Page 56 of Wicked Waters

“Alright. But I’m taking it with my phone. Yours is shit,” I said, just to wind him up, and he cuffed me around the back of the neck.

“He’s right,” Knox added, just to be an asshole, and got a cuff of his own. The three of us grinned at each other. I tugged my phone from my pocket, lifting it in front of us.

“Someone’s popular,” Tristan commented, staring at my screen.

“Huh?” I followed his glance, and my stomach dropped. Four messages and three missed calls. Swiping my screen, I saw they were all from my cousin Caiden.

“Oh, fuck,” I whispered. “Fuck.”

“Ro? You okay? What’s going on?”

“Roman? What is it?”

I ignored Tristan and Knox, backing away with my phone gripped tightly in my hand. I needed to get out of here. It was too fucking loud, too many people. If Cade had contacted me this many times in such a short period, it wasn’t a social call.

I was jogging by the time I reached the entryway, speeding up to a run as my feet pounded against the flagstones, the sound echoing through the emptying corridor. Coming to a stop at the sweeping staircase that led to our dorms, I hit my cousin’s number, pacing up and down while I waited for it to connect.

“Cade?”

He got straight to the point. “We traced the digital footprint. A bit more than that, in fact. I don’t know how it all links up, but I’ll send you everything, and hopefully, you’ll be able to make sense of it. If there’s anything more we can do, let me know. We’ve got your back.”

“What are you saying?” I couldn’t make sense of his words.

“It’s probably best if you read the info. I’m sending it through now.”

Switching him to speaker, I sank down onto the bottom step of the staircase, opening the message. My brows pulled together as I read the words on the screen.

“This makes no sense. Both the emails relating to Quinn’s paper came from one of the administrators’ computers? And what? How? Fuck. I don’t understand.”

Cade sighed. “Yeah. I dunno, West said it originated from there, but the sender had been able to spoof your email addresses so it looked like they came from you and Quinn. Uh…you know how they can do a ‘send as’ thing, so it looks like it comes from another address? It’s mostly used if an admin assistant wants to send an email as their boss, y’know, shit like that, but in this case…it was used on you. West found the deleted email that contained Quinn’s original paper, too. Someone had managed to get into her history professor’s email and erase it before he had a chance to look at it.”

“What the fuck? How could the school staff be behind this?”

“It’s not them. I mean, I can’t say for sure, but I’d put money on the fact that it was someone else. Someone who was able to access that computer and wanted to cover their tracks.”

I slumped back, rubbing my hand over my face. “So we still don’t know who it was?”

“Look at the rest of the shit I sent you. I have an idea, but I don’t know these people. You do. Do you think it could be connected? Do you think they’d have a reason to do all this?”

“What?” I swiped down the screen, my mouth falling open as I took in the information in front of me. “The ball votes, too? What the fuck? Who?”

31

QUINN

“You need to come with me. Right now.” The grip on my wrist tightened, the person forcibly dragging me away from the dance floor.

“What are you doing? Let go of me!”

“No. You need to see this.” Freya’s expression was grim. “Seriously, Quinn. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important.”

“Fine,” I bit out. It wasn’t like I wanted to stand there and torture myself watching Roman dance with someone else, anyway. Even if it was with Penelope. Penelope? Not Aria? Everything had happened so fast I still wasn’t sure what exactly had happened.

Freya’s grip loosened on my wrist once she realised I was coming with her willingly. She led me out of the main hall, down the corridor, and up the stairs in the direction of our dorms.

“Freya? What are we doing?”

“I need to show you something.”

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