FOUR KINGS, ONE GIRL.

7

Chapter 7

The name he said was Draven.

I stood on that campus path in the cold morning air and the word landed on me like a physical thing and I could not speak for a full ten seconds.

Draven, I said. As in Cole. My TA.

Kane watched my face. His expression was not apologetic. It was careful. The way a man looks when he is delivering something breakable and knows it.

What did he do, I said.

We do not know the full picture yet, Kane said. But the access to your class schedule, your student housing information, the route the envelope took to reach you through his office. It all traces back to him. He should not have had that information. He accessed files he had no authorisation to open.

I thought about Draven in my doorway. The envelope in his hand. Those dark steady eyes and the way he had said he arrived before he could talk himself out of it. I had believed him. I had believed everything about him.

He brought me the note himself, I said. If he was behind this why would he hand me the evidence.

Kane said nothing for a moment. That is the part I cannot explain yet.

I looked at him. You are not sure.

I am sure of the access logs, he said. I am not sure of the intent.

I need to talk to him, I said.

Sienna.

I need to talk to him, Kane. Not you. Not Axel. Me.

His jaw tightened but he did not argue. He knew better by now.

I found Draven in the humanities building at noon.

He was in his office with the door open, reading, jacket off, sleeves pushed up the way they always were. He looked up when I appeared in the doorway and his face did the thing it always did when he saw me, that brief unguarded shift before the composure came back down.

He said: Close the door.

I closed it. I stayed on my side of the room.

How did you access my student housing file, I said.

He went very still.

The system flagged your name, he said. There was an alert set up by someone in administration that notified certain staff when specific student files were accessed. I was trying to find out who had set the alert and why. I followed the access trail.

Why would my file have an alert on it.

That is what I was trying to find out, he said. When I found the envelope under my door addressed to you I brought it to you directly because I did not know who else in that building I could trust.

His eyes did not leave mine. He was not shifting or explaining too much or filling the silence with justification. He was just telling me and letting me decide what to do with it.

Sienna, he said. I know how this looks. I know Kane has access to the same logs I do and that what he sees points at me. But I need you to tell me you know I would not hurt you.

The room was very quiet.

I crossed it.

I did not plan to. My feet simply closed the distance between us while my brain was still running arguments and I stopped in front of him where he sat and looked down at him and his dark eyes looked up at me with something stripped and open in them that I had not seen on his face before.

Tell me the truth, I said. All of it. Not the version that makes you look better. All of it.

He reached up and took my hand from where it was hanging at my side. He held it in both of his and looked at it for a moment like he was deciding something.

Then he told me.

He had found the alert on my file six weeks ago while running a routine check. He had started digging quietly because the person who set the alert had administrative credentials that did not match any current staff member. A ghost account. Someone who had set up access and walked away. He had been trying to trace the origin without alerting whoever it was that he was looking.

He had been protecting me before he knew me.

The thought moved through me like heat.

I looked down at him. He was still holding my hand and watching my face and waiting with the patience of someone who had learned that waiting was the only honest thing left to do.

I kissed him.

He pulled me down into his lap in one smooth motion and kissed me back and it was every quiet thing about him made physical. Unhurried and deep, his hands in my hair and at my waist with a sureness that undid every last piece of resistance I had been carrying.

We stayed tangled together in that office chair for a long time.

His mouth moved from mine to my jaw, my throat, and I tipped my head back and held onto him and let myself stop thinking for the first time in days. He took his time the way he did everything, deliberate and focused, reading every sound I made and adjusting with a precision that made it impossible to keep quiet.

When I finally pulled back enough to breathe I was in his lap with my hands in his hair and his forehead against my collarbone and both of us trying to remember how oxygen worked.

I said: I believe you.

He said nothing for a moment. Then: I know. You would not still be here if you did not.

I pulled back and looked at his face. There was something new in it. Something opened up that had not been there before.

I need to tell Kane, I said.

He nodded. Tell him what I told you. He will check the ghost account. If I am right about what he finds it changes the whole picture.

And if you are wrong.

He looked at me steadily. Then I deserve whatever comes from it.

I stood up and straightened my clothes. He stayed in the chair watching me with those dark eyes and that new open thing in his face.

At the door I turned back. Draven. The essay outline.

His mouth curved. The first real smile I had seen from him. Small and reluctant and completely devastating.

Still due Friday, he said.

I left before that smile could do any more damage.

I called Kane from the path outside. I told him everything. There was a long silence on his end that felt like recalculation and then he said: A ghost account. Give me an hour.

I went back to my room and sat on the edge of my bed and thought about four men and a threat that kept changing shape and a father who had reappeared and a mother who had known everything.

My phone rang forty minutes later. Kane.

I found the ghost account, he said.

And.

The credentials belong to a member of this university's board of governors, he said. Someone with enough access to bury anything and enough reason to want me specifically discredited before I finish what I started.

I closed my eyes.

So Draven was right, I said.

Draven was right, Kane said. And I owe him an acknowledgment I am not going to enjoy delivering.

I almost smiled. Then something else landed.

Kane, I said. If this person has board level access. They know everything we have been doing. Every meeting. Every file. Every conversation in a building on this campus.

Yes, he said.

Then they know we found the account.

Yes, he said again. His voice had gone flat in the way it did when he was controlling something. Which means we have about twelve hours before they move to cover it.

A pause.

And Sienna. Axel just radioed in from your building.

My chest seized.

Someone has been in your room, Kane said. While you were gone. This time they left something behind.