جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 24

CHAPTER 21POV: MiaMark had chosen a restaurant.Not campus. Not a coffee shop. A proper restaurant, the kind with heavy doors and low lighting and tables far enough apart that conversations stayed where they were put. The kind of place that understood privacy without being asked.She noticed that.The choosing of it.Ryder noticed her noticing. “He’s careful,” he said quietly as they pushed through the door. “He’s been careful for four years. Old habit.”“Is that a warning?”“It’s context.”She nodded.Followed him in.Mark was already there.Corner table, back to the wall, clear sightline to the door. Also something she noticed. The seating of a person who had learned to watch entrances.He was older than she’d imagined from the voice on the phone. Late sixties, maybe. Silver hair, close cut. A face that had done a lot of living and processed most of it with something like dignity. He was dressed simply, dark jacket, open collar, but he wore it with the particular ease of someone f

CHAPTER 23POV: MiaThe letter arrived Monday.Not digitally, physically. Printed on faculty letterhead, slipped into her departmental pigeonhole between a reading list and a library notice like it was ordinary correspondence. Like it was nothing.She almost missed it.She wouldn’t have looked twice except the envelope had her full name typed on it, not handwritten, not the casual shorthand of internal campus mail. Typed. Formal. The kind of deliberate that announces itself.She opened it in the corridor.Read it once.Read it again.Then she stood very still for approximately thirty seconds while students moved around her and the ordinary Monday morning continued without any awareness that the ground had just moved.Dear Ms. Caldwell,This letter serves as formal notification that a review has been initiated regarding the academic integrity of work submitted under your name during the current semester. Specifically, concerns have been raised regarding the collaborative project submit