“Who found him?” Nico asks.

“Who do you think? This is what I do, McDreamy.”

Nico motions to her mask and gown. “Is that the only protection you have been wearing?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll need to start on prophylactic antibiotics. Immediately.” Nico turns to Byron. “And anyone else who was exposed to that rat before he was covered.”

“This is not our first time in the field, Nico. All of us took doxycycline and cipro before even coming out here.”

“Is this the only rat you found?” Alana asks.

“The only dead one,” Justine says.

“You’ve trapped live ones, too?”

“Two of them.”

“Healthy?”

“I mean, I didn’t check their cholesterol or blood pressure or anything . . .” Justine pokes the carcass with a stick. “But unlike this poor little fella, they don’t look like they’ve come down with the plague.”

“You will test them, of course?” Nico asks.

“More helpful advice,” Byron says.

Nico shoots Byron a withering stare but holds his tongue.

“I’m far more interested in testing the fleas we found on them,” Justine says.

“You sure they were carrying fleas?” Alana asks.

“Hundred percent. The male rat we trapped—aggressive little guy, total alpha male—he was scratching up a storm.”

“Justine knows her stuff,” Byron says with a touch of pride. He turns to Alana. “I heard from Don Arturo. He sent me the address of that monk you wanted to speak to.”

“Let’s go see him,” she says.

“Soon as I decontaminate.”

Nico glances from Byron to Alana. “I better get back to the hospital,” he says as he turns away.

Minutes later, Byron meets Alana on the other side of the tape and they cross the street to his rental car, a nondescript dark sedan. He plugs the address into the car’s GPS, which guides them deep into the distinctly working-class district of Sestri Ponente. He parks in front of a drab yellow and gray four-story building. They climb a flight of stairs to a second-floor apartment.

The same tiny monk from the construction site opens the door to them dressed in a traditional black habit. His eyes are hooded and the skin over his bald scalp is blotchy from sun damage. He could be anywhere from seventy to ninety years old.

Alana makes introductions. Brother Silvio ushers them inside his small apartment, speaking English in an almost musical cadence. The vanilla-and-must scent of old books permeates the room, reminding Alana of the old college library where she loved to study during med school. There’s hardly any furniture, aside from a few chairs stacked with papers and a small wooden desk that supports a laptop computer. Leather-bound books cram the bookshelves and spill out onto piles on the floor.

“Too early for a grappa?” Silvio asks merrily.

“For me, I’m afraid,” Alana says with a smile, and Byron shakes his head.

Silvio clears a stack of papers off two chairs and insists they sit down. Once seated, Alana motions around her. “Quite the collection, Brother.”