Page 73 of Honor Code

"What?"

"You don't think I figured she'd be here, did you?" A sneer crossed his face.

Phoenix gripped him by the collar, pressing him into the rough. "What have you done to Ellie?"

"What do you think? She knows too much, which means your little girlfriend is going to have to die."

Was he bluffing? Phoenix didn't know whether to believe him or not.

"Go," Pat said, taking custody of Henderson on the edge of the fairway. "Go to her."

"You're too late," Henderson smirked, his chuckle following Phoenix as he sprinted across the course, making a beeline for the hotel.

CHAPTER 32

Ellie was just getting into bed when there was a knock on the hotel room door. "Who is it?" she called. It couldn't be any of the men. They'd only just left.

A familiar voice said, "Ellie? Can I come in?"

Suzi!

Ellie sprang out of bed and opened the door. "Oh, my God. Suzi, what are you doing here?"

Her former colleague gave her a hug, then walked into the hotel room, closing the door behind her. She looked different. On the rig, she'd worn cute little dresses, but now she was wearing distressed denim jeans with holes in the knees, a Metallica T-shirt, and big, clunky boots. Her eyes were rimmed with black eyeliner, and the stud in her nose was now a small hoop.

"I had to come and see you," she said. "I had to make sure you were okay."

Ellie was touched. "Thank you, but you really didn't need to come all the way to see me. A phone call would have been fine."

"So, what happened?" Suzi asked, perching on the edge of the bed. "Tell me everything."

Where to start?

"It was awful." Ellie told her about the explosion. "I was coming back from the Discoverer when the oil rig blew up. It was like this massive fireball in the sky. I couldn't believe what I was seeing."

"Terrible," murmured Suzi.

"Thank God Billy managed to get the remaining staff members into the second inflatable. Otherwise, there would have been multiple fatalities. As it was, we nearly lost Boomer and Phoenix." She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears at the memory. She didn't think she'd ever get over that.

"They're okay?" Suzi asked.

"They are now, but it was touch and go for a while there. Phoenix had a concussion and scrapes and bruises, but Boomer nearly got blown up. He was unconscious for a while, and his face got all messed up."

"Poor guy," Suzi said. "Serves him right for meddling like that."

"What?" Ellie stared at her, confused by the reaction.

Suzi released her hand. "I really like you, Ellie, but you know what your problem is? You ask too damn many questions."

Ellie stared at her for a long moment. Slowly, the pieces fell into place. "No," she finally whispered. "Not you too."

Suzi rolled her eyes. "Well, of course me, stupid. How else were we going to position the rig at those coordinates? Any geologist worth a dime would have recognized the difference in morphology if they'd looked at a chart of the seafloor. I'm not that dumb."

Holy shit.

Suzi.

As the horrifying truth sank in, several anomalies began to make sense. Like why Suzi had left the morning of the blast. "Your father didn't have a bad fall, did he?" she asked.

---