Page 14 of Shielded Secrets

Lev furrowed his brow. “I guess it’s just as well that you could check in on her. Maybe she’ll have something to tell you about all that’s been going on since Vik’s cover was blown.” He blew out a harsh breath. “We didn’t pull out all the men, but I was never in favor of cutting down the eyes and ears we had on campus. The Petrovs and Ilyins can fight each other all they want, but if one of them claims that turf, it’ll have a lasting impact on the whole area.”

None of us wanted that.

And I personally didn’t want to stand back and let Kelly be stressed, traumatized, or overwhelmed either.

It was fine time for me to get off light duty and be on top of both angles of spying at the campus again.

7

KELLY

Jerome wouldn’t leave me alone. It didn’t matter if I was in class, eating at the cafeteria, walking to the admin building, or studying in the library. He was everywhere.

He never approached me. He didn’t make any attempt to speak to me. All he wanted to do was keep an eye on me and make sure that I knew he saw me.

I know what you did.

That was his message, and the three little dots after it loomed so large.

What did he intend by reminding me that he knew me from long ago? What was supposed to happen with his remembering what I’d done?

I was no stranger to blackmail. So many of the foster “parents” used it on the kids they took in, all for getting some money from the government.

If Jerome wasn’t interested in using my secret against me as blackmail, then I had no clue what he’d want from me. I hadnothing to give him. No power, no money, no information. Nothing.

Is he just a sadist, wanting to torture me?I wouldn’t put it past him, and that was why every morning, I woke up with fear gripping me and went to bed with dread pooling in my stomach. My dreams of Rurik stopped coming, and when they didn’t, I realized how much I’d depended on his presence even in my dream state.

“Hey,” another student worker said as they came into the outer part of Jasmine’s office where I was working that afternoon.

I jerked at the sudden visit, blinking my eyes open wide.

“You’re Kelly, right?”

How would you know?

No one knew me, and that was the way I liked it. The anonymity of just being one student among so many was one big thing I liked about this college experience. I wasn’t labeled as the foster kid. I wasn’t outcast as the weirdo without a family, the loser whose parents were addicts. I was just a nobody, and that blank label fit so well.

“I remember you from last semester. You, um, you were really helpful with that one econ test, and I thought I could, uh, well, uh, repay the favor.”

I remembered him now. He was talking about a brief half hour of studying together because we’d happened to be seated next to each other when the power went out and we had to wait for the lecture to resume.

“Repay the favor of studying?”I don’t need help withthat.

“No. Um.” He looked around, almost nervous but trying to look and sound casual as he came toward my desk. If he wasn’t worried about being here, he sure seemed uneasy to talk to me. He did seem shy.

“I figured you might want to see this.”

“See what?”

He shrugged, then flicked his long hair back as he gestured at the computer. “Can I log in?”

Curious, I rolled back my chair and let him have access to the school computer. He lowered to type rapidly, clearly a gamer or computer savvy nerd. “I work in the other end of the admin building. By campus operations and services.”

I nodded, watching as he logged onto his email. “Okay.”

“And when I noticed these, I thought I’d send them to you, but your school email address is wonky.” He clicked and moved the mouse, making some videos come up. The surveillance feed was of the admin building, then another one of the cafeteria. In all the views he showed me, there he was. Jerome watched me. In the darker ones, when it was nighttime, still shots were taken to show him tracking me across campus, stalking me as I walked from one place to another.

“Do you, like, know this dude?” he asked.

---