A drunk guy with flushed cheeks and a goatee led me all the way to Dylan’s room, on the second floor above the cafeteria-ballroom. Jazz vibrated faintly underfoot as Drunk Guy used his keycard to let us both in.
“His room is just down there—” He unleashed a beer-flavored belch, and I gulped for fresher air at my side, which wasn’t that much fresher—there was a distinct smell of sweaty guy and stale beer in this dorm.
“Thank you,” I said, giving him a quick nod and moving over the thinning navy carpet toward the door he’d pointed at. From here, it seemed to be partially open; light spilled in a wedge into the dim hall.
Brilliant. The plan worked.
“Sure,” Drunk Guy said, and shuffled off in the opposite direction with another large belch.
Slowing my step, I calculated my next move. Seemed the guy crashing in there was already here. Now all I had to do was make some conversation while slyly scanning the walls.
Simple enough.
I hoped.
Voices trilled down the hall, followed by laughter and doors opening and shutting. Footsteps followed me to Dylan’s door. I moved to the side to let the guy pass, but he didn’t. I blinked at the scuffed black shoes as they moved to my side, and—
“Gah!” I startled, lurching into Dylan’s door and swinging it open.
“Liam,” Quinn said, grabbing my arm tightly to stop me from toppling into the room. He pulled me back to a standing position as the door thumped against the wall, revealing an unoccupied room. Maybe the guy had just gone to the bathroom?
“What are you doing here?” I asked, torn between the need tograb my pen and the need to investigate The Raven so I could leave before the guy returned from his toilet trip.
Quinn frowned at my hurried words and guilt-ridden tone. “Maybe I should ask whatyouare doing here?”
I scanned the hall and made a decision. In the name of truth, in the name ofjournalism, in the name of helping The Raven who’d saved me, I stepped into the decent-sized room and yanked Quinn in with me by his suspenders. I’d have preferred him to turn around and go the other way, but he might have lingered in the doorway and demanded answers, drawing all the wrong attention to us.
Once we were safely inside—the suspenders having come to a hearty snap against Quinn’s chest—I carefully placed the door in its original spot.
“Again, what are you doing?” Quinn said, this time with more curiosity.
“Just a bit of research. This shouldn’t take more than half a minute.”
“Are you...” Quinn said, following me around the king-size bed. He stopped at the two desks in the middle of the room. “Are you snooping?”
“I prefer to call it investigating,” I said, scanning the corkboard of pictures overhanging the desks. One of these shots might bethe one. Quinn stood with his arms folded, shaking his head. I glanced and added, “But I suppose I could live with sleuthing, too.”
A hint of a smile touched his lips. Lifting pictures to see the ones hidden underneath, I asked, “And what are you doing here?” I couldn’t deny I was marginally curious as well.
Quinn shrugged. “Confession: I wanted to find you. I rang up theScribeand some girl, Hannah, I think, said you mentioned you would be here tonight.”
“Hannah?” I asked, ripping my gaze from the corkboard for an astonished second.
“Yeah, I know someone who lives here and it was pretty easy to get a ticket. I’ve been waiting for you to arrive.”
“I’d have thought I was the last person you’d want to see. Or if not the last, close to it.”
He ran a hand through his hair and bit his lip. “It’s just... you haven’t been at home. Every time I go there you never answer.”
Quinn had visited?“I’ve been working late.”
“Fine, but I needed to finally tell you that I’m sorry. What I said last weekend, well, I was a complete prick, and I never should have been so cruel.”
I re-focused on the pictures. “Stating a fact isn’t cruel.”
He winced. “Look, Hunter seems to think you’re the best so, you know, I had no right to say what I did.” He tried for a small smile and then reached out his hand. “Do you think we can start again?”
My fingers brushed over a blurry picture of a figure in the darkness, wearing a hood. Was this the picture Dylan had taken?
