FOUR KINGS, ONE GIRL.

3

Chapter 3

Kane Hargrove did not deny it.

That was the thing that kept me up that night. Not the note. Not Axel's careful hands around the evidence sleeve. Not even the fact that someone had been inside my bag while it sat on my shoulder in a building full of people.

It was the silence from Kane when I accused him of already knowing what the note said.

He had looked at me across that library table with those unreadable grey eyes and he had said absolutely nothing. No denial. No explanation. Just a long, measuring look and then: "Go home, Sienna. Lock your door."

I had gathered my things and left because staying felt more dangerous than walking away.

I was starting to think everything about Kane Hargrove felt that way.

My literature class was at eleven the next morning and I was late.

I pushed through the door with my bag half open and my coffee about to spill and every head in the room turned. I hated that. I slid into the nearest empty seat, dropped my bag, and looked up at the front of the room.

The man standing there was not the professor.

He was younger than I expected for whoever held the room with that kind of stillness. Tall and lean, dark circles under darker eyes, ink on his forearms where his sleeves were pushed back. He was holding a paperback by its spine like it weighed nothing and he was looking at me with the flat patience of someone who had been waiting for exactly this interruption.

"Glad you could join us," he said. No sarcasm. Just the words, dry and even.

"Sorry," I said.

"Do not be sorry. Just sit down."

I sat.

He turned back to the board. His name was already written there in sharp block letters. D. Cole. Teaching assistant. He had not introduced himself. He clearly did not feel the need.

He taught the way some people fight. No wasted movement. No performance. He said things that landed so precisely that the room went quiet after each one, not because they were dramatic but because they were true and everyone knew it.

I took more notes in fifty minutes than I had in any class last semester.

When the hour ended he said: "Essay outlines due Friday. Two pages. Do not summarise the text. Analyse it. There is a difference." He looked up once more and his eyes found me across the room like they already knew where I was sitting. "Questions to me directly. My office hours are on the board."

He picked up his book and walked out.

I sat for a moment longer than everyone else.

Priya from my business law group appeared at my elbow. "That is Draven Cole," she said, with the tone of someone delivering necessary information. "Graduate student. He has been a TA here for two semesters. Half the girls in this department have tried. None of them have gotten anywhere."

"I was not planning to try anything," I said.

She smiled like she did not believe me and left.

I went to the security office at two.

Axel was behind his desk when I knocked on the open door. He looked up, clocked me, and gestured to the chair across from him without speaking. I sat. He slid a form across the desk.

"Fill in everything you remember," he said. "Timeline, location, anything you touched before you found the note."

I filled it in. He read it without expression while I watched the tight economy of his face, the way he processed information like a machine that had learned to look human.

"You said the folder was in your bag all day," he said.

"Yes."

"And the bag was with you."

"Every minute."

He looked up. "Then whoever accessed it was close to you. Someone you would not have noticed or questioned."

The thought moved through me like cold water.

"I need to ask you something," I said. "And I need an honest answer."

He set the form down. "I will give you what I can."

"Does Kane Hargrove have access to your investigation?"

The pause was less than a second. Most people would have missed it.

"Why are you asking that," he said.

"Because he knew I came to see you before I told anyone. And he knew about the note before I showed it to him."

Axel held my eyes for a long moment. His expression did not change but something behind it did.

"Kane Hargrove," he said carefully, "has resources that extend beyond this campus. I cannot speak to what he does or does not know."

"That is not a denial," I said.

"No," he said. "It is not."

I left the security office with more questions than I had walked in with, which I was beginning to suspect was the standard outcome of any conversation with any man in this building.

River found me on the path outside.

Not by accident. He was leaning against the wall across from the security office door like he had known exactly when I would come out and had arranged his schedule around it. He fell into step beside me the way he did everything, like the decision had already been made and he was just waiting for the world to catch up.

"How did it go," he said.

"Were you waiting for me outside the security office," I said.

"Yes."

"That is unsettling, River."

"Probably," he agreed. "How did it go."

I stopped walking. He stopped too, turning to face me with his hands in his pockets and that steadiness underneath the easy surface.

"How much do you know," I said. "About what is happening on this campus. About the notes. About me."

Something crossed his face. Fast, gone quickly, but I caught it.

"River."

"I know enough to be worried about you," he said quietly. "That is honest."

"I do not want worried. I want information."

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he said: "Come with me tonight. There is something you should see."

"That is not information. That is a plan that ends badly."

"Sienna." He said my name differently this time. Not charming. Not performing. Just straight. "I am not the one you should be afraid of. I promise you that."

I searched his face.

I believed him. Which was possibly the most dangerous thing I had done since arriving back on campus.

"Where," I said.

He told me. I went back to my room to drop my bag and I was reaching for my jacket when someone knocked on my door.

I opened it.

Draven Cole was standing in my doorway.

Not River. Not Kane. Not Axel. The man I had exchanged exactly twelve words with in a classroom three hours ago was standing outside my dorm room door in the early evening, his dark eyes steady and his jaw set like he had made a decision and arrived before he could talk himself out of it.

"How do you know where I live," I said.

"You are on my class list," he said. "With your student housing assignment."

"That is not public information."

"No," he said. "It is not."

I stared at him. He stared back.

"What do you want, Cole."

He reached into his jacket and held out an envelope. My name was on the front in handwriting I did not recognise.

"This was put under my office door this morning," he said. "Addressed to you. Delivered to me." His eyes did not leave mine. "Whoever sent it knows you are in my class. Knows my office. And wanted me to be the one to bring it to you."

I took the envelope.

"Are you going to open it," he said.

I opened it.

One line. Same handwriting as before.

I told you to leave. You did not listen. Now they are all in danger because of you.