She sighed. “I heard things in hallways and classrooms, things about how you would be headmistress once David was finally gone and out of the way. I tried to figure out who was saying those things, but every time I thought I caught someone talking about it, I would turn the corner and there would be no one there. I tried to call Rob to warn him about the things that I was hearing but the reception in the mountains kept dropping his call for some reason. I finally just got in my car and drove up there to tell him. I arrived in Asheville early in the morning just after sunrise and since I was trying to keep a low profile, I went into your backyard to try calling Rob on my cell phone again, and that’s when I saw David lying in the garden. Then you came out and I ran so that I wouldn’t blow my cover. I called Rob from just down the road and told him what had happened. But I swear to you, I didn’t kill your friend.”

“Why didn’t you tell us about any of this?” I asked Rob angrily.

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” he said with a shrug. And I was definitely getting tired of the fucking nonchalant shrugs. “We still didn’t know who killed David and all it would have done was blow Layla’s cover. You were hell-bent on coming out here anyway, so I figured I’d just let you find out on your own.”

“That’s messed up, man,” Adam said to him. “We trusted you.”

“And I haven’t done anything to betray your trust,” Rob said.

“How can you say that?” I shouted as I stood to my feet. “You hid information from us and lied to us. Of course, you betrayed our trust!”

I was so mad. We weren’t any closer to finding David’s killer and now I couldn’t bring myself to trust Rob. Why were people constantly letting me down?

“Lisette, please,” Rob said as he reached forward to touch my hand.

Michael immediately stood up and put his body between us.

And that’s when Layla interjected again, making my want to rip her damn vocal box out of her fucking throat. “Well, I can see that this situation is about to get a lot more dramatic than I want to be involved in. Lisette, I can’t stay here now that my cover is blown. I’ve pissed a lot of people off that we put behind bars for having connections to your brother’s drug trafficking operation. You need to take over as Headmistress now.”

“Me?” I asked in shock.

“Yep,” Layla said. “You’re the rightful person who is next in line to take charge of the school. Plus, there are obviously people that are so insistent on you being Headmistress that they were willing to commit murder in order to make sure it happened.”

“Doesn’t that make this a really dangerous situation for Lisette to stay in here then?” Adam asked.

“Yes, it does. But it seems that dangerous situations seem to follow you guys anyway. Besides, you’ll still have Rob here to help keep you safe.”

I made a huffing sound at that notion. I no longer trusted him at all. For all I cared, he could crawl back into the hole he seeped out of.

Layla headed toward the door and Rob got up to walk her out as she left.

“We aren’t staying here,” Michael said as soon as the three of us were alone in the room. “It’s not safe for you here.”

I groaned. “Apparently, Layla is right about one thing, though: it’s not safe for me anywhere.”

Michael huffed. “Yeah, but please tell me that you’re not considering taking over as Headmistress. Not only would that mean we wouldn’t be going back to Asheville and to our beautiful sanctuary home where you were so happy, but it also means that you would be glaringly out in the public eye. If anyone wanted to target you, they wouldn’t even have to look hard to do it,” Michael said as he pleaded with me to get up and leave with them back to Asheville now.

Adam cleared his throat. “Okay, I already know this idea is not going to go over well with you. Hell, I don’t think it’s even going to go over well with me,” he said as he turned to Michael.

“Jesus don’t even say it,” Michael said as he shook his head.

Adam clicked his tongue. “Maybe Lisette would be safest if she was in the public eye.”

“Adam are you even being serious right now?” Michael was clearly getting agitated. “You want to bring her back on this campus, which we all were quite literally DYING to get away from, and stay here with Rob, who is obviously a double-crossing piece of shit. You want to abandon the great thing that we had started in Asheville for this? For Lineage Academy? You’ve lost your mind.”

“I agree with Adam,” Rob said as he came back into the room.

“Of course, you do,” Michael snapped as he rolled his eyes. “Your opinion doesn’t matter anymore anyways. You’re not Julian.”

The mention of his name hurt me as if a knife was being buried into my chest. My chest hiccupped with a sob that I refused to shed as Michael knelt down in front of me and looked in my eyes.

Yet as much as I hated to admit it, Adam had a point.

“Lisette,” Michael said as he took my hands in his, “Julian wanted to take you to Asheville and that is where you have been more happy than I have ever seen you. You had peace there for a time and we can have peace there again. Choose me and let me take you back there. Leave all this bullshit behind for good…please.”

The other two men watched and waited for my reaction and my answer. But, I couldn’t think straight. I needed some air.

“I’m going to take a walk,” I said as I stood up.

Michael looked immediately distressed. “Lisette, please. I’ll get on my god damn knees and beg you if I have to.”

I waved my hand in the air mindlessly. “I just need to clear my head.”

“Then, I’ll come with you,” he said.

“No, I want to go alone.”

“Lisette it might not be safe to—”

“I want to be alone for a few minutes,” I said as I interrupted Michael and pushed past Rob to get out the door.

It was the middle of the day and the campus was filled with students going back and forth to class. It was as safe as anywhere else and all of the threats that I knew of were either dead or in jail.

I walked across the campus all the way to the edge of the Lineage tree line. Then I crossed over to Goldshire and walked that campus as well. It had been a long time since I was back at Goldshire. So long that it felt like it was a lifetime ago. Funny how I always thought my family’s heritage tied me to Goldshire and not Lineage.

“Headmistress,” I said to myself aloud as I walked. There would have been a time where that sounded like something I would have wanted. That was before I just wanted to run away and hide from it all.

Still, there was something about the idea that came full circle. It looked like Layla had done a good job of cleaning up the campus. Everything was functioning smoothly, all aspects of the treachery that had plagued the campus before had been removed. The colleges had been separated into their own entities again and the students seemed happy and content. Even the stone room had been taken away. What if there was a reason that this all happened the way that it did? What if my mother was right yet again and the universe did work in mysterious ways, with this too? I wondered if being at Lineage wouldn’t feel like being trapped anymore if I was the one running it.

Perhaps this was the ultimate way that I could finally honor everyone that I had lost.

My mother.

Julian.

David.

For a moment I walked without direction and daydreamed about what I could do if I was Headmistress and what I could build the college into. I could build a stargazing observatory in Julian’s name, and plant gardens in David’s memory. I could even start a new teen runaway program that linked to the halfway house, something that not only gave homeless teens a place to sleep, but also a place to learn.

The more I thought about it the more excited I became. I didn’t want to abandon our cottage in Asheville—that was absolutely where I wanted to live. And I wouldn’t break the promise that I had made to the guys. I promised them that if they came back here with me, that I would choose one of them to bring back to Asheville with me for good, and I very much intended to keep that promise. But I started to think that I could do this for a year first. Just one year to make all of the changes and differences that would help people and put into place the things that mom, and Julian, and David would have been happy to see.

Yet, there was some sort of weirdness going on with whatever whispers Layla had heard. And I still needed to figure out who had killed David and why, and what the one-word suicide note had meant. But I stood a better chance of figuring all of that out from here as well.

I also thought that Adam was right.

I didn’t need to hide in the shadows in order to stay safe for the rest of my life. I could hide right here in plain sight out in the open. If anything happened to me, everyone would see it. And by the time I had crossed back over to the Lineage campus, I had already made up my mind.

I think all three guys could tell it too, when I walked back in through the door.