17

Jadon

Jadon was parking on the edge of campus when the call came. Nico’s name appeared on the car’s display. For a moment, all he could do was stare. Then he reached to accept the call. Before he could, though, it ended. He thought it couldn’t have rung more than once.

He sat there, counting the seconds. After a full minute, he placed a call to Nico. It rang until it went to voicemail. Jadon counted two full minutes next time. The counting was helpful; it let him focus on breathing, keeping everything even and regular. He tried to center his thoughts. I’m sorry. That would be a good way to start. I’m sorry for how I acted and what I said. I was out of line. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Nico. I’m so sorry.

When he placed the call again, it went to voicemail.

“Hi. I saw you called, and I’d like to talk to you.” Jadon had to stop. He felt it again, that part of him rushing forward, the sudden stop as he balked. “I’m sorry, Nico. I acted inappropriately, and I was out of line. I’d like to apologize in person and see if we can find a way to—” Again, that surge of emotion, and then the hard stop. He felt like he had something stuck in his throat. “—to figure this out.”

He disconnected. And he thought, That, ladies and gentlemen, is how a coward does it.

The phone stayed dark. A minute. Then three. Then five.

I can go home, Jadon thought. I can go home, and I can pretend that was it—he called, and I called, and that was our chance. And that would be easy and safe and it would hurt like hell, but in a few days, Jadon knew he’d be back in his routine, and the pain would get a little easier every day.

He got out of the car and headed for Harlow Hall.

The dorm lights were on tonight, making it a limestone island that dissolved into the low, hard sky of clouds. Inside, it had an emptiness that Jadon didn’t remember—the white noise of silence, the rebounding echoes in the stairwell, the way you could tell, sometimes, that you were the only one in a building. Nico’s door was locked, and the strip underneath was dark. When Jadon knocked, no one answered.

“Nico?”

Nothing.

It was a dorm room in an old building. The lock might as well have been make-believe. Jadon loided it with a credit card, and when the door popped open, he braced himself for—

Shouts. Outrage. Worse: Nico lying there, still and unresponsive.

But the beds were empty, and Nico’s luggage still lay in the middle of the room, surrounded by clothes. He hadn’t finished packing. He hadn’t gone to a hotel.

Jadon did a quick walkthrough, checking for anything that looked out of place. Nothing. He let himself out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him. His heart was beating a little faster as he made his way out of the dorm. Nico had called him only a few minutes ago. That meant, at the minimum, he was still thinking about Jadon. Wanted to talk to him. He might have felt conflicted about a conversation—that could explain why he hadn’t answered when Jadon called back—but a part of him wanted to talk. His bags were still here. He couldn’t have gone far. He was probably somewhere on campus still—

Dr. Meza’s face floated in Jadon’s vision. The way he had smiled. The way his pale fingers had rolled the corduroy of Nico’s lapel back and forth.

The dinner, Jadon thought. The closing dinner for the seminar. That made the most sense—Nico had decided to go after all, maybe to patch things up with Meza, maybe simply to round out his time at the seminar. Jadon started across the quad at a jog. He knew, from previous visits to campus, that the college had a private club for the professors. Then he realized he didn’t know if any of the professors from the seminar were actually faculty at Chouteau; they might have gone somewhere else. The Central West End had lots of great restaurants, the kind of upscale places that a group of academics might go for wine and overly priced tapas, for example. He placed another call to Nico as he passed through a clump of trees, the shadows deeper under the shroud of bare branches.

If it hadn’t been so dark, he wouldn’t have seen the light. Jadon noticed it, lying off to the side among the trees, and he almost kept going. Then his brain recognized the familiar shape—a phone screen, lighting up as a call came in. His own phone, still pressed against his ear, continued to ring. He stopped jogging.

He ended the call to Nico. A moment later, the phone on the ground went dark.

Jadon turned on the flashlight on his phone. He directed it at the grassy stretch next to the path, took one step, and then another, sweeping the light left and right. He stopped again. To his left, a few yards back in the direction he’d come, muddy depressions and torn grass showed where something heavy had fallen and then slid. Not something, his brain corrected. Someone. Where someone had fallen.

It was luck, a part of him recognized numbly. If the ground hadn’t been so soft from the steady drizzle, there wouldn’t have been any sign at all. Luck and carelessness. Because he’d left the phone.

He took Nico.

It was a jump in logic—the rational part of Jadon knew that. But he also knew it was true. He used the phone’s weak flashlight to check the ground as best he could, and then he took a looping route toward where he’d seen the fallen phone. Finally, balancing on an old tree root to keep from disturbing the marks and prints left on the ground, Jadon snagged the phone. He knew this was reckless, knew he should have waited for an evidence team, knew, at the least, he should have been wearing gloves. But it didn’t matter. It was Nico’s phone; he recognized the case, the corner of the molded plastic where Nico, lost in thought, had chewed on it. And something else, too—a dark, wet clump of fabric. His hoodie, the one he had loaned Nico on that morning run.

