Chapter Eight - STOP

The photograph was lying at the top of Ashley’s hamper.

——

The hallway stretched in two directions. To the left, a set of metal doors marked STORAGE - AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLY. To the right, a narrow corridor that led toward the loading dock, where a rectangle of moonlight spilled across the concrete floor.

No footsteps. No shadow. Just the smell of bleach and raw chicken and something else underneath, something chemical, something that reminded me of the nursing home where I'd watched Mrs. Patterson die. God bless her soul.

Perfume. Expensive perfume. The kind that came in a bottle shaped like a teardrop and cost more than my monthly rent.

Someone had been here. Recently.

I moved toward the loading dock, my sneakers silent on the concrete. The door was propped open with a cinder block, the night air rushing in like a held breath finally released. Outside, the parking lot was empty except for a single car,a black sedan with tinted windows, parked beneath the broken streetlight.

The engine wasn't running. But the dome light was on.

And someone was sitting in the driver's seat.

I couldn't see the face. The glare from the interior light turned the windows into mirrors, reflecting my own silhouette back at me. But I saw the shape of shoulders. The curve of a head. The slow, deliberate movement of a hand lifting something to the mouth.

Drinking. Whoever it was, they were drinking.

And waiting.

I stepped back from the doorway, my heart climbing my throat. The hallway behind me was still empty. The freezer still hummed. The lights still flickered.

But the perfume was stronger now. Closer.

"Looking for something, Nova James?"

The voice came from my left. From the storage room doors.

I spun.

A woman stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the dim light of the freezer. Mid-twenties. Blonde hair pulled into a low ponytail. Lab coat over jeans. And on her feet, leather boots that clicked against the concrete with each step she took toward me.

"I'm sorry," she said, and her voice was warm, almost friendly. "I didn't mean to startle you. I was checking the inventory and heard someone back here."

She stepped into the light.

Her face was familiar. Not because I'd seen it before…I hadn't, but because it belonged to a type. The kind of girl who had never known hunger, never known fear, never known what it felt like to watch your only family disappear beneath dark water. Privilege sat on her like a second skin.

"I'm Helena," she said, extending a hand. "Helena Vance. My father runs the BioMed lab. I'm a graduate assistant."

Vance. Professor Vance's daughter.

I took her hand. Her grip was firm, cool, and just a little too long.

"Nova James," I said. "New transfer. I got lost looking for the bathroom."

Helena smiled. It was a perfect smile,straight teeth, glossy lips, the kind of smile that had been practiced in mirrors and calibrated for maximum charm. But her eyes didn't change. They stayed cold and flat and watchful.

"The bathroom's the other way," she said. "Past the salad bar. Left at the water fountain." She tilted her head, studying me the way a biologist might study a specimen. "You must have taken quite a few wrong turns to end up here."

"I have a terrible sense of direction."

"So you said." Helena released my hand and stepped around me, her boots clicking toward the loading dock. She peered out at the parking lot, at the black sedan still sitting beneath the broken light. "Beautiful night, isn't it? Crisp. Clear. The kind of night that makes you want to stay out too late and make terrible decisions."

I said nothing.

Helena turned back to me, her smile still in place. "You remind me of someone, Nova James. Someone I used to know. She had the same eyes. The same way of standing. Like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop." A pause. "She's dead now."

"Alice Lean," I said. It wasn't a question.

Helena's smile didn't waver. "You've done your homework."

"I read the campus paper."

"Did you?" Helena moved closer, her perfume wrapping around me like a net. "That’s surprising, people don’t usually care about stuff like that….” She said while walking toward me. “Alice was an Angel…."

She stopped inches from my face.

“…And then she died. And everyone acted surprised. Like they cared when deep down they knew they didn't. But you know the thing about secrets, Nova." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "They always come out. One way or another.”

The freezer clicked off. The sudden silence was deafening.

Helena stepped back, her smile widening. "You should get back to your dinner. Ashley's probably wondering where you've gone. And Myles..." She laughed. "Poor Myles. He's been lost since Alice died. It's nice to see him interested in someone new."

"I'm not…"

"Of course you're not." Helena patted my arm, a maternal gesture that felt anything but. "But be careful, Nova. Grief makes people do strange things. And Myles Clay has more grief than most."

She walked past me, toward the dining hall, her boots clicking a rhythm that sounded almost like a countdown.

At the door, she paused.

