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didn’t ask for it.”
    “Well, least you can do is introduce me to a few cute nurses when the dancing starts.”
    Gina wasn’t sure she’d even make it through to the dancing—half the time she found herself fantasizing ways to escape Saturday’s gala all together. “No problem.”
    Trey hung up the radio. “Make a U-turn, we’re heading to Heinz Prep,” he instructed Gecko. “Code Two.”
    “What’s up?”
    “School nurse thinks a kid might have meningococcemia. He came in with a fever, and she sees a rash. Kid’s acting fine otherwise.”
    “Shit.” Meningococcemia was a highly contagious bacterial disease that could quickly go from no symptoms to near death. “Any other kids with the same symptoms?”
    “They’re going to check. Might be nothing—you never know with school nurses—but she got verbal permission from the mom for us to transport him for a full eval. In fact, the mother insisted on it, has her personal physician on his way to meet us at Angels’ ER.”
    “Personal physician? Who are these folks, the Rockefellers?” Gecko asked.
    “Could be,” Gina said as a stately white-brick mansion surrounded by several other large buildings came into sight. A wrought-iron gate announced their arrival at Heinz Prep, her alma mater. “Rockefellers, Kennedys, Carnegies, they’ve all attended.”
    “Are those dormitories?” Trey asked as they parked between two colonial-style brick houses.
    “Yes. Students come from all over the world.”
    “If it is meningococcemia—” Trey began.
    “Then we might have a disaster on our hands,” Gina finished for him.
     
     
    D R. L YDIA F IORE TOOK ADVANTAGE OF A FEW moments of calm and sat at the ER nurses’ station, completing Karen Chisholm’s death certificate.
    She filled in the tiny spaces on the crowded form, writing as neatly as possible, worrying the fingers of her free hand through the uneven layers of her dark hair. She hated paperwork. Especially the way it diminished a person to a few sterile facts. She hadn’t known Karen, but that didn’t matter. Karen had been one of their own. She deserved more than meaningless words on a smudged form destined for a dusty drawer in some bureaucrat’s office.
    To Lydia, every patient she lost deserved more. But she didn’t have the luxury of investing in that emotion. She had to focus on her other patients, give them the best she could.
    “Hell of a way to start a shift,” she muttered, scanning the nurses’ notes for the exact time of death.
    “How do you think she ended up in the cemetery?” a nurse asked as she pretended to straighten the stacks of paperwork at the desk.
    “Did you see the stuff they spray-painted on her?” another said with a shudder. “Like a horror movie.”
    Lydia watched, on alert. She’d called in a crisis counselor, but he hadn’t arrived yet. A few of the staff had broken down, sobbing after Karen’s failed resuscitation. Most swallowed their emotions, their movements now stiff, angry, guarded. And then there were the ones whose curiosity outweighed their grief. As if arming themselves with details about Karen’s death would keep them safe.
    “We need more security around here,” one of the older nurses put in, banging a chart down on to the shelf beside Jason, the desk clerk.
    “What do you want?” Jason asked. “Armed guards patrolling the hallways? This isn’t Baghdad.”
    “You’re not a woman. You don’t understand. I’m afraid to walk to my car. They make us park so far away, and that parking garage is always dark and deserted.”
    Lydia turned to Jason. “Speaking of security, did you send the guys across the street to guard the place where Nora found Karen?”
    “Yeah, they’re waiting for the cops to take over. Here comes Glen now,” Jason said.
    “Morning.” Glen Bakker, the head of security, was a man whose posture screamed military. His shoulders were squared, jaw jutting forward, as he extended his hand and shook Lydia’s. He