For a moment, Jadon couldn’t do anything. Then, holding the phone and hoodie, he retraced his steps to the brick path. He needed to call Cerise. No, she wasn’t on duty, and this wouldn’t be her case. He needed to call this in, get a patrol unit out here. Only it was Halloween, one of the busiest nights of the year for the Metropolitan PD. They’d be spread thin, and Jadon wasn’t sure that pulling rank would help him. If the captain caught wind of it and shut him down—he could hear her now: He dropped his phone while walking across campus. Believe it or not, it’s happened before, especially after someone’s had something to drink. Do you think that might be a possibility on Halloween on a college campus?

He placed a call to the campus security office instead. The voice that answered was male, older, gruff. After identifying himself, Jadon said, “I’ve got an active crime scene that I’m trying to secure, and a possible assault currently in progress. I need as many people as you can spare to search the campus—anywhere you wouldn’t be able to see on a camera.”

“That’s a lot of campus, Detective. And we’ve kind of got our hands full with a fraternity party—”

“Really? Does that seem like your priority? What do you think your supervisor, or the dean, or the chancellor, or whoever the hell I have to get on the phone, is going to think when I tell him that a sworn officer of the law requested help to prevent a sexual assault in progress, and you decided that a bunch of toga-wearing assholes breaking the campus alcohol policy was a bigger deal?”

Silence. Then, in a stiff voice, “I’ll send some people over.” There was a pause, and the next words were even starchier: “Do you still want me to call that detective?”

“That’s me,” Jadon said and disconnected.

Some people, whatever that meant, wouldn’t be enough. Someone had Nico. Right then, at that moment. Jadon was sure of it. And whoever it was, he’d been planning things, trying to get Nico for days. He could see, in his mind’s eye, Dalary Lang’s bruised and battered face, the tamped-down horror in his eyes. Dark eyes. And dark hair. And a slender, almost waifish build. Not quite like Nico, who was more lean muscle. But the same dark, shaggy hair. Jadon remembered what it was like to be helpless. To be unable to move. To be unable to fight back. Unable to make them stop. He remembered when he lost control of his breathing, and he tried to gulp air, and the bag sealed its plastic around his mouth and nose again.

For a heartbeat, it was like something physical lodged in Jadon’s throat; he couldn’t breathe. Then he forced himself to calm. Whatever had happened, whatever was happening, he couldn’t do anything to help Nico if he didn’t keep his head.

In the meantime, all he could do was try. He placed a call to dispatch and requested a patrol car and a detective on duty. Then he stood there, his fingers growing numb from the cold, his face and clothes wet with the misty rain, listening to the drumbeat inside his head.

“Nico!” he shouted. He kept his distance from the disturbed ground where the attack had happened and began to move outward in a spiral. “Nico! If you can hear me, make some noise!”

A girl in a Wonder Woman costume stared at him and then hurried away. Jadon kept moving and calling out. As he did, he tried to be logical, tried to make sense out of what had happened. Someone had been following Nico. Someone had made attempts. That suggested a pattern, a fixation. Again, in his memory, the vision played of Dr. Meza rolling the wale of corduroy between his fingers. But Jadon could also admit to himself that it was a stretch. The assaults had been happening for weeks, and for all Jadon knew, Meza was a tenured professor at some institution on the coast. The same was true for the next person in Jadon’s lineup—Clark clearly had an interest in Nico, perhaps even an unhealthy one, and he certainly hadn’t been pleased that Nico had chosen to spend time with Jadon. But again, the assaults had been happening for weeks. Unless Clark was a grad student in the area, then he was out too.

Of course, there were other explanations. The attacker might have simply recognized the pattern of assaults on campus and realized it would make perfect cover for his own actions—kind of like a copycat. Even that felt weak to Jadon; the physical similarities between Nico and the previous victims were too great. If someone was simply taking advantage of the situation, then the odds of that similarity would have to be astronomical. Then Jadon remembered the strange security guard, the one who had been there when he and Nico had run into each other (literally). The guard who had appeared, as if by magic, when Meza and Jadon had started going at it. Had Jadon seen him other places? Maybe; he had a vague recollection of spotting a familiar face on campus. But then, Chouteau was a small college, so it didn’t seem unusual that he’d might run into the security guard by accident. Maybe the best thing would be to call the security office again and see if that guard was on duty tonight. Or if he could be located. A home address, maybe. If Jadon had thought of it earlier—

And that stopped him. Because the man in the security office had said, Do you still want me to call that detective? And Jadon, in a hurry, had dismissed the words. But Jadon hadn’t asked campus security to contact him about an assault. Jadon had asked some guys in patrol, ones he was friendly with.

Do you still want me to call that detective?

It was like pieces of the puzzle lining up. Vic saying, Reck, that kid is some grade-A pussy. Vic saying, Holy shit, this is the underwear model? But Jadon had been careful never to bring that up because he knew how sensitive Nico was about it. So, how could Vic have known—

Unless he’d learned it himself.

Vic, who was always walking a fine line of homophobia. Vic, with that harassment complaint hanging over his head. Vic, always insisting it was just a misunderstanding.

A young Black woman in a security guard uniform was approaching, flashlight in hand. “Sir?”

“Don’t let anyone touch that crime scene until the patrol officers get here,” he said, pointing at the disturbed section of grass. Then, still clutching the hoodie and phone, he sprinted toward where he’d parked his car.