CHAPTER EIGHT

Hannah Dorsey walked out of her Intro to Inductive Logic class and headed to her meeting.

She was moving briskly, partly to fight off the chill in the mid-January air, but also because her meeting was at 10:15 at a coffeehouse across campus.

It was 10:05 and she had a half hour before her next class, Art in Context: History, Theory and Practice, started. The winter quarter at UC Irvine had only started a week ago and she already felt the pressure. Her current classes were more challenging than in the fall, to the point that she wondered if what she planned to do next was even a good idea.

She was already juggling so much. It was enough for most people to just navigate freshman year at a top school like UCI. But Hannah had bitten off a lot more than just that. She was also steering her way through a flirtation with Finn Anderton, a fellow freshman that she'd initially despised before her feelings had changed. Finn, a fraternity member, had been a suspect when Hannah's friend—and now roommate—Lizzie Dempsey, was being anonymously harassed. When Hannah eventually uncovered the culprit, it turned out not to be Finn and their initial animosity had morphed into…well, she wasn't sure quite what.

But that was the least of her challenges. Much of her winter break had been spent caring for Kat Gentry, the best friend of her older sister, Jessie. Kat's fiancé was recently murdered, and Hannah had decided to stay at Kat's apartment to help her through those first, difficult weeks afterward.

She didn't mind the task. After all, she and Kat had become friends too. Last summer, Kat had invited her to be an intern of sorts at her detective agency. The two of them spent many hours in Kat's car, surveilling people while eating crappy food and talking about everything and nothing. They'd gotten close.

So it seemed like a no-brainer to help out. She was out of school for several weeks. Jessie couldn't crash with Kat because of her case load. So Hannah had stepped in. And it appeared to help. Even though Kat hadn't yet resumed case work at her detective agency, she was talking more openly and getting out more often. She'd even confided to Hannah about her obsession with Ash Pierce. And at Hannah's urging, she was going to tell Dr. Lemmon about it too.

But there was another reason Hannah had offered to help Kat, a less altruistic one. It was the same reason she was dashing across the quad right now. Hannah had an itch, and unless she got to gently massage it on occasion, it would end up throbbing to the point that she'd scratch it bloody.

The itch was her never-ending desire for vengeance, something she'd come to view as a kind of bloodlust. She suspected she'd inherited it from the serial killer father she shared with her sister. She knew that Jessie, who had admitted to similar feelings, had found a way to control them. She had turned her ferociousness into something constructive: profiling the people who harmed others and bringing them to justice.

That was harder for Hannah, who didn't have a professional outlet for her urges. In one instance, her desire to punish wrongdoers had led her to shoot a man dead. Admittedly he was serial killer intent on harming her, Jessie, and Ryan. But he was also elderly and handcuffed at the time she'd killed him. Despite that, the act had given her thrill. And afterward, Hannah found that the incident awakened a desire to recreate that feeling. The fact that the shooting was declared self-defense by authorities only made her more brazen.

When she eventually confessed her dark desires to both Jessie and Dr. Lemmon, they'd convinced her to admit herself to a facility where she could work on curbing those yearnings. They officially admitted her to deal with "anger management issues," but the three of them knew why she was really there.

It had worked, at least in one major way. Hannah learned that to keep her demons at bay, she had to do what Jessie did, find a productive outlet for her need to punish the guilty.

She'd found it in some measure by continuing to do for others what she'd done for Lizzie. Word had spread among students that if someone needed help with a problem that they didn't want to take to the school administration or the campus police, Hannah Dorsey might be able to help.

That was why she was hurrying to the Student Center's Starbucks right now. She had agreed to meet with Clayton Callum, a sophomore from her Exploratory Data Analysis class. He'd mentioned that he'd heard about what she'd done for Lizzie, and for another student and basketball player named Reggie Calderone who was wrongfully accused of cheating. He was hoping she could help him out too but said he was embarrassed to explain his issue. Intrigued, she agreed to meet him for coffee and see if she could help.

When she walked into the Student Center, it was 10:12. She was three minutes early, but Clayton was already there, sitting at a table in the corner. Hannah caught his eye, waved, then ordered a drink. Once it was in hand, she joined him.

He stood up to greet her and she took him in more closely than she'd done before. Clayton had longish black hair that hung down in his blue eyes. He wore gray cargo pants and a striped rugby shirt that hung off his wiry frame. Hannah, at five foot nine, was about an inch taller than him.

Even though she felt no need to impress the guy, she gave herself a half-glance in the glass window of the place to make sure she was presentable. She was wearing blue jeans and a thick navy sweater to fight off the mid-morning cold. It hid her once-painfully-skinny-but-lately-proudly-athletic build. Her blonde hair was tied back in a loose ponytail and her green eyes, the same shade as her sister's, were well-rested, something she didn't expect to last long now that school was back in full swing.

Satisfied that she looked like a credible amateur campus sleuth, she walked over to him and took the open chair.

"Thanks for meeting me," Clayton said, leaning in as if they were spies rather than students.

"Sure," she replied. "I'm happy to hear what's going on, but you should know my workload this quarter is pretty heavy, so I'm not sure I'll be able to help you out."

"I understand," Clayton said. "I appreciate you taking the time."

"So what's going on?"

"Okay," he said, his voice dropping to an unnecessary whisper in the crowded coffeehouse where no one was paying any attention to them, "there's this girl in two of my classes. We're both business administration majors. Her name is Dana Douglas. Do you know her?"

