I plucked the note from the particle board and flipped it over. The sight of BRS’s logo, drawn in red permanent marker, made my stomach turn.
My phone vibrated, displaying a text from Wes. All week, he’d been checking in with me on a regular basis. Ever since his conversation with Officer Wilson, the force had kept Wes in the dark about the O’Connor case. He was uneasy, at work and at home, and I knew that my constant lurking in the library did nothing to soothe his nerves.
His text said: Still alive?
I texted back: 10-4.
I crumpled the sticky note with BRS’s logo on it and used the edge of the table to propel myself back to my feet. If the Black Raptor Society thought they could scare me off with a schoolyard prank, they were going to be disappointed. I refused to give up so easily. My elbow was sore but no worse for wear. I shook it out, stretched, and glanced around for another chair to use.
Across the room stood Jo Mitchell, peeking out at me from behind an outdated collection of encyclopedias. A moment later, when she realized I’d noticed her, she turned on her heel and vanished around the corner of a bookshelf.
I threw my messenger bag over my shoulder and jogged toward the encyclopedias, ignoring the students who glanced up from their homework to give me dirty looks. The row that Jo had disappeared down was empty.
“Damn!” I whispered. I hurried along the row, looking left and right for Jo. When I emerged from the shelves, I finally caught sight of her. With a nervous look over her shoulder, she scurried quickly out of the library and into the lobby.
I followed Jo from the building and out into the courtyard. There it was more difficult for her to lose me, so I put on a burst of speed, the soles of my boots slipping a little on the icy ground, and caught up with her.
“Jo!” I called, panting.
She spun around. She appeared no less stressed than the last time I’d seen her. She had tied her hair up in a sloppy knot at the top of her head as though she’d given up on it entirely, and her eyes flitted to whatever student was closest to us in the courtyard, never focusing on anything for more than a couple of seconds.
I extracted the sticky note from my pocket, smoothed it out, and held it up so that she could see it. “Did you rig my chair?”
She shook her head. “I told you not to get involved with them.”
“You figured it out,” I said, furiously shaking the note in front of her. “What you wrote on my hand. Nec plus ultra. You knew about the Black Raptor Society.”
“Shh!” She snatched the yellow sticky note out of my hand.
“Tell me what you know,” I demanded.
“Nothing!”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m telling you the truth,” Jo insisted. Like before, she kept her voice low. I stepped closer to ensure I heard every word. “I got the same note once, when I was trying to figure out why my grades had plummeted. I made the mistake of ignoring it. Shortly after, they tried to have me committed.”
“You told me they forced you to see the school psychiatrist,” I reminded her. My mind flashed back to Lauren Lockwood’s journal entry. According to Lauren, Jo had been “contained.”
“Yeah, they did,” said Jo. “And I went along with it. Then, during one of my appointments, Dr. Thornton left the room. His computer was logged on. I couldn’t help it. I snooped through my file.”
“And?”
“My entire file was made up,” she said. “Thornton had written all sorts of notes, claiming I’d said and done things during our sessions that definitely didn’t happen.”
“Like what?”
“Like coming on to him inappropriately and other wonderful shit.”
“Oh, God,” I said, a lump forming in my throat. “That’s sick.”
“Mm-hmm. And when Thornton caught me looking at my file, I accused him of making up half the crap that he had written. Want to know what he did?”
“Not really.”
“He called security. I lost it. I was yelling my head off at Thornton and trying to convince the security guard to check the computer. They sedated me, and the next thing I know, I’m waking up in a damn hospital room.”
A gust of wind howled through the courtyard, and a whirlwind of dead leaves swept between me and Jo.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” I asked Jo.
“Because I was hoping you’d keep your nose down,” she replied. “They’ll ruin you. They’ve had a lot of practice, if you haven’t figured that out already.”
“I’m starting to realize that.”
My phone vibrated again. I looked down at it, expecting another text from Wes. Instead, I saw that I had a new email. I swiped the message open.
Miss Costello,
I trust that you are well. I hope that you have put some time and effort into your thesis. I regret to inform you that in order to graduate at the end of the spring semester, you will need to have completed your work in two weeks’ time. Know that you have already been awarded quite the extension, as the other graduate students have already defended their dissertations to their advisory committees. With this in mind, I would like to meet with you again as soon as possible to discuss your progress. Please report to my office on Monday at 9 a.m.
Regards,
Dr. Catherine Flynn
Dean of Arts and Humanities
Waverly
