Page 15 of Mayhem

“Nichlas asked for more coverage.”

That got my attention. “For what?”

Ronan leaned forward, forearms braced on his thighs, and glanced once at Malakai before answering. “He says somebody’s watching him. Same person keeps turning up around campus. He’s noticed her outside the library, near the café, around the east hall. Nothing he can point to and say she followed him from one place to the next, but enough that he’s started changing his routes.”

Malakai went quiet beside me as he set Nichlas’ file down and looked at Ronan properly. “Who?” he asked.

“The new transfer. Echo Matthews.”

The name landed with more recognition on Malakai’s face than I expected. It was slight, barely there, but I knew him too well to miss it.

“You know her?” I asked.

“I’ve seen her.”

Ronan looked over at him, then back at me. “She’s been around enough to notice if you’re paying attention. She hangs with the unofficials. Priya, Devon, and Maren.”

I opened the student directory on my laptop while he talked. “What exactly has Nichlas seen?”

Ronan shifted deeper into the chair and gave me the useful version instead of Nichlas’ panic. Echo wasn’t approaching him. She wasn’t confronting him. She wasn’t leaving messages or making herself obvious. She was choosing places that happened to give her a view of his exits. She would sit near a window and keep talking to whoever she was with while Nichlas passed outside. She would take a different stairwell and end up where he was headed instead of directly behind him. If he doubled back, she didn’t follow.

That was the part that bothered me.

Most students who decided to watch someone were terrible at it. They stared too long, moved too quickly, or kept repeating the same route because they thought distance made them invisible. Echo wasn’t doing any of that. If Nichlas hadn’t already been nervous, he might not have noticed her at all.

Malakai reached for my laptop and turned it slightly toward himself when Echo’s student profile came up. “She watches doors.”

Ronan nodded. “That too.”

I looked between them. “You’ve both noticed this?”

Malakai kept his eyes on the screen. “Noticed her. Then noticed what she was doing.”

That answer told me enough. Kai did not spend his time tracking random students because they were attractive, no matter what Ronan liked to imply. If he had started paying attention to Echo, she had given him a reason. Her profile gave me less.

Twenty-three. Criminal studies. Transfer. No visible connection to the family business, Quorum. No family name tied to anyone I recognized, no donor affiliation, no recommendation that led back into one of the families who routinely moved people through Aldrich. Her application history was neat. Her address checked. Her previous school existed. Everything was in order.

Which meant very little.

“What did you pull on her?” I asked Ronan.

“Not much. Her school record is clean. No family standing attached to her, no obvious money behind the transfer, no Quorum history under Matthews. She listed one emergency contact, a woman with a different last name. The woman is real, the number is real, but there’s nothing tying her to anybody here.”

I looked at the contact information. Jade Bellamy. The name meant nothing to me. The only thing that did stand out was the university. Nichlas went to Westbridge, too, I mutter to myself. Their majors didn’t match up and what little I knew about Westbridge, campuses were split by their academic track. They should have never crossed paths.

Malakai hummed as he read over my shoulder. “Parents?”

Ronan just shook his head. “Not listed in anything useful. No one connected to the application who gives us a reason for why she’s here.”

I sat back and looked at Echo’s photograph again.

Unknowns were a problem on their own. An unknown circling someone my father had personally protected was worse. If she had come in under a known family, I could have called somebody. If she owed a favor, there would be a person attached to it. If she had money behind her, there would be a trail somewhere. People at Aldrich didn’t just appear. They always arrived connected to something.

Ronan snorted as he nodded toward Kai. “You’ve been watching her longer than I have, haven’t you?”

Kai glanced at him, then back at the profile. “She’s pretty.”

The comment was casual enough that it might have ended there if Ronan hadn’t smiled. Malakai saw that and his expression changed just slightly. He crossed the short space between them before Ronan said anything else, caught him by the front of his shirt, and pulled him into a kiss.