The Professor
Alexandria Clarke
Contents
The Professor
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Prologue
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Present Day
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Present Day
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Prologue
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Ten Years Later
About the Author
The Professor
Alexandria Clarke
1
George O’Connor could barely see through the windshield as a relentless rainstorm drummed a cadence on the hood of his small, gray sedan. The road was black, slick, and unforgiving. O’Connor had nearly slid out twice already, furiously pumping his brakes as his tires lost traction with the pavement. As the car hydroplaned through yet another invisible puddle, O’Connor cursed his terrible luck. The back roads of the midsized town twisted and turned through the darkest parts of the woods. There were no streetlamps here, no exit ramps or stoplights. No alarmingly bright car dealerships to mark the edge of the township. No other signs of human life at all.
O’Connor flipped on his high beams, but the old, yellowing headlights no longer had enough power to penetrate the gray curtain of rain outside. As he coaxed the sedan up and over a massive hill, O’Connor glanced in his rearview mirror. At first, he only saw the darkness of the road behind him, the tall trees of the woods bending over the pavement like shadowy guardians of the underworld. Then, one after the other, three pairs of LED headlights crested the hill.
“Shit, shit, shit,” he swore, pressing his foot farther down on the gas pedal. He rounded a bend at a breakneck pace. The mug in the cup holder of the center console gave way to gravity, tipping to one side, and cold coffee splashed over the edge of the cup, soaking O’Connor’s pant leg.
The road forked ahead, beyond the bend, and O’Connor took it as a sign. He had a chance to lose the men in the expensive SUVs behind him, but only if he could outsmart them. Just in case… he fumbled for his phone, his fingers shaking as he extracted it from his jacket pocket. He spared a quick glance at its screen to locate the number he needed then refocused on the road as the phone dialed.
“Pick up. Please, pick up,” he urged. Each additional ring on the other end of the line was a harsh reprimand to his ear. “Come on, pick up—”
“Hey, you’ve reached Nicole Costello. Please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
“Damn it, Nicole!”
The phone beeped a dulcet tone.
“Nicole, it’s O’Connor,” he said, flooring it toward the fork in the road. Another glimpse at the rearview mirror. The parade of headlights was gaining on him. “I know this is strange, but I need you to do something for me.”
As he approached the fork, O’Connor considered his options. He knew that the road to the left would circle back toward campus. With one twitch of the steering wheel, he could return to Waverly University, to the comfort of his office on the third floor of the Arts and Humanities Building. Unfortunately, the campus was no longer safe for O’Connor, and the men driving those SUVs would catch up to him far too easily there. The road to the right, on the other hand, led to the interstate and endless possible escape routes.
In a reckless move, O’Connor switched his headlights off entirely. The road plunged into complete and utter darkness, and O’Connor slammed on his brakes to compensate for his lack of vision. As he guided the tired sedan to the right, his eyes straining to make out the yellow Bott’s dots along the side of the road, he remembered his phone call.
“Nicole, I’m in some serious shit,” he continued, speeding up again as his pupils adjusted to the black night around him. Behind him, the oncoming headlights had slowed down. With any luck, they had lost sight of O’Connor’s sedan. “I need help. In my office, there’s a—Christ!”
O’Connor jerked the steering wheel to the left, narrowly avoiding the small doe that had stepped out of the woods and into the road. As the doe bolted, the car spun, and O’Connor felt the familiar release of his tires unsticking from the pavement. He dropped his cell phone and wrenched the wheel in the opposite direction but to no avail. The sedan careened out of control, skating across the river that the road had become. O’Connor beat mercilessly on the brakes, blind to the trees that bordered the desolate highway. His stomach dropped as the car drifted off the pavement and slipped into a drainage ditch. With a jolt, the vehicle finally came to a halt, firmly situated in the mud and facing the wrong way.
O’Connor, his heart pumping, peered through the glass of the front windshield.
“Please,” he whispered under his breath. “Just go back to campus.”
But a moment later, the headlights appeared again. O’Connor groaned, experimentally pressing on the gas pedal. The engine whined, and muck splattered the back windshield. The tires were stuck.
“Fucking. Piece. Of. Shit. Car.” Every word was punctuated with a punch to the dashboard. He glanced up again. The headlights were too close. Even if he made a run for it, the degenerates driving those monstrous SUVs were sure to find him.
He searched the footwell for his cell phone, capturing it and opening up a new text message. Hurriedly, he dashed off a short series of instructions, only half-focused on the small touchscreen. A squeal of tires and the hum of multiple V8 engines permeated the interior of the sedan. The aggressive headlights flooded the car cabin, and O’Connor’s eyes watered as he squinted to finish typing his text message. Heavy car doors opened and slammed shut. O’Connor pressed send then dunked the cell phone into the mug of coffee, which was still miraculously half-full.
Not a second later, a hammer bashed in the driver’s side window of the sedan. Broken glass
