads downstairs.

Byron is seated at a high-top table in the lobby café. Alana braces herself for another rebuke, but if he’s upset about being excluded from the confrontation with Zanetti or the AISI raid, he doesn’t show it. He even offers her a small grin as she joins him. “I’m guessing your night might have been more eventful than mine,” he says.

“Possibly.” She swallows. “Byron, it all unfolded so quickly, and Sergio insisted that no one else—”

He stops her with a raised hand. “Just tell me what happened.”

She takes a quick glance around her. Aside from an inattentive waiter, they’re alone, so she feels comfortable speaking freely. After she finishes updating him about the raid, she says, “Did you hear about the local mosque?”

“Yes. I was told they even tried to light it on fire while worshippers were still inside.”

“It’s our fault, Byron. If I hadn’t pressed so hard on Yasin . . . and if his name hadn’t been released to the media . . .”

He shakes his head, unrepentant. “Would have happened anyway. As soon as the news got out about the shoot-out with those terrorists. Anyone could’ve put it together. People are on edge. Looking to blame something or someone.”

“It’s only going to get worse.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” he says distractedly. “Alana, listen, I heard back from Geneva this morning. This Yersinia outbreak here isn’t a genetic match for any known plague bioweapon.”

Relieved as she is to hear it, she also feels strangely deflated, as though they’ve lost further momentum. “If it’s not a match for a bioweapon or any documented naturally occurring plague, then maybe we’re facing a new spontaneous mutation?”

“Maybe. But it’s still got to come from somewhere.”

“Exactly. And we better figure where. Soon.”

“Right now we need to deal with the spread,” he says. “There have been nineteen more cases since yesterday. Four of them children. One was a friend of Sonia Poletti’s daughter.”