When Erik spots me, his hands still and he rises. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I whisper.
Cami leans forward to look at me. “Hi. Everything ok?”
I nod, lying. I lick my lips, which are so dry they may crack.
“We’re looking in the wallets for passwords to unlock their phones,” she says.
“Sure.”
As I start to turn, Erik snaps off his gloves and drops them on the corner of the coffee table. He hustles out from behind it to fall in step with me as I cross the library to the doorway.
“Can I get you something?” he asks.
“Like what?” I whisper.
“A drink?”
“Probably not a good idea.” I shrug. “You can go back to work. I’m just waiting for Tavi. When she’s off the phone, we’ll hang out in the guest room.”
“Wait,” he says, catching my hand.
The fabric of the ACE elastic bandage covering his knuckles rubs against my palm.
“Keep going through the wallets, Reynolds,” he says. “We may not have long with the phones. Let’s get what we can.”
“You think they’ll show up here?” she says. “Because if they do, they won’t get far. Declan has five armed men out there, including a sniper on the roof with some kind of infra-red scope. It’s like Seal Team Six for billionaires.”
“The Lambda Deltas won’t come tonight. But the police might.”
“Oh, right.” She picks up the next wallet and opens it. “I’ll keep going.”
“This way,” Erik says to me as he guides me into the hall.
“What did Brayden say to you at the end?”
“He’s not dead, Arya.”
I shiver. “You sure?”
He hesitates. “I didn’t try to kill him. If he dies, it’ll be from injuries he got in the fight.”
“What did you ask him?”
“He said you sent an email about the incident. To the administration.”
“I didn’t.”
“Maybe Octavia did.”
“No. Neither of us told anyone until I told you last night. She was just trying to figure how much to tell Jeff before she called him.”
“You never told Eden?”
“God, no. She would’ve gone ballistic.”
“Maybe someone in the fraternity grew a conscience. Or confided in a girlfriend who decided to report it. It could’ve been anything. They might have used your name, so that whoever the university assigned to investigate would come to ask you questions.”
