Page 31

“Are you coming down to the dining hall for dinner?” Tabby asked from the doorway of our shared dorm room. “Mark said Garrett would be back with AJ by five and we should meet them down there. It’s already ten after.”

“Calm down, Tabs. Garrett will build in at least a fifteen minute tardy window before he sends out a search party. But if you’re starving, just head down without me—I need to find my phone charger ASAP, or I’ll be heading out to the store to get another one instead of eating.”

“Okay,” she said, lingering for a second. “Want me to grab some food for you?”

“If you promise not to get me anything you can’t easily identify, then yes, go ahead.”

“Meatloaf it is,” she said right before she bolted out the door.

“I will literally end you!” I shouted after her, but I knew it wouldn’t matter. My ass was about to be choking down a slab of dead cow for dinner, smothered in watered-down ketchup.

Awesome .

Muttering under my breath about all the creative ways I could torment her while she slept, I ransacked our room in search of the charger cord that didn’t want to be found. My stomach growled loudly in protest and I rubbed it, knowing it wasn’t going to feel any better after I ingested the meatloaf.

“Don’t they feed you in this place?” a male voice called from behind me, and I whipped around to find Dawson leaning his shoulder against the doorframe. “Need me to take you out for some real food before you fade away?”

“That depends,” I said, standing to face him.

“On what?”

“On whether or not I get to pick where we go.”

He pushed off the door and sauntered over with that swagger I had grown to love. “I guess that depends, too…”

“On what?” I asked, our roles suddenly reversed.

“On whether or not I get to pick what we do after.”

“I have a very important test tomorrow, Dawson,” I said, dodging him as he got closer.

“What class?”

“An important one.”

“Who’s the professor?”

“Someone you don’t know…who’s important.”

“I feel like there’s a theme here—”

“That’s because you’re a super sleuth,” I said, grabbing my coat off my bed. “Now, do I get to pick or not? And we’ll have to stop by the dining hall so I can properly bail on my friends and the meatloaf Tabby is getting me for dinner.”

His face scrunched in horror. “What did you do to make her mad? And yeah, we can stop by quickly to let them know.”

As I shrugged on my coat, Dawson pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen. Then he tapped a button and put it to his ear.

“This is Dawson,” he said. I was at his side in a flash to eavesdrop. “Okay…okay…I see. Yeah, I can be at the Bureau in twenty.” He hung up without another word and stared at me. “I have to go. Something came up at work.”

“I gathered that. What’s going on?”

“Columbus PD reached out to us regarding three recent homicides in town.”

“But cops HATE you guys. They never bring you in unless—” I cut myself off as realization dawned. “It’s a serial killer .”

Dawson’s jaw flexed in preparation for the barrage of questions he knew I was about to ask—the kind he couldn’t answer. “I don’t have the details yet, but it seems as though someone is targeting females aged 18-24.”

“Any other common denominator yet?” I asked.

Those dreamy hazel eyes narrowed to angry slits. “So far, yes. They all appear to be students at Ohio State. Petite blonde students.”

“Oh boy—”

“I’m going to take you down to your friends, and I don’t want you going anywhere without one of them until we catch this guy,” he said as he walked toward the door.

“Orrrr,” I said, chasing him into the hall, “I could help you catch this guy somehow—”

“Danners—”

“Hear me out! It’s not like I don’t have experience with this kind of stuff—”

“No.”

“—and I’d have the element of surprise, potentially—”

“What did your therapist say about this behavior?”

“I could at least be your eyes and ears on campus,” I continued. “See if I can get people to talk to me that won’t talk to cops—”

“That’s what undercover is for—”

“It would be just like old times!”

“I’m not sure that’s a good thing, Kylene. Besides, even if I was remotely on board with any of this—which I’m not, for the record—there is a zero percent chance your father would allow it.”

I smiled up at him, mischief and mayhem coursing through my veins. “Help me convince him, and we can skip dinner altogether and go straight to the after part you were so excited about.”

“No.”

“C’mon, hotshot. You know you miss having me as your unofficial partner.”

“I’d rather have you as my girlfriend—alive.”

“We can good cop/bad cop my dad into letting me help.” I closed the door behind me and locked it. “ Then ,” I said, looping my arm in his to pull him closer, “we can play good cop/bad cop back at your place.”

“Nope. Not going to happen.”

“Don’t act like you can resist the charms of Kylene Danners,” I said, jumping in front of him. “I’ll just wear you down until you let me have my way.”

“No, I’ll outmaneuver you until you think you’ve gotten your way, but really I have.”

“Oh, you think so?”

“Absolutely.”

“Care to make a little wager, then?”

He stopped cold. “You’re on.”

“Twenty bucks says I’m feeding you tips on the killer by the end of the week.”

“Forty bucks says you’re in class with a personal armed guard if you even think of trying.”

I quirked a brow. “That doesn’t sound so bad…is he hot?”

“ Very .”

“Dammit—”

“How about this: we don’t bring this to your dad, and I let you do a little digging around on campus while you’re in the constant company of your friends or the aforementioned armed guard?”

“Deal!”

“Ha!” he scoffed in triumph. “Like I said, I outmaneuvered you.”

“Wait, what?”

“I was going to let you dig around, because I knew there’d be no stopping you. I let you think I wouldn't allow it so that, when I conceded to it, you’d feel like you won.”

Son of a bitch…

“You’re going to pay for that later,” I threatened as he opened the fire door to the main lobby.

“Do your worst,” he said over his shoulder, smiling wickedly. “I dare you.”

I caught up to him, laughing at how well he’d played me while scheming ways to get him back—just like old times, indeed—and there was comfort to be found in that. My life would never be normal; I’d never have a standard-issue college experience. I’d been through too much to expect that. But I didn’t want that anyway. The call of the chase was too strong to ignore.

And with Dawson at my side and my friends at my back, I’d never have to.