she’d processed the thought.
“Hello, Ms. Hall,” Blair said as she drew closer. She found Phoebe’s eyes in the dusk and boldly held them. Gwen, however, lowered her eyes to the ground.
“Hello, Blair,” Phoebe said, staring straight at the girl. Her unease was quickly morphing to anger.
“It’s getting dark so early these days, isn’t it?” Blair said slyly, slowing down as she passed. A tiny smile formed on her face, making the edges of her full lips curl upward.
You little bitch, Phoebe thought. I won’t let you intimidate me.
“We all need to be careful, then, don’t we?” Phoebe said. “Bad things can happen in the dark.”
The nasty little smile evaporated as Blair passed. She didn’t like two playing at her game.
Was I being warned of another visit? Phoebe wondered, hurrying up the path. Or was Blair simply trying to remind me who was boss? Phoebe turned to look behind her, but the girls were now out of sight.
It wasn’t until she was inside the science building that Phoebe finally let out a breath. Duncan’s office turned out to be on the second floor, in a warren of a half-dozen or so offices that branched out from a single reception area. The receptionist had gone for the day, but after making a guess, Phoebe hung to the right, and two doors down she found Duncan reading what looked like a term paper, his cowboy boot-clad feet propped on the desk.
“Hey there,” he said, looking up at the sound of her footsteps. He swung his feet off the paper-strewn desk and pushed his reading glasses onto the top of his head. He’d paired his jeans with a plain white button-down shirt, open at the neck and rolled at the sleeves, the color setting off his dark brown eyes. Phoebe felt desire surge through her. How the hell did this happen? she wondered. A week ago I was completely irritated when he asked me for dinner, and now I’m nearly weak-kneed at the sight of the man.
“So this is the nerve center of the psych department at Lyle College,” she said, smiling.
Duncan tossed down the paper and rose from the desk. “If you took a look at these papers I’m grading, you’d hardly call it a nerve center. Of course, it takes lots of nerve to turn in crap like this.”
“Are the students just not trying? Or do you think what’s happening on campus is affecting their work?”
“Possibly the latter. Though with some of the guys, I worry it’s just plain over their heads. Here, let me clear a seat for you.”
There it was again—the problem with boys. Duncan came around the desk, scooped up the papers piled on a leather-covered wingback chair, and plopped them on the floor. Then he turned back to Phoebe.
“My, don’t you look lovely today?” he said. He stepped closer and kissed her softly on the mouth.
“Thank you,” she said. She leaned back, looking into his eyes. “Though I’m a bit wigged out at the moment.” She briefly described what happened with the dishwasher and then bumping into the girls on the path.
“Gosh, Phoebe, why didn’t you call me?” he said. “I would have come right over.”
“You were already forced to come to my rescue once this week. How many times can I drag you out of bed?”
“Well, is Ball taking this seriously enough?”
“Yes, I think so. And he’s involving the police now.”
“Would you prefer to bag the tour and just head to dinner then?”
“Oh, no, a tour would be fine.”
“Great. Wait here for just a sec, though, would you? Bruce wanted to ask me something up on four.”
As soon as Duncan departed, Phoebe let her eyes roam the room, trying to see what the space would divulge about him. There were stacks of term papers on the desk and on the counter behind it, shelves full of books, and Post-it notes stuck to the computer screen, typical items in any professor’s office. The only personal objects were a mug that read “Musikfest, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,” a wall diploma for a doctorate from the University of Michigan, and two small photos on the desk. In one Duncan stood with several students, holding an award; the other featured him and Miles, in hip waders, standing in a stream. Not much to go on. She took a seat and tried to relax.
For a while her thoughts wandered, and then finally she brought them back—to the room, to the night ahead. She glanced down at her watch. To her surprise Phoebe realized that Duncan had been gone fifteen minutes already. She rose from the chair and sauntered down the short hall to the reception area and then out into the main corridor. It was empty and silent, not surprising for this hour on a Friday night. Suddenly there was the sound of footsteps echoing in a nearby stairwell. She waited, thinking it was Duncan, but he failed to appear. She felt a sliver of annoyance at his having left her for so long.
She started to turn, to go back to Duncan’s office. Then suddenly the hall lights went off in unison. Phoebe was standing in total darkness.
18
She swung back around toward the hall again. As her eyes adjusted, she saw that the emergency exit signs above the doors to the stairwells were still lit. They cast an eerie, ghostlike ball of light at each end of the corridor. Where in hell was it that Duncan had said he was going? she wondered. The fourth floor. But why in the world wasn’t he hurrying back now? She quickly began to make her way to the stairwell at the end of the corridor, where she figured she was bound to meet him coming down. She wondered if the power was out over the entire campus.
It turned out the stairwell had emergency bulbs, but they cast only the dimmest light. There was no one on the stairs, and no sound of anyone descending.
“Duncan?” Phoebe called up the stairs anxiously. “Are you there?”
From far off she thought she heard the sound of a door slam, but then nothing else.
She felt annoyed, pissed really, that Duncan had not only left her for so long but wasn’t bothering to rush back. She had no intention of standing around in the dark. I’ll just go outside, she decided, and wait for him in front of the building. But first she needed to grab her purse from his office. She’d left it on the floor by the chair. In fact, maybe the smartest thing to do, she realized, was to call him on her cell. Hopefully, he had his own phone in his jeans pocket.
She reentered the corridor. It was utterly silent there, and her heart rate quickly accelerated even more. Relax, she willed herself again. It’s only a stupid power failure. She made her way back toward the psych department. Peering into the reception area, she saw that it was even darker there than in the corridor because the windows faced the Grove. Phoebe took several tentative steps into the room and turned right, in the direction of Duncan’s office. She edged along with a hand out in front of her, feeling for the open door to the hallway. She found it the hard way, as the left side of her head smacked into the doorframe. Phoebe groaned in pain.
Taking a breath, she corrected her position and entered the hall. Her eyes started to adjust, and she could see a little in the darkness. With both hands now in front of her, she groped her way down the hall to the entrance to Duncan’s office. She stood for a second in the doorway, gaining her bearings. Finally her eyes found the dark shape of the chair, and she moved clumsily in that direction. It was only when she touched the chair and felt the fabric that she realized she wasn’t in Duncan’s office after all. His chair had been made of leather.
Cursing in frustration, Phoebe retreated to the hall and made her way jerkily to the next office down. This one was definitely Duncan’s. Even in the dark, she could see the dull gleam of the yellow Post-its on the computer screen. She moved toward the chair, and felt around by the base until she made contact with her purse.
As she stooped to pick it up, Phoebe heard a sound out in the hall. She rose and spun around in that
