Page 5 of The Knight

There's a knock on the door, and someone new comes in: a non-uniformed officer by the looks of him, with a badge hung around his neck. It's the detective, and based on the look he shoots Officer Lopez, he's none too keen on the fact that she took my statement first.

"Officer Lopez, if you could wait outside in the hallway while I take the witness's statement." He looks at the lawyer and grunts. "Pierce."

"Lyons."

Lopez hands me the bag full of my stuff. I try not to take it too eagerly. "We'll keep an eye out for those men, Brenna. I promise that we'll find them."

"No need to make that promise, Officer." Lyons narrows his eyes in her direction. "I'm on the case."

"Of course," she says, somehow managing to sound polite and yet doubting at the same time. "I'll just wait outside, then, make sure no one shows up to kidnap this young woman a second time."

I watch her leave, then open up the plastic bag. It's sealed tighter than I realized, with a large red label on it and my named scrawled at the top. My student ID is inside, along with my phone, and the clutch I took to the dance, all of its contents emptied: gum, a tiny thing of hand sanitizer, a bottle of ibuprofen, two tampons, and a keychain pepper spray Wally insisted I take with me to Coleridge. Grabbing the phone first, I push the power button and watch its cracked screen flicker to life.

Then power back down again, the battery symbol flashing red.

Great—the damned thing ran out of battery while I was in the trunk of a car. That makes it pretty much useless to me. I won't be able to call someone to grab Silas's laptop out of my room, and now I've got this detective watching me impatiently. At this rate Hass, or someone else, will get the laptop and wipe it of whatever evidence is on it before I even figure out why those guys killed for it.

Glancing at "my" lawyer, I ask him, "Can you do me a favor?"

"Of course. Detective Lyons, if you could give me some alone time with my client—your uniformed officer already took her statement, after all, and she's had a long night."

The detective makes another grunting noise, sealing my impression of him as one of those bro-like dudes who speak solely in monosyllables. "Just one question before I pop out to grab myself a coffee: what are you doing with a false ID and the social security number of a dead infant?"

Panic seizes my chest. "I, uh..."

"Don't answer that," the lawyer says, making me grateful for his presence in the room. "Detective, unless my client is under arrest?"

A keen smile breaks out on the detective's face, and I change my estimation of him from, suddenly realizing he has to be clever to have gotten to his position in the department. "Not yet," he says, "but, BrennaWilder,whatever is going on here, you're better off just telling us the truth now. Not just because me and my guys will figure it out, but because whatever you're up to, it nearly got you killed tonight."

"Detective."

"Fine, fine, I'm leaving. Confer with your client and figure out her defense—she's going to need one if it turns out she's involved with something bigger than just a fake ID."

The detective heads out into the hallway, passing by Officer Lopez, who's standing alert and on watch. As the door closes behind him, I find myself wishing very badly that I'd never started digging into anything at all.

Then again, if I hadn't, I wouldn't know the truth about my brother's death.

That alone is worth whatever trouble I'm in now. I can take it all—just as long as the real murderers get arrested.

"What can I do for you, Ms. Wilder?"

The lawyer is looking at me expectantly, but there's something I want to know before I trust him with this particular task. "Who hired you?"

"A concerned benefactor."

"That's not a name."

He lifts his brows, looks down at his phone, then glances out the little window into the hallway. Something crosses his face, and he nods; craning my head, I try to see who he's looking at, but either there's no one there now or they're at an angle I can't see, unlike the very tall lawyer.

"I can tell you that I've been hired by a group called the Elites."

The way he says it makes it seem like he doesn't even know what the term means, but of course I do. Cole Masteron, Tanner Connally, Blake Lee, and Lukas DuPont are the four reasons why I came to Coleridge under a false name in the first place. They run the social circles of the school, despite being first years—the equivalent, at a public school, of the junior year of high school.

I came here loathing them, and found myself ensnared in their web. Ruining them and their reputation got me more than I bargained for: I was taunted by Cole, teased by Tanner, got my tests stolen by Blake, and at least some of the girls interested in them cut the safety line to my harness while I was indoor wall climbing, then they even went so far as to throw me into the enclosure that holds Coleridge's mascots, four wolves who are barely tamed.

I survived it all. I even made it to the end of semester Blind Ball, despite all the mistakes I made along the way, including betraying someone who I didn't realize actually cared about me, my rich socialite roommate Holly, getting exposed in front of the whole campus for stealing and lying about my name, and accidentally doing to one of the Elites what they did to my brother Silas: falsely accusing him of sexual assault.

Coming here was supposed to take down the four rich boys who carelessly pushed my brother to commit suicide. The truth has turned out to be far more complicated than I expected. Now all I have to show for my efforts is the attempted kidnapping that I nearly didn't make it through and a lawyer hired by boys who I know must hate me as much as I once hated them—feelings that have been complicated by kisses that never should've happened.

---