Page 29 of Hunting Pretty

The door opened.

Light from the office blinded me but I still heaved with all my might.

My attacker easily caught the tray.

A familiar chuckle made me sag with relief.

“Breaking up with me wasn’t enough?” Cormac said, his clean scent of white linen wafting into my nose. “Now you want to kill me?”

I snatched the tray out of his hands and tossed it aside. “You eejit, didn’t you see the Darkroom in Use sign I’d put up?”

Cormac shrugged and slipped his soft manicured hands into the pockets of his pressed light-brown chinos, shaking his boyish sandy hair from his eyes, looking exactly like an advertisement for Abercrombie and Fitch.

Well-groomed. Preppy. Rich.

Boring. Vanilla. Safe,I mentally added.

“What are you working on so intensely that you’d avoid my calls?” he asked, shifting his head to look over my shoulder.

My cheeks flushed. I shoved Cormac out of the darkroom before he saw the photo of my stalker, the sole print hanging in the middle of the darkroom. “Get out. You’ll ruin my work.”

He backed up and I stepped out into the cool light of the office, making sure to lock the darkroom door behind me.

I shivered as a rush of cold air sent goosebumps over my skin. The outer office door was still ajar, letting cold air in from up the stairs. There must be an open window in the tower somewhere.

I marched over to it and closed it with a bang before swirling to face him. “How the hell did you get in? I locked this door.”

Cormac grinned and held up a small shiny key. “What, did you think Ibrokein?”

I strode toward him, hands in fists by my sides.

I wanted to shove Cormac right out the turret window because underneath my relief, I wasdisappointed.

Fucking disappointed that my stalker hadn’t come to face me.

What was wrong with me?

“How did you get a key?” I demanded. “You, and I quote, wouldn’t work for the pithyDark Diarieseven if you sucked my dick every day for a month.”

I grabbed at the key, but he snatched it out of my reach.

Cormac gave me that smug look that made me want to punch him right in his perfectly straight nose. “There’s not much that a handful of euros won’t buy me.”

Asshole. He must have bribed the janitor to cut him an extra key.

I held out my hand. “Give it to me or I’ll tell the dean.”

Cormac shrugged but he dropped the key into my hand. “Firstly, the dean is like besties with my da. Even more than your ma. And secondly, I could just get another key.”

I tucked the key into my pocket and crossed my arms over my chest, pissed that he wasn’t lying. “What are you doing here anyway?”

Cormac picked up my notebook from my desk and flipped through it.

I snatched it from him and shoved it into my bag. “Find your own leads.”

I’d started scribbling notes in there about potential leads in Liath’s disappearance.

No one except Lisa knew I’d decided to start investigating. And I wasn’t about to let Cormac know what I was up to.

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