Page 34 of River of Deceit

River jerks away from me. “Yeah. That,” he says, his voice flat.

“I don’t care if he’s harmless. You’re not supposed to have men in the dorm,” Sam retorts.

I roll my eyes. “To prevent us from having sex? How homophobic.Two women can fuck each other too, Sam.” I glance at River. “It’s not an actual rule, by the way. I checked before I picked this dorm. They ask everybody to respect quiet hours, that’s all. Don’t scream too much when I fuck you.”

“Who says I’d be the one screaming?” River retorts. “Don’t worry, Sam. I’ll gag her to keep her from making too much noise.”

Sam does not look any more pleased at that than she had the rest. “Or you could just leave,” she retorts.

“You want us to have sex in thehall?” I ask, making a mock scandalized expression. “That would be worse! I’m really not into public exhibitionism.” After a beat, I add, “I don’t judge if you are, though.”

Sam grabs a coffee mug and turns without a word, stalking back off into her own room.

“Wow,” River says as soon as she’s gone. “You got a real winner of a roommate.”

I laugh. “Yeah. I’d be nicer if she hadn’t judged me right when we met.” I lead River to my room and lock the door behind us.

I give the door a suspicious look. “How soundproof do you think this actually is?”

“Not very,” he says. “But you have two doors in between us and your delightful new friend there, so it should be fine. Unless you think she’s going to put her ear against the door and try to eavesdrop while we talk about murder and whatever.”

“You mean like you tried the other day, when you were lurking outside my dorm?” I suggest.

He glares at me, but he doesn’t contradict me.

I go to the desk and open the bottom drawer, pulling out my prized possession. “I guess we’ll have to sit close to each other and talk in low voices,” I say.

When I hold up the notebook—Rachel’sjournal—River’s expression changes. “What have you figured out?” he asks, his voice quiet, less confident than it had been.

I get on the bed and motion for him to sit next to me. It’s a double bed, not a queen, so it’s still a bit of a tight squeeze for meand River together. I open the journal to the page that started all of this.

A flyer to a lecture at Dyschord U is stuck onto the page, and Rachel’s note about meeting somebody there is burned into my mind.

“This lecture,” I say, tapping on the page. “It was sponsored by the Kappa Fuckwits frat. That doesn’t mean whoever she met there was from the frat, but a lot of the frat guys would have attended. But…” I scoot closer to River. “I did more digging. Uncle Slayer helped, too. There’s this weird pattern of female students going missing from Dyschord. Not enough to become a national scandal, but…” I sigh. “And Papa talked to some people too, from his business. There’s definitely something going on with the university. Papa wasn’t able to get hard details from anyone though.”

I smile crookedly. Papa had gone on a whole rant about it, about how he needed to kill a few people to loosen lips, but Daddy had convinced him not to cause a huge scene. All of them had told me that I should forget about it.

I get that from Daddy and even Uncle Slayer want to keep me safe, but Papa?

He’s usually the first one to suggest violent revenge.

I’d ignored all of them when they’d suggested I study at New Bristol University instead of Dyschord.

At least they hadn’t tried to stop me. I don’t know what I would have done if they’d attempted to hinder my plans.

“That’s surprising,” River says, and his voice is edged with something bitter. “Usually your Papa gets anything he wants.”

“Apparently he doesn’t run in the right circles for this.” I flip the page back to find an entry about an outing the three of us had gone on. “It’s old money crap. Papa isnewmoney, even if a lot of that money was grandpa’s.”

“People with old money think they can get away with anything,” River replies. “But murdering a high school girl?” His jaw clenches.

He’s pretty hot when he’s angry.

“You’re actually shocked by that? You know what the elite do.” Iseethe inside. “They’re the kind of people who hire the Bouchards and the Pavones of the world. They need us to do their dirty work. They call on us to… to… chop up a girl and dump her in the trash, and I’m the only fucking person whoevercared about Rachel?—”

“You aren’t the only one who cared!” River snaps at me. “If I didn’t care, I’d have fucking killed you instead of agreeing to help you.”

“You sure it wasn’t just because you wanted to get your dick wet?” I counter, anger rising inside me.