“Neither of us knew we had this connection. It was a surprise to see her in class,” I say. “I’ve done nothing that violates the standards of teacher and student.”
Rolling her eyes, she nods. “That, I believe. You haven’t fallen for the overly-displayed charms of your student fangirls, I’ve seen the folder of love notes you’ve sent to the Dean.”
“I’m doing nothing to encourage it,” I growl, “I dinna get these women, all the cackling and twittering.”
“Just be careful.” Laosie steps closer. “I know you’re an honorable man, Cormac, it’s clear though, that Miss Chandler is not a- what did you call it? A twittering fangirl. Remember that Helen is deeply unforgiving of impropriety with faculty and students. I’d hate to see you missing a hand.”
Growling at that, I move past her. I’ve had enough of holding back from allowing myself to feel for Mala. Our night together is never far from my thoughts, seeing her around campus, how her gaze studiously avoids mine… It’s been torturous, a feeling that makes me even more irritable. I have self-control, for fuck’s sake! She should not have this kind of power over my thoughts.
I’d argued against the scuba dive through the underwater caves for the third and final task, I’d fought Helen hard on this one but she had insisted. Instead of watching the signals on the screen from the tracker tags in the wetsuits, I would have rather been down there, keeping an eye on these kids.
“This is sloppy,” I murmured to Laosie, “too many moving parts, this shite can go sideways in a second.”
“I agree with you, this is the worst of her ideas,” she says quietly, “and that’s saying something after the apocalyptic potential of the skydiving task.”
When the stretcher brings out Konstantin Turgenev from the underwater caves at the end of the third task, I’m almost happy. It gives me something else to focus on. Two students attemptedto kill him, and the staff members set to observe that section of the caves went conveniently missing. There’s going to be some very unhappy people tonight, and I’m going to get a workout.
“Where were you, Martin?”
The guard I’m questioning is tied to a chair, his face and chest are bloody. He’s held out longer than I expected. His chin’s resting on his chest and he’s having a hard time answering me through the broken teeth.
“I told you, fucker.” Yeah, a little slushy sounding. “I heard something in one of the caves branching off to the left.”
“Convenient,” I say, stretching. “And did you find anyone there?”
“It was my job to check,” he mumbles.
“So you left your post right at the moment Turgenev was attacked from behind during the marked course his team was sent through?” I punch him again, knocking the chair over. There’s a grunt as he lands on the cement floor. “You can see where I might question your timing.”
Martin groans, turning his face away.
“If you’re done playing with your food, I’d like to have a chat with you.” Laoise is leaning against the door, looking bored.
“Why don’t you see if this can jog your memory a little.” I punch Martin hard enough that a molar flies out of his mouth. “I’ll be back.”
Laosie follows me into the bathroom, leaning against the wall and waiting for me to wash off all the blood. “This is why I prefer non-physical interrogation,” she says. “Your way is so unhygienic.”
“You have information for me?” I sigh.
“You’d think these little bastards would be better about checking their gear. If they’d bothered to look, they could have disabled their trackers. We identified the two students who tried to knock Mr. Turgenev unconscious, Hwan and Dubois, they’re both in the Assassin’s division.”
“Appropriate. Who had them on their teams?”
“Dubois was on Baptiste Fournier’s team,” she explains. “We’ve had our eye on him since his cousin Camille attempted to kidnap Tatiana Aslanova last year. Hwan was on Lauren Birch’s.”
“Does Helen want me to bring them in now?”
“No, she wants to hold off and monitor their devices for outgoing messages. Finn in Cyber Security says he can hack in fairly easily, and leave a keylogger virus. Do these kids really think we don’t know they have electronics?”
“I thought I was being cunning when I had a phone on campus ten years ago. And agreed on monitoring Hwan and Dubois,” I say, wiping some of Martin’s blood I missed off my neck. “But I want a tracker on both of them. Have Dr. Giardo administer mandatory flu shots. He can inject a subcutaneous tracker in on those two without any suspicion.”
Laosie gives me a deeply unsettling grin. “He is going to hate you so much for this.”
“Giardo hates everyone,” I laugh, “this can’t make it any worse. Let’s see if we can get through the next couple of months without another attempted murder.”
Chapter Eleven
In which Mala is not putting up with this shit anymore.