"Oh, and Nova? The bathroom? It's the other way. Try not to get lost again."

Then she was gone.

I stood alone in the hallway, the silence pressing against my ears. The black sedan was still in the parking lot. The dome light was still on. But the driver's seat was empty now.

I headed back to my dorm, I already lost my appetite and I could feel my second heartbeat beat again.

The night air cold against my face, my feet carrying me across the quad toward Morrison Hall without any conscious instruction from my brain.

The campus was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that felt deliberate, like everyone had been given instructions to stay inside and lock their doors. A single streetlamp flickered near the path to the lake, and I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead, refusing to look at the water.

I walked faster.

My list was growing. Ashley Bright, my too-friendly roommate with the cigarette scar and the easy questions. Professor Vance, Madden Lighter, the dark-haired girl eating a banana alone, who had once been Alice's friend and then wasn't. And Helena Vance, the professor's daughter, with her perfect smile and her cold eyes and her warning wrapped in sympathy.

Five names. Five suspects. And somewhere in the shadows, at least one killer.

My chest ached,a deep, hollow throb, I was tired of bearing.

But I didn't have the luxury of rest.

Morrison Hall rose in front of me, its windows dark except for a few scattered lights on the upper floors. Room 217 was on the second floor. Second floor, right side, the last door before the fire escape. The room where Alice had slept. The room where Alice had dreamed. The room where Alice had…

Stop.

I climbed the stairs. Each step sent a small shock through my spine, and by the time I reached the second-floor landing, my vision had started to blur at the edges. I pressed my palm against the wall and breathed until the world stopped tilting.

Then I walked to Room 217.

The door was ajar.

Not wide open. Not closed. Ajar by maybe two inches, the way a door might be if someone had left in a hurry and the latch hadn't caught. The hallway light spilled through the gap in a thin yellow blade.

I stopped breathing.

Maybe Ashley came back early. Maybe she left it open by accident. Maybe..

The excuses died in my throat. Because I could hear something from inside. Not voices. Not footsteps. A soft, rhythmic sound, like paper sliding against paper.

Someone was in my room.

I reached into my jacket pocket and wrapped my fingers around a lockpick set I always kept in my pocket.It wasn't a weapon,not really, but the metal picks were sharp, and I'd learned long ago that surprise was better than brute force.

The door swung open under my touch.

The sight stopped my heart.

The room had been destroyed.

Ashley's side; her fairy lights, her cat socks, her carefully arranged desk,was chaos. Her laptop had been swept to the floor, the screen cracked like a spiderweb. Her mattress was flipped, the sheets tangled in a heap near the window. Her clothes, all those cheerful sweaters and jeans, lay scattered across the floor like fallen soldiers.

But my side was worse.

My side was nothing compared to Ashley's. Because my side was empty. The scholarship letter I'd used to enroll,gone. The photograph of Alice and me, the only copy I had, the one I'd hidden beneath the mattress,gone.

Someone had torn through my belongings with surgical precision. They hadn't just ransacked. They had hunted.

And there, in the center of the floor, lying on top of Ashley's overturned hamper, was a photograph.

I knew what it was before I picked it up. I could feel it, the way you can feel a storm coming in your bones. But I crossed the room anyway, my legs numb, my hands steady despite the shaking in my chest.

Alice's body. Face-flat in the lake. Her hair fanned out around her like dark wings. The water murky, almost black. Her arms floating at odd angles, disconnected from the girl who had once used those arms to hug me, to hold me, to pull me out of my own darkness.

I covered my mouth with both hands, but the sound escaped anyway,a small, wounded noise that didn't belong to Nova James or Alexa Lean. It belonged to the orphan girl who had just lost her sister all over again.

I turned the photograph over.

The message was written in red. Not ink. Not a marker. Something thicker, something that had dried in raised ridges against the glossy paper. Something that smelled coppery and wrong.

STOP. THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING.

All caps. The letters uneven, as if the hand that wrote them had been shaking.

Or laughing.

I stared at the word, and the second heartbeat pounded in my ears, and somewhere in the building,downstairs, maybe, or up on the roof. I heard the fire escape creak.

Not footsteps.

A single, deliberate shift of metal.

Someone was still here.

Someone was watching me find the photograph.

I turned toward the window, toward the fire escape, toward the darkness beyond the glass.

The silhouette was already gone.

The photograph slipped from my fingers and fluttered to the floor, Alice's face staring up at the ceiling.