Page 83 of The Sound of Us

I liked Blake but there was only one guy I wanted to be with. “I’m still sort of with the guy you met in the lounge. It’s… complicated.”

“If it ever gets uncomplicated…”

I leaned up to kiss his cheek. “I’ll let you know.”

Blake may not have wanted to reveal any names, but now that I knew the personal assistant still worked on campus, it didn’t take me long to search through past administrative directories for the athletic center and cross-reference them with current university admin listings. I came up with a list of five names, and all it took was another tray of coffee and a box of lemon squares to get my new friends in the athletic center admin office to confirm that Marisa Staples, now executive assistant to the chair of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, was the key to my investigation.

Of course, Marisa wasn’t interested in talking about her time working with basketball team. She’d responded to my email inquiry with a big fat “no comment” and brushed me off when I approached her in the hallway. I’d even sent her a coupon for a free coffee and lemon square, but she never showed up.

“Why don’t you wait outside her office and spill coffee on her?” Isla said, flipping over the next card for our game of Texas hold ’em. Chad, Haley, and Nick had joined us for lunch and I’d given them a brief outline of what I knew so far. I hadn’t mentioned the sexual assault because I was worried about triggering Isla. The last thing she needed was to hear that there was another rapist loose on campus.

“Because that’s too obvious. She’ll probably get angry and then she’ll never tell me what I want to know. That will be the end of my story.”

“Is this for our year-end project?” Chad asked. “I’ve been struggling to find anything worth investigating.”

“I have something else I’m working on for the year-end project,” I said. “But if this turns out to be something big, I might just use it instead.”

Chad rubbed his hands through his hair. “It’s not fair. You getsomething so juicy you might have to throw coffee on someone, and I can’t even find out if the gluten-free flour they use in the gluten-free pizza is safe for celiacs.”

“One of my psych profs said that when you want someone to open the door, you don’t break it down; you make them want to open it for you,” Haley said. “Maybe there is a reason she doesn’t work for the basketball coach anymore. She might want to talk but since she still works for the university, she’s afraid of losing her job.”

“Is that how you took all my money?” Chad asked Isla, who had cleaned him out in the first two hands. “You made me want to give it to you?”

“Chad, Chad, Chad.” Isla shook her head as she threw five dollars on the table. “Don’t try to blame me for your ego getting the better of you. Were you not at the bar when I hustled those guys at pool? Did you think my skills were limited to sticks and balls?”

Nick snorted a laugh as he folded. “I’m not even going to touch that one.”

“Who thinks Isla’s bluffing?” I studied the cards on the table. I still had some skin in the game, but Isla was a master.

“Look at this cute face.” Nick rubbed his knuckles gently over Isla’s cheek. “Do you really think she could hide anything from you?”

“Don’t be fooled. She’s trying to get us to fold.” Haley folded, but I threw in my five dollars. I might have played it safe at the beginning of the year, but now I wasn’t afraid to take a risk. “I’ll see you…” I trailed off as an idea took root in my mind. “What if I bluffed and told people I had enough evidence to run my story?”

“I thought you didn’t have any evidence,” Isla said, fanning out her hand of nothingness for everyone to see.

I’d never beat Isla before, so I made a big show of scooping up the money. “And you didn’t have anything in your hand, but I paid to see you anyway.”

“Won’t you get in trouble if you go around saying stuff that isn’t true?” Nick asked. “How bad is the thing the baller did? Is it a crime?”

“Yes.”

“Then shouldn’t you just go to the police?”

“I have no proof,” I said. “I have a guy who said he talked to another guy who said he talked to a girl who said she knew something. Not much to go on. And the university has already covered it up. That means they’ve buried the evidence.”

“I’m beginning to think my gluten flour story isn’t so bad,” Chad mused. “It’s low risk, easy to investigate, and yet it could save lives.”

“Maybe I tell Blake I’m planning to run the story and he ‘misunderstands.’” I punctuated the last word with finger quotes as I put the pieces together. “He tells someone I’ve got the evidence and that person tells someone else, and soon the people who are the most worried will crawl out of the woodwork and expose themselves to try and stop me from going public. I don’t have to spill coffee on anyone or hunt them down. They’ll come to me.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Isla said. “What if they threaten you? Or worse?”

“They can’t risk doing anything until they know what evidence I have and who I’ve told.”

“I don’t like it.” Nick folded his arms. “What if they break into your apartment looking for evidence like they do in crime shows? You and Isla aren’t safe. I’ve got a friend in engineering who used to be a locksmith. I’m going to bring him by your place to check your doors and windows.” He pulled out his phone and stepped away to make the call.

“What the hell was that?” I asked Isla.

“I told Nick everything,” she whispered. “I wanted him to know why I couldn’t get into a relationship with him, even though we really click.”

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