Zoe shook her head, amazed that hehadn’t yet seen the connection. But then again, it wasn’t as though sheexpected great things from the rookie. “Just keep driving along this road,” shesaid, spotting a campus map illuminated by a light above the sign and quicklymemorizing it as they drove by.
Campus security waved them throughwhen Zoe showed her badge out the window, and then they were moving down a longrow of large houses separated by strips of land: fraternities. Greek lettershung over the doorways of each one, two or three symbols indicating theidentity of the group living inside.
The whole fraternity or sororitything had never appealed to Zoe. She hadn’t joined when she was at college. Shehad no idea about which fraternities were the biggest, which ones had badreputations, or anything like that. She had vague recollections of articles abouthazing and the blazing hoops prospective members had to jump through in orderto impress their older cohort.
“Are you serious with this?” Flynnmuttered sullenly, slowing the car to more of a crawl as they eased past eachhouse. Most of them were lit up with lights blazing through each window. Zoeguessed the penny had finally dropped for him. She ignored him, focusing onlooking from side to side, examining the identity of each house.
Then she saw it. The house withonly one letter above the doorway. Next to it was a blank space where thebrickwork was a slightly different color, nails still visible in a discerniblepattern. It should have been Sigma Pi. But the Sigma had fallen off.
“Pi House,” Flynn breathed.Without Zoe’s prompting, he had rolled the car to a stop right opposite thedoorway. He was leaning forward, one arm crooked over the top of the steeringwheel so that he could see it clearly.
“This is it,” Zoe said firmly. “Thatcannot be a coincidence.”
For a long, sweet moment, shethought that Flynn was going to agree with her. That she had finally won himaround to her way of thinking, and he wasn’t going to argue with her anymore.That they could get on with the investigation the way she wanted.
And then he opened his mouth.
“It absolutely could be acoincidence,” he said. “And I’m sure it is.”
Zoe swung her head toward him. “Whatare you not seeing?” she demanded. “This is precisely the same symbol that wascarved into the victims’ torsos. And you do not think it is worth checking outat all?”
Flynn snorted. “What are you goingto do, interview every single member, every single student who walks by here,every single member of staff? It could be anyone who saw the sign and liked it.”
“It is much more likely to besomeone inside the fraternity, who sees it as part of their identity,” Zoeargued.
“Okay, fine,” Flynn said, rollinghis eyes. “So your theory is, what? New fraternity pledges are being given thetask of murdering people and then carving the frat’s symbol into their skin toprove that they did it?”
“No,” Zoe said, feeling defensiveat his disbelief. “Of course, that would be far-fetched. But I do think thatsomeone inside knows more about this.”
“Are we going to go after the wholemathematics department, too?” Flynn said. “You’re acting crazy. This is toomuch of a leap.”
Zoe stared at him, seeing red fora moment. It faded a little before she could do anything stupid, like hit him.Maybe the antidepressants were working, after all. “I am not crazy. What I amis the senior agent on this case, and I say we need to go inside and talk tothe frat members.”
Flynn hesitated, some of hiscockiness disappearing. For all that he clearly thought he was the best thingsince sliced bread, he was also fresh enough to give respect to rank. She had alot of years on him, and he knew it. He was also probably thinking that gettingin trouble with SAIC Maitland on his first case was a bad idea. Or so Zoehoped.
He looked up at the building in frontof them, angling his neck to get a good view through the car window. “But there’sclearly a party going on inside,” he said. Faint music was pumping out from thefrat house, reaching them even inside the car—some kind of insipid pop song.There was a couple walking hand in hand up to the doors even as they watched,carrying red Solo cups, empty by the look of them. Maybe going in to get atop-up. “We should at least wait until the morning.”
“Why?” Zoe demanded. “Whatdifference does it make?”
“There will be a lot of people inthere,” Flynn said. “Probably doing things they’re not supposed to be doing.What are we going to do, arrest the entire party?”
“If we have to,” Zoe saidstubbornly. “We stay on track. Look at the clues we need to link this together.Starting with the… whatever they call it. Whoever is in charge.”
“The president?”
“The president of the fraternity.”Zoe looked up at the house one last time herself and took a deep breath. Shetried not to think about what it would be like in there. The noise. The numberof people. The confusion. “We are here now. We go in.”
She reached for the handle of herdoor and got out of the car, pleased at least to see that Flynn followed suit.It had taken pulling rank on him to at last get him to follow her orders, butnow he was in line.
“I still think this is a bad idea,”Flynn muttered, falling behind Zoe as she strode toward the doors.
He didn’t have to think it was agood idea. He just had to do as he was told. Zoe took one last breath of thecold night air and reached for the doors, ready to burst in and fight throughthe numbers to get their man.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The music was like a real assaulton Zoe’s senses, battering her from every side. It was turned up so loud thatit didn’t just obliterate her hearing: she could feel it pulsing through thefloor and the walls when she touched them, throbbing all the way through herbody, the heavy bassline the only thing she could make out properly.
The numbers in her head kept up arunning tally of the beats, the musical signature, the throbbing, counting itout over and