"I don't think so," Hannah said.

"Okay, anyway, she was in one of my classes last fall too," he said. "She seemed nice enough, although we didn't really talk that much. But because of our last names—Callum and Douglas—we were seated next to each other in Principles of Accounting this quarter. She's been especially chatty since then. It was a little annoying because sometimes I couldn't hear the professor, but I didn't think much of it until last Friday."

"What happened then?"

"A series of things all in a row that I didn't even notice at first. One thing was that there's this group project in Intro to Marketing. We were put into groups of three. Dana wasn't in mine at first. This other girl named Bridget was in it, but she got sick, like so sick with food poisoning that she had to go to the hospital, so Dana took her place in our group. No big deal, right?"

Hannah shrugged. He didn't seem to be really asking for her opinion. Sure enough, he continued without waiting for a response.

"But then I was returning to my apartment that same day—I live in an on-campus one with three other guys—and I saw her darting down the stairs just as the elevator door opened to my floor. When I got to my door, I found this had been slid under it."

He handed over an open envelope. Inside was a black and white photo printed out on computer paper. It was of him sitting in a study nook in what looked like the main library on campus, Langson, hunched over his laptop. Typed below the photo in all caps was one word: HOT!!!

"So you think this girl has a crush on you?" Hannah asked, handing back the envelope.

"If I thought it was only that, it wouldn't be a big deal," Clayton said. "I'd just politely tell her I'm not interested and move on. But I'm a little worried."

"Why?" Hannah asked.

"Well, for one thing, I heard from a guy I know that she got fixated on someone else last year. Supposedly, it got so bad that he ended up transferring at the end of the year."

"Hold on," Hannah said. "This person didn't go to the administration to complain. He just up and left school?"

"The guy I know said that this other dude decided it wasn't worth it to go through the hassle. He just wanted to get clear of her."

"What was this dude's name?" Hannah asked, realizing that her disbelief was starting to bleed into her tone. She had to rein that in.

"I don't know," Clayton said. "It didn't occur to me to ask, but I can go back to the guy I know and try to find out."

"That would be great," Hannah said, more supportively. "Is there anything else that has you concerned? "

"Well, there's what happened to Bridget. What if that food poisoning thing wasn't an accident? What if Dana did something to her so that she could be in our group?"

Hannah tried to hide her skepticism better than earlier as she asked her next question.

"Has she behaved oddly in your group meetings?'

"No, but we've only had one so far and there was another guy from class there for it, Van," Clayton said. "We have another one scheduled for tonight in a study room at Langson but Van texted us that he had a wedding in Connecticut this weekend and his flight was delayed. He won't be back until after midnight. I was going to postpone the group meeting but before I could, Dana texted that we should go ahead with it anyway, so we don't fall behind. I was going to make up some excuse, but then I thought that it might be a good chance for you to see things for yourself."

"What do you mean?"

"I thought if you were nearby during the meeting, maybe you could listen in on our conversation," he suggested. "I could try to get her to come clean and see if she'd admit to this stuff."

"Then why do you need me there?" Hannah asked. "Why not just record her yourself?"

"Is that allowed?" He said. "I thought it might be illegal."

"In general it is, since California is a ‘two-party consent' state when it comes to recording conversations," Hannah conceded, referring to what she'd learned from Kat during their multiple surveillance outings, "but there are exceptions. If you're recording to gain evidence related to certain crimes or if you believe your personal safety is at risk, that can sometimes pass muster."

"That's good to know," Claton said, "but all the same, I'd feel more comfortable if you were there. What if I call her out and she threatens me, turns the tables and accuses me of stalking her or something? If I don't have a witness, it's just a ‘he said, she said,' situation. I worry what she might be capable of."

"You know Clayton, if you're this concerned maybe you should just go straight to campus police and ask for their help. Then if something escalates, you at least have a record to build on."

"Listen," he said, leaning in extra close. "I'll do that if you say I should. But the whole reason I came to you first was because I was hoping to avoid the embarrassment."

"What do you mean? "

"Come on," he said, his tone pleading, "I know it's not very modern of me to so say this, but it would look pretty lame for me to go the campus cops saying some petite co-ed has me scared. They'd laugh me out of there. I thought you were the option for people who didn't want to go through official channels. Plus, there's the other part."

"What's that?"

"It could be embarrassing for her too," he whispered. "If this is legit, I didn't want to ruin the girl's life. I just want this to stop before it turns into full-on stalking. I thought you might have a softer touch than the cops. I don't need you to confront her and demand answers. I was hoping we could sort this out this without anyone official needing to be involved, you know?"

Hannah looked at her phone. It was already 10:21. She needed to leave now so as not to be late to her next class. She sighed.

"I'll look into it," she told him as she stood up, "see what I can find out. Then I'll get back to you."

"You don't want to do the library study room thing?" he asked, surprised.

"Like you said, I don't want to ambush her if it can be avoided," she said, throwing her backpack over her shoulder. "We can consider that option down the line. I'll be in touch."

"Okay," he standing up and offering a weirdly awkward half-bow maneuver, "thanks for this."

"I haven't done anything yet," she replied, "but you're welcome."

She turned and headed off to class. Her first instinct was to think that Clayton Callum was paranoid. But as she had learned the hard way, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone's not after you.