Page 28 of Mayhem

ronan

I found Hunter in the smaller office off the west side of the library, the one he used when he wanted to work without half the campus finding a reason to walk past the door. He’d already cleared most of the desk except for the folders he actually cared about, which meant he’d been there long enough to get irritated with whatever he was reading. I shut the door behind me, dropped into the chair across from him, and waited until he looked up.

“Nichlas showed up downstairs about twenty minutes ago,” I said. “Split lip, marks around his throat. Malakai got the name out of him before he could come up with anything useful.”

Hunter’s expression changed immediately. “Echo.”

“Yeah.” I rested an ankle over my opposite knee and watched him reach for the file we’d already started building on her. “He finally admitted she’s his ex. Wouldn’t say much more than that. Every time Malakai asked what he did to her, Nichlas found something else to answer.”

Hunter opened the file without looking at it yet. “Where’s Malakai?”

“Following him.”

His eyes lifted.

“I told him we were coming here.”

“And he decided that meant follow Nichlas.”

“He wanted to see what Echo did next.”

Hunter leaned back in his chair, his jaw tightening once before he looked down at the page again. “Of course he did.”

I didn’t bother defending Malakai. He knew exactly what Hunter had asked for and had chosen the version that interested him more. That wasn’t unusual enough to spend time explaining. “Nichlas was scared before he left. More than the damage justified. Whatever happened between them started long before she transferred here.”

“That was already obvious.”

“It’s more obvious now.”

Hunter turned another page and stopped at the Westbridge information we’d found the day before. “If she came here because of him, I want to know why before Desmond decides to ask me.”

“He might already know.”

That got his attention again.

I shrugged. “Nichlas is under his protection. Extra coverage gets requested, then he turns up looking like somebody got through anyway. If the wrong person reports it first, your father hears that before he hears anything from us.”

Hunter closed the file. “Then he hears that we’re handling it.”

There was no point arguing with that. Hunter had been managing Desmond’s expectations for years, and I knew better than to confuse irritation with uncertainty. I shifted to the rest of what had been waiting for us that afternoon. “East house wants more bodies Friday. They’re expecting trouble after the Voss table got expanded again.”

Hunter’s mouth flattened. “They can have two more.”

“They asked for four.”

“They can want four.”

I nodded once. “And Colson’s people are still trying to move into the south lot after midnight. Security caught three of them last night.”

“Warn them once.”

“Already did.”

Hunter’s gaze sharpened slightly. “Then next time don’t warn them.”

I’d expected that answer. I made a mental note and moved on. Two students had been leaning too hard on a freshman who owed money. One of the lower houses was trying to use a Quorum connection it didn’t actually have. Somebody had started circulating a list of names attached to Friday’s dinner, and three of them were wrong. Hunter corrected what mattered, dismissed what didn’t, and by the time we reached the dinner itself, his irritation had returned for an entirely different reason.

“My father moved Camille to the main table,” Hunter said.