17

Cathy comes up next to me and peers through the gap, but something inside me clenches and I can’t let her leave. I need her for five more seconds. I shut the door and cage her against the wood. “Come to my office for lunch.”

I fall into her warm coffee gaze when she stares up at me. Her fingers curl into my sweatshirt and her lips part. I think she’s going to say something but she rises on her toes and brings her lips to mine. “I’ll bring us something from the cafeteria.”

I want to feed her gourmet, but cafeteria food will have to do today. I capture her in my arms, sweep my tongue into her mouth and kiss her like I don’t want her to leave. It’s easy because I don’t. I make myself draw away and content myself with watching her slowly come back to her senses. Knowing she’s as affected as me almost makes parting from her easier.

Almost.

She offers a small smile before she steps outside, darting to the end of the corridor and through the outside exit. She pulls the hood over her head and disappears, taking the long, but solitary, way round back to her dorm.

I make myself wait ten minutes before I force my way across campus to Marty’s office beneath the guise of taking my morning jog. Gods knows why the man is here so early. It’s not like he’s beating the pathways himself.

I pass his admin assistant’s empty desk, knock on his door and step inside without waiting for his usual ‘enter’. The man doesn’t deserve my respect. He sits behind his desk, computer open.

“You messaged?” I hang back instead of sitting in one of the smaller chairs this side of his pretentious desk. I don’t care to get too close to him today.

As I suspected, Marty opens with his usual concerns about his laundered money. “I’m looking through my accounts, but I don’t see Fowler’s donation distributed anywhere.”

I force myself not to roll my eyes. If the guy was more intelligent, he wouldn’t need someone like me to wash his money. “I can’t just push that amount of money through the usual channels without an alarm going off somewhere, so I’ve opened another shell company. The university is the brand-new owner of a division for private mentorship tuition. I’m waiting for the official documents to come back. I’ll need to set up a fake online presence to legitimize it before I even start, otherwise we risk being discovered.”

“You mean, you risk being discovered.” Marty’s pale blue eyes pin me.

He’s holding the same threat over me. He goes down. I go down. I place my hands on my hips and stare while I try to ignore the bile swishing around in my stomach. “When everything is set up, I’ll distribute the money through a series of offshore accounts and crypto currency exchanges. That will also take time, but rest assured it’ll end up in your Swiss account.”

Like every other fund I’ve stolen on his behalf.

“In the meantime, the other investment businesses I’ve set up are generating significant interest returns. I’ll withdraw the dividends when they’re available and begin the process of sliding them into your accounts.”

Marty runs his thumb over his bottom lip and fails to hide the greed in his eyes. “Good. Good.”

I could tell him anything, and he’d agree. He has no clue how I’m doing this. All he sees are the end figures in his account. Not the time or complexity of how the funds get there. Unfortunately, I’m making him a lot of money in the process.

The best I can hope for is his early retirement. He can roast his bloated carcass on some beach on the other side of the world for all I care. I hear the Australian beaches in Queensland have crocodiles. And lethal jellyfish. In fact, now that I think of it, he should go there. There’s a lot of lethal wildlife over there.

“Have you processed my dissertation request?” I hate asking anything of him. It’s no surprise when he steeples his fingers and peers at me over the top.

“Why would you want to write a dissertation with an undergrad?” he says.

I fire off the only arguments he’ll listen to. “She’s a star student. It’ll look good for the university to have undergrads working on dissertations. Once the paper is published, it’ll drive more ambitious students here. Which will be good for the university.”

“You’re up for a lot of extra work,” he says. “A lot of extra close contact hours. Do I need to be worried, Black? You do have a track record.”

I grind my teeth. My track record was a week spent with Emmerson while we worked out if we still felt that same way about each other. I take a moment and swallow the real words I want to spit out. “Catherine Evans is not Emmerson. She’s highly intelligent and will make a good ambassador for the university. Besides, I was looking for another paper to publish to my name. Surely the university won’t pass on the opportunity for a professor to build a portfolio to promote the faculty in which they work.”

I don’t pass it off as a question. I put the thought in his head. He settles back in his chair, pretending to consider it and I press my most important point. “More published dissertations mean more students. And more donations.” I swallow bile when greed lights his eyes. He flicks his hand as though that needn’t be said. “Talking about donations, I have a lead on the Fowler girl.”

He taps his computer and turns the laptop around where a blurry photo of a gaggle of private school girls fills the screen. None are familiar, although I recognize the uniform as exclusive. That, at least, makes sense.

“Which girl is she?” I ask, when it’s not immediately apparent.

“This one.” Marty points to a girl walking behind the group, hugging books to her chest. It’s too blurry to make anything out at all.

“I can’t recognize her from that.”

“You telling me you don’t know your own students? She’s in your class,” Marty says.

“Which year level? I have over two thousand students in my classes.” On Tuesdays I fill one of the biggest lecture theatres in the university. I’m about to offer a smartass comment on asking students to replicate the photo but I keep my mouth shut. I don’t actually want to find this girl.

