CHAPTER TWENTY

Hannah felt helpless.

It wasn't a sensation she was accustomed to, and it had put her in a bad mood. Apparently, she wasn't doing a great job of hiding it.

"Are you okay?" Finn Anderton asked with a frown as they sat at the Java City Kiosk, having a mid-afternoon snack of scones and iced tea.

"Sorry," she said. "I didn't realize how unpleasant I was being."

"Tell me what's going on," Finn said. "Maybe getting it off your chest will help."

She fought off a smile. Finn looked like an enthusiastic puppy, with his wide gray eyes, casually windswept dirty blond hair, and crooked grin, highlighted his pronounced dimples. He was so eager to help and despite her best efforts, she found herself warming to his bro-tastic frat boy energy.

"I didn't want to bore you with my stuff on what was supposed to be a relaxing, between-class study break."

"I thought you didn't have a class for the last little while," he replied.

"True," she said. "I've been spending the last few hours focused on something else."

"Spill," he said. "You know you want to."

So she did, filling him in on Clayton Callum's request to deal with Dana Douglas, the girl he thought was stalking him. She detailed the possible food poisoning incident of Bridget Lerner, the classmate working on Clayton's project, and the photo with the word "hot" on it slid under his door.

"Do you know either of them?" she asked Finn when she was done.

"I don't think so," he said. "Do you have pictures?"

"Who do you think you're dealing with?" she scoffed. "Of course I do."

She showed him photos of both students, but he shook his head when he saw them .

"I don't know either of them," he said. "I think I might have seen him around campus. I don't recognize her at all. Then again, that's not such a shock. There are over 28,000 students at this school."

"Well, I'm having trouble finding anything concrete," she said. "I did a shallow dive into Dana's background and—" she started.

"A shallow dive?" Finn asked, puzzled.

"Yeah, you know," she said, amused by his confusion, "instead of a deep dive. I don't have time for that right now."

"Oh, I get it," he said, "so what did you find out?"

"Okay," Hannah launched in, happy to review what she learned for her own benefit, as well as his, "Dana Marie Douglas, twenty-year-old sophomore. Business Administration major, just like Clayton. From up north in Bakersfield. Graduated 14 th in her senior class. No criminal complaints as an adult. I searched to see if there were any sealed juvenile records that might suggest something untoward when she was younger, but nothing popped."

"I forgot that you know how to sneak around legal corners to find what you're looking for," Finn marveled. "How do I know you didn't do that with me?"

"First of all, I'll take that as a compliment," Hannah retorted, aware he didn't mean it as an attack but a little defensive nonetheless. "Kat Gentry taught me well when I was an intern at her detective agency. And second, you can rest assured that I absolutely did a deep dive on you. I thought you might be sending my roommate threatening messages, remember? I know all about you, Finn Anderton."

His already ruddy cheeks turned scarlet. "So you were saying something about Dana?" he deflected.

"Right," she continued, not pressing any further. "No legal issues to speak of for Dana. No disciplinary problems here at Irvine. Good grades as a freshman and so far this year."

"So do you think this Clayton guy is blowing things out of proportion?"

"Not necessarily," Hannah answered. "A spotless record in the past doesn't say much about what's in her head now. She could have stalked people all that time but just never been found out. Something might have happened recently in her personal life that made her snap and start behaving this way. Her past history, or lack of one, is relevant but it's not exculpatory."

"But so far, you haven't found anything?" Finn pressed .

"I wouldn't go that far," Hannah said. "The girl who was originally in Clayton's project group, Bridget, did get food poisoning according to resources I won't share with you because I don't want you to judge my legal sneakiness again. And I did find footage from Clayton's apartment building showing her leaving around the time he said he saw her. But there are only exterior cameras at the complex, not on the individual floors, so that's not definitive. There's nothing I could confidently claim proves or disproves his concerns."

"So what now?"

Hannah sighed.

"I'm thinking of taking Clayton up on his offer."

"What offer?" Finn asked.

"He's supposed to have a meeting with Dana and the other member of their group, Van Moseby, tonight at Langson Library," she explained. "But Van is out of town and won't be back until late tonight. Dana supposedly still wants to get together. Clayton thought it might be a chance to catch her in the act somehow, maybe extract a confession and record it."

"So he wants you to be there, like nearby as witness, to catch her saying something incriminating?"

"Pretty much."

Finn smiled broadly.

"Maybe I can help," he suggested.

"How?" she asked, skeptical but curious.

"I could go too," he said. "You're not as famous as your sister, but you have been in the news a few times in the last few years because of…the stuff that happened to you. What if she recognizes you and gets suspicious? What if she knows about how you've been helping out fellow students and wonders why you're there? If you think that you're made, you can leave but I'll still be around, hanging somewhere inconspicuous, to be an extra set of ears."

Hannah held up her hand. "I'm sorry, but did you just say, 'if I think that I'm made?' What is this, a Philip Marlowe movie or something?"

"I don't know who that is," Finn said without shame.

She shook her head.

"That's a very sweet offer but not necessary."

"Really," he insisted, "I don't mind at all."

"How about I agree to keep you in mind if I need your help?" she suggested .

"Keep me in mind?" he repeated with a scoff, "as opposed to considering all your other candidates?"

"You don't know," she told him, trying to keep a straight face. "Maybe I have an intern of my own."

"You do," he told her, "me!

Hannah quickly took bite of her scone so as to not let him see the giggle she couldn't hold back. It was nice to have a moment of goofiness. She decided to lean into it. She could relax this afternoon.

But tonight, she had work to do.