Page 67 of Good Girl

Thudding footsteps rose from the hall, pounding closer and closer until finally, Samuel burst through the door. His hair stuck up wildly from the sprinting, and his eyes widened as he skidded to a stop and took in the damage to his office.

“What the...?”

“I’ll explain,” I said to the security guard, giving him a cue to leave before he became the victim of Derek’s next explosive outburst of anger. The guard nodded once and scurried away, leaving the three of us in the charred stink of Samuel’s office.

“What the fuck happened?” Samuel gasped.

“Someone tried to burn your fucking office down,” Derek growled as he paced aggressively in front of the window. He was always a quiet man, and I had rarely ever seen him raise his voice. It only happened during times when he was so worried about someone he cared about that he didn’t know how to process it. For a man who thrived on being in control, it was the one thing he had no power over.

“What?” Samuel’s gaze darted between the two of us then over to the burnt-out shell of the trash and the adjacent scorched wall.

“A trash can fire, childish, really,” I remarked, “but dangerous all the same. I saw the smoke and pulled the alarm. Thankfully, there was more smoke than there was fire, but it was lucky you hadn’t been sleeping in here.”

“My class ran late,” Samuel panted, and he shoved a hand through his hair, gripping the strands as he took in the damaged books and the stain. “Holy shit. A prank?”

“Maybe.” I glanced at Derek, who had a hand over his mouth as he paced, likely trying to gather himself enough to make a coherent argument. “Whoever it was, the security guard said they can check CCTV footage from the halls, but it’ll be hard to pinpoint exactly who. He thinks it was an end-of-year stress prank.”

Samuel crouched by the trash can, touching it lightly while trying to process it. “A fucking fire...” he grumbled softly.

“It was Paul,” Derek finally snapped. “Had to be. That little fucker. I’m going to wring his fucking turkey neck the next time I see him.”

“We don’t know that,” I replied, trying to get a handle on Derek’s fury before he did something stupid.

“Fuck off, Matt,” Derek growled. “Who else would it be? The fucker’s been after me since the day I came back, and we’ve all been getting those twisted notes. Stupid threats. Now this? You can’t look at all this and tell me there’s no connection. Samuel could havedied.”

“He wasn’t here,” I reassured him. “I understand why you’re angry, but Samuel is okay. Right, Sammy?”

“Yeah,” Samuel said somewhat dejectedly as he pulled a couple of the ruined books off the shelf. “Aw man, I lovedFables.”

“That’s not the point!” Derek rounded on me once more, the hand near his face curling into a fist. I watched and waited for whatever internal argument he was having to pass, then his hand dropped and his shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry. This is my fault.”

“How do you figure that?” I chuckled, dropping into one of Samuel’s soft chairs near the non-scorched wall.

“If this is Paul, then he’s targeting you because everyone knows we’re friends.” Derek rested back against Samuel’s desk, crossing his arms across his chest. While his voice was quieter, tension bled from his physique and the muscles of his bare forearms flexed continuously.

“Bullshit,” Samuel replied, finally discarding the destroyed books into the equally destroyed trash can. “We all give that lying asshole a well-deserved hard time. He tried to destroy your career. That isn’t on you.”

“Rich kids have no boundaries,” I agreed, “and it’s just the childish thing someone like him would do because he knows he has family money to protect him.”

“Money won’t protect him from my fist,” Derek growled.

“Jail will,” I warned, although I was entertaining the same idea in the back of my mind.

“Would he really go this far over some grades, though?” Samuel slowly sank into the chair next to me, but his forlorn gaze lingered in the dark stain on the opposite wall.

“Like I said, rich kids.” I chuckled dryly. “No boundaries. No sense of anything.”

“Maybe we should report the threats now,” Samuel sighed. “All those stupid letters telling us we didn’t know what was good for us and toback off. Can’t really avoid an investigation now.”

“Fucker,” Derek growled, and his fingers dug into the flesh of his arm.

Silence fell as each of us likely contemplated all the non-legal ways to deal with Paul until Samuel groaned long and low and threw his head back on the chair.

“I need to do something reckless and exciting before I actually hunt that twerp down,” he said.

“Anyone heard from Charlotte?” I tried all week to contact her, but once again, our communications were being ignored.

“No.” Samuel grunted. “Haven’t seen her since she fled last weekend.”

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