“That’s not my job to find out,” Marty says, always passing the buck when he doesn’t have the answer.

“How did you even get that photo?” I ask. The subject matter alone, not even taking into account that no one has given consent for him to have this photo of underage school girls, is wrong on so many levels.

“I have my ways,” he says.

He’s probably trawled the web for Fowler’s daughter. It’s a minor miracle he found anything. I’m sure a man like Dominic Fowler has the resources and the determination to clean whatever he wants off the web. I wish I was here with anyone other than this scum.

“If that’s all?” I say.

He waves his hand, dismissing me. My jaw aches when I open his office door. “Oh, and don’t make me wait for you so long when I call you next time.”

All I can do is nod before I shut the door behind me. I make my way past the still-empty admin’s desk but before I can draw in a cleansing breath, a figure steps in my path. It takes a split second to recognize him and I come to an abrupt stop.

“Mr. Adam. The dean is in his office. You can probably see him before his first appointment.” The petty part of me wants to send Chris Adam to Marty Sotheby just to disrupt his morning as he’s done to mine. The other part wants to haul the man into the bushes and beat the truth out of him.

Chris steps back. He’s looking like the all-American jock this early in the morning while I smell like sex. At least I hope I do. I’m being petty again, but I’m in a petty mood right now.

“I’m not here for the dean,” Chris says. He looks over his shoulder and I eye the recent professional shade he’s had done. The hair product that makes his waves artfully tossed. I note his expensive jacket, jeans and the brand of shoes on his feet. All new. He doesn’t strike me as a student for whom Mom and Pop saved all their lives to send to university. Then again, he’s here at the bequest of Dominic Fowler.

Dominic Fowler.

Blue Sky Empire.

Dominic’s daughter on campus.

Ice runs through my veins when I make a connection. He could probably tell me who Catherine Fowler is. And I…I can’t ask him to tell me. I can’t do that to the poor girl. Not when she’ll be set up through the likes of Chris Adam and Marty Sotheby. The girl I saw in the photo doesn’t deserve anything like that.

A stray through flickers into my mind. That my Cathy is the Catherine Fowler, but I’ve seen my fair of women who come from that kind of money through the college over the years. My Cathy dresses in old jeans and a sweatshirt most of the time. She doesn’t have the look about her. She’s not entitled. She’s not lavish. She doesn’t flaunt anything. She doesn’t go anywhere except to the library to study. She lives in the student dorm. I know she definitely skips meals she doesn’t think she can afford. I wipe the thought away as inconsequential.

“Who are you here for?” My mouth goes dry when another realization slams into me. I hope he hasn’t seen me with Cathy. My mind spins, thinking of when we’ve been together. The many places we’ve flaunted our relationship where anyone could walk in on us.

“I was hoping you knew where Cathyan…Cathy Evans is staying?” he asks.

“Why do you want to know? The university isn’t in the habit of telling men where women sleep.”

My voice is a low growl. Chris’s eyes flare before he collects himself. “It’s…not like that.”

“Then what is it like, Mr. Adam?”

He shuffles his feet, but something about the way he stands doesn’t ring true. It’s like he’s trying to be nervous, but it’s only a show. And I like that even less. “Look, I didn’t know who else to ask but…this is a very personal issue, Professor.”

I glance around, but it is still early enough that there’s only a few stragglers making their way to the university cafeteria. “What is?”

His pupils narrow until they’re small artificial dots when he trains them back on me. I never thought my life and career would end on a cold gray morning like this. But it suits, I guess. I brace for what I know is coming. “Well, she…she owes me money. A lot, actually. And I was hoping you could help me get it from her.”

“She owes you money?” He doesn’t look like he’s struggling. My defenses are at an all-time high now. “Why did you think I can help with that?”

“You’ve said it yourself. You’re an official of the university. I know I can come to you if I’m being harassed by other students, and I feel that money owed is harassment. Especially if the student involved is in your class. It’s your job to look after students in their time of need, and I’m a student in a time of need.”

I can tell Chris Adam has never known a time of need. He’s a man who always looks after himself. “How much does she owe you?” I ask.

“Five thousand. Normally I’d wait, but the move here has cleaned me out. Blue Sky may have sent me here, but I still have to pay for books and everything else,” he says.

I weigh him up. I see the lie on his face, but he keeps eye contact like he really does believe she owes him money. “That’s a big amount. She can’t afford that.”

Chris scoffs. “Believe me. She can.”

He’s not going to let up. Ultimately there’s a reason Cathy is avoiding him. I know there’s more to this story, and I will get that, but from the right source. She said she would tell me when the time is right and I believe her. All that matters now is giving us space so she can, and that means I’ll get Chris off her back.

I’ll help her in any way I can. Even if that involves stepping over a very thick, very red line. “Give me your bank details. I’ll have the amount transferred into your bank account by the end of the day. After that, you stay away from Cathy Evans.”

Chris stares at me and his mouth curves into a wide grin. “Deal. You pay me and Cathy Evans will never see me again.”