Page 24 of Catching Fire

That explained why she didn't already recognize him. But …

Still standing in the hallway—still not willing to get inside a small, enclosed space with this man—she said, “Almost two weeks ago, I ran into Dr. Gilman in this office.”

He took another sip from the mug, his smile condescending. “I assure you, you did not.”

“I did. He came intothisoffice. I had bumped into him coming around the corner. He came in here, and I introduced myself. He said he was Dr. Fred Gilman.”

At last, Gilman seemed to take her seriously. His brows pulled together. “But I assure you I am the actual Doctor Gilman. And I never go by Fred.” He waved his hands around to indicate the walls. “That's my degree, and my other degree, and my other degree.”

Seline tipped her head at him as if to saynow who was being stupid?The name was written in calligraphy so beautifully it was almost difficult to read, but it didn't prove anything. He nodded a single conciliatory time and said, “These are my family pictures.”

Sure enough, she remembered the pictures had been on the desk before, but she hadn't looked. Now she could see that he was in almost half of them.Arrogant bastard,she thought, but the face in the pictures was that of the man in front of her. Not the man who’d been here before.

“We should go see Dr. Morales.” Seline offered cautiously.

“Absolutely.” He agreed as though he were clearly going to have the upper hand here. He set down the mug and stood sharply upright.

Her stomach churned. His willingness meant that Morales would recognize him. This was the real Dr. Gilman.So who had been here before?

She was certain she already knew. And she had to tell her boss what she’d brought to the school.

Opening the door to the main office, she found the department secretary smiling. He ushered them into Morales’ inner office. Though he’d agreed to come with her, Gilman now looked as though he didn’t have the time to be bothered with this.

Seline offered him a harsh expression as if to sayyou will sit and you will wait. She knew what was at stake even if he didn’t.

It didn’t take long for Gilman to have worked up a good head of steam over the fact that Seline was making him visit the boss. Sonia Morales finally looked up at them and greeted them by level of seniority. “Dr. Gilman. Dr. Marchand.”

Seline felt her heart sink. BRK had been in Dr. Gilman’s office. She’d shaken his hand.

Now the only question was:How many other times had she encountered the killer?

Chapter Fifteen

Seline had driven home exhausted from both the meeting and the outcome. She’d spent too long on the phone with Agent Decker after that relaying information about the strange call and the single word, “watching.”

“I don’t think it’s BRK…” Decker had replied. “I mean not off the top of my head, because it would be a strange change in M.O. But we’ll look into it.”

That made Seline feel marginally better, that and the promise to fully investigate the call. But she’d not returned Kalan's calls or messages all day.

The bad feeling in her gut persisted, though now it was not only because William Treat Sanders had actually been on her campus and interacted with her, but because her department chair had asked her not to come to campus anymore. She was allowed to show up and teach classes, where the school would place security guards in the hallway, but she couldn’t visit her own office or interact with faculty or students aside from fielding questions immediately after class. She needed to begin calling roll in each class and learning faces, so she could report anyone unusual.

She hadn’t lost her job per se, but she had been severely downgraded.

If she called Maggie, her friend would understand. While Seline desperately wanted to stay alive—and keep BRK’s future victims alive, too—she was livid that her life was slowly getting stolen from her. It was all necessary for her safety and the safety of those around her—she understood that. But, through no fault of her own, she was the one who bore the brunt of the ramifications. And she was pissed.

Seline had sat in Morales’ office with a senior professor and listened to her department chair call the FBI. Agents had shown up. Ones Seline didn’t already know.

Didn’t that say everything? She now knew FBI agents personally.

They'd pulled fingerprints and suggested a sketch artist. But Seline had unfortunately been able to say, “He looked like the enhanced picture that Agent Watson showed me almost two weeks ago.”

That hurt.

She’d had to then explain why she’d seen someone who looked just like a version of the Blue River Killer and brushed it off. The upside was that Seline didn’t have to sit for an hour for a sketch. The downside was that Morales had scolded the FBI for not putting those images on the nightly news so everyone at the school could recognize him.

Dr. Morales had asked her point blank. “Why did you think it was Dr. Gilman?”

“Because he was in Gilman’s office.” Seline realized that was a slim excuse now. “He sat in Gilman’s chair and was shuffling through the papers on the desk. He drank from Gilman’s mug.”

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