Geoffrey met my eyes. “People mourn in different ways,” he said. I might have been imagining it, but I saw the barest hint of a smile around the edges of his lips.
“She was in my small group,” Bryce volunteered. “For our end-of-semester project. The professor assigned the groups. Emerson was…nice. Perky, even. I mean, who’s perky in a class about serial killers? But Emerson was. She was nice to everyone. One of the guys in our group, you should see him—he’s like a roly-poly. You say anything to him, and he just curls into a metaphorical ball. But Emerson could actually get him to talk. And Derek—the other boy in our group—he’s that guy. You know, the obnoxious, if-you-don’t-know-who-that-guy-is-in-your-section-then-chances-are-good-that-you-are-that-guy guy? That’s Derek, but Emerson could actually get him to shut up, just by smiling.”
Bryce couldn’t match Geoffrey’s detached tone. She was upset about what had happened to Emerson. This wasn’t just a performance to her. She leaned into Michael.
“Emerson didn’t show up for our exam.” Geoffrey closed his laptop. “Professor Fogle was out sick. I printed off the tests that morning, one for every student in the class. Emerson was the only one who didn’t show. I thought she was…” Geoff cut off. “Never mind.”
“You thought she was what?” Michael asked.
Geoffrey narrowed his eyes. “What does it matter?”
It mattered, but before I could come up with a rational explanation for needing the information, Michael’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out, read a text, and then stood. “Sorry, Bryce,” he said. “I have to go.”
Bryce shrugged. Clearly, she wasn’t going to be pining away for him anytime soon. Michael turned toward the door, catching my eye as he passed. Lia, he mouthed.
“I should go, too,” I said. “This was…intense.”
“You’re leaving?” Geoffrey sounded genuinely surprised. Apparently, he’d been under the impression that he had this one in the bag. Dead girl. Freaky lecture. Sensitive eyes. Clearly, I was supposed to be his for the taking.
“Tell you what,” I told him, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. “Why don’t you give me your number?”
Lia’s text didn’t lead us back to the party. Apparently, she hadn’t been quite as cautious as I was about going off with her quarry alone.
“What exactly did Lia say?” I asked.
Michael held up his phone for my inspection. There was an off-center picture of Lia with two college boys: one tall, one round, both slightly out of focus.
“‘Having a fascinating chat,’” I read the accompanying text. “‘Heron Hall, roof.’” I paused. “What’s she doing on the roof of some random building?”
“Interrogating suspects who don’t know they’re being interrogated?” Michael suggested, an edge creeping into his voice.
“Any chance the boys in the picture aren’t suspects?” I wanted to believe that Lia wouldn’t go off alone with someone she thought might be capable of murder. “Maybe they’re just friends of Emerson’s.”
“She sent a picture,” Michael replied flatly.
In case something happens, I filled in. Lia had sent us a picture of the boys she was talking to, in case we got to the roof of Heron Hall and she was gone.
We shouldn’t have left her at that party alone. I’d been so caught up in getting information out of Geoffrey that I hadn’t even told Lia I was leaving.
Lia did a very good impression of someone who could take care of herself—but Lia could do a good impression of just about anything.
Dean wouldn’t have left her, I thought, unable to stop myself. That was why he was the one person in this world that she’d walk through fire for, and Michael and I didn’t make the cut.
I walked faster.
“She’d mock us for worrying,” Michael said, as much to himself as to me. “Either that or she’d take it as a personal insult.” He picked up his own pace. With each step, I imagined the ways that this could go badly.
Lia was ours. She had to be okay. Please be okay. Finally, we made it to Heron Hall. The towerlike building was clearly Gothic in design—and just as clearly, it was closed and locked down for the evening.
NO TRESPASSING.
Michael didn’t miss a beat at the sign. “Do you want to trespass first, or should I?”
I heard Lia laughing before I saw her. It was a light, almost bell-like sound, musical and delighted—and almost certainly a lie.
A step in front of me, Michael opened the door onto the roof. “After you,” he said. My stomach muscles unknotted themselves slowly as I stepped out and into the moonlit night. My eyes searched for Lia. Once I’d seen for myself that she was okay, I registered the fact that her flair for fashion apparently extended to her choice of rendezvous points. Not just a tower, not just a locked tower, but the roof of a locked tower. From here, we could see the entire campus stretched out below, a splattering of lights in the darkness.
From the other side of the roof, Lia spotted us. There were two people with her, both of them male. “You made it,” she said, weaving on her feet toward us in a way that would have made me nervous even if we’d been on solid ground.
“Don’t worry,” Lia whispered, throwing her arms around me like the very happiest of drunks. “I’m on the clock. Nothing but Gatorade since we arrived. And if anyone asks, my name is Sadie.”
Lia turned back toward the boys. I followed her, unable to keep from thinking that Sadie was Lia’s real name. None of us knew why she’d changed it.
Only Lia would use the name she’d been born with as her fake name.
“Derek, Clark, this is…” Lia hiccuped, and Michael took that cue to take over the introductions.
“Tanner,” he said, sticking out his hand to shake the others’. “And this is Veronica.”
The boy on the left was tall and preppy, with politician hair and classically handsome features. There was a distinct chance that he was flexing his pecs. “I’m Derek,” he said, slipping his hand into mine.
Definitely flexing, I thought.
Derek elbowed the boy on the right, hard enough that the boy actually stumbled. Once he regained his footing, he held out his hand. “Clark,” he mumbled.
“You sound like a duck,” Derek told him. “Clark, clark, clark!”
I ignored Derek and focused on Clark. His handshake was surprisingly firm, but his hands themselves were soft. In fact, soft was the best adjective to describe him. He was small and round and looked like he’d been made out of clay that had never quite set. His skin was blotchy, and it took him several seconds to actually meet my eye.