18

Registering for classes was a lot easier when you didn’t care which classes you got. It was also a lot easier to be back on the Lineage campus when you didn’t feel as though it were a prison cell. And speaking of prison cells, I walked over to the stone room to see if that structure was still standing and it made me very happy to see that it was not. The entire little building had been removed and there was a patch of freshly seeded grass in the place where it had stood.

Maybe this woman was actually trying to make the school a better place.

But the question remained: who was she?

Lineage and Goldshire had both been handing down from generation to generation in the names of the original families. Technically, I should be the Headmistress of Lineage now that my parents and half-brother were dead. I was the last living member of that family bloodline. Not that I wanted it; I didn’t. I would be more than happy to leave this entire place behind again just as soon as I figured out who this woman was and whether or not she murdered David.

As soon as classes had started, I excused myself to go use the bathroom. The guys offered to come along but having a bathroom escort in college would draw almost as much attention to me as just announcing the fact that I was looking for my brother’s killer.

And on my way to the bathroom, I veered off into Layla’s office.

I was happy to see that both she and her secretary were in a meeting inside the conference room with a set of potential parents and they were having a rousing discussion about the incoming freshman needing a bit of extra attention and support. It allowed me to slip right into her office unnoticed. I was careful not to disturb anything in her office that she would find out of place. I carefully lifted up piles of paper and opened drawers. There wasn’t anything unusual about her office at all. But then, as I got ready to leave, I looked up at what was hanging above the doorframe.

A mask.

The same gold and silver mask that she had on at the Masquerade Gala.

She lied.

“Alright,” I said as I stormed into the conference room brandishing the mask in my hand. “Who are you?”

“Excuse me!” Layla’s secretary said as she glared at me in surprise. “We are in the middle of a meeting here. You need to leave at once!”

“No,” I said firmly. “Not until she tells me who she really is,” I said as I pointed to Layla.

I threw the mask down on top of the table in front of her and took a seat in one of the chairs.

“This is outrageous!” the secretary said. “I’m calling campus security.”

The prospective parents picked up the course schedule from the table and got up to leave. When the room was empty aside from the two of us, Layla spoke.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I want to know what happened to David,” I said.

“I already told you that I don’t know,” she said.

“Yes, well you also already told me that you weren’t at the Masquerade Gala and we both know that was a lie. Did you kill him?” I asked point-blank.

“No.”

Michael, Adam, and Rob came in just after she had answered me. I must have been gone from class too long and they got worried. They looked around to see what was going on and Adam saw the mask on the table.

“You were right?” he asked me. “Did this woman kill David?”

“I didn’t kill your friend,” she answered. “But I was there when he died.”

What?

“You were at our house?” Michael asked her in shock.

He looked as though he was bristling like a threatened dog.

“Yes,” she said coolly.

“How did you even know where we were?” Michael asked. “What the hell is going on here? Who are you?”

“I think maybe you should ask him,” Layla said as she pointed to Rob.

I felt all the blood rush out of my face as I watched Rob step up to shake Layla’s hand.

“It was worth a shot,” he said as he smiled at her. “I appreciate you trying to keep them all out of it.”

“My pleasure,” Layla answered. “That’s what friends are for.”

Michael and Adam flanked me tightly as we all waited on Rob’s explanation. And it needed to be a damn good one to keep my hands at my sides instead of wrapping around his fucking throat.

“What did you do?” I asked as anger brewed in the pit of my gut.

“Sorry,” he said. “It was for everyone’s own good and you were all safer if you didn’t know what was going on. Layla didn’t kill David, she’s a cop. She was my undercover partner. Well, I guess she kind of still is my partner now that the department is back on the up-and-up.”

“I’m so confused,” I said as I tried to wrap my head around what was going on.

Rob motioned for the other guys to sit down so that he could explain, and we all sat at the conference table together. Apparently, Layla’s secretary also wasn’t in on the news because Layla had to go out and calm her down and send back the campus security that the woman had called. I could tell that Michael and Adam were falling back into the same “fight or flight” mode that we had back when my father was still alive because they were protectively pressed up against either side of me so tightly that I was starting to sweat. It was amazing that the three of us could trust anyone anymore after all of the double-crossing and betrayals we had been through.

I really hoped that’s not what this was turning out to be now with Rob.

“Layla was sent here to investigate the campus at the same time that I was,” Rob said as he launched into an explanation. “Her job was to stick close to David and keep tabs on him while I investigated the drug operation. When we left the campus to go to Asheville, she was the contact that I still kept in touch with. It was Layla that wiped the car plates for us and told me about the charges being brought against David. When David ran and showed up at the cottage in Asheville, the school was left without leadership. He didn’t exactly have a committee of administrators to fall back on, either. David was running the school like a king. So, Layla stepped up in his absence to keep the campus from falling apart.”

“How did no one question that?” Michael interrupted. “Didn’t anyone want to know who you were to be able to just take over the school?”

“Not really,” Layla answered. “I had some records created and kind of just slid into the position unnoticed and unchallenged.”

Rob jumped back in. “The precinct was weeded out as soon as the investigation followed up on all of the organizations the drug circle had in its pocket, and the good cops that remained continued their search for David so that he would be brought to justice for what he had done.”

Rob paused and looked thoughtful for a moment before his eyes fell to me. “I was going to tell them that David was with us and turn him over to the police. But when I saw what you were able to do with him, and how he was able to turn his life around, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. So, I reached out to Layla again, and had her convince the precinct to drop the search on the grounds that David had simply just disappeared.”

I was getting really uneasy in my chair. I started to think this whole thing was a bad idea and that we should have just stayed in Asheville after all instead of coming back here.

“What does any of this have to do with David being killed?” I asked impatiently.

“I heard some whispers around campus,” Layla said.

My eyes snapped over to her. “What kind of whispers?”