“Your client?” Detective Asher scoffs.
“I’ll be representing Ms. Ellis from this point forward,” the man announces. “Are you charging her with anything?”
Detective Asher looks like she wants nothing more than to unload her clip into the fancy lawyer’s chest, but after several moments of enraged silence, she shakes her head. “No. Ms. Ellis is not being charged at this time,” she grits out between her teeth.
“Then we’re done here. Ms. Ellis, come with me.” The man turns for the door, and after a few seconds where my brain scrambles to catch up to whatever the hell is happening, I push to my feet to follow him, shooting Asher a confused look.
She glowers back at me but doesn’t try to stop us.
Once we’re clear of the conference room, I blurt out, “I’m sorry, but who are you?”
The man stops and turns to face me. Digging into his jacket, he pulls out a fancy black business card and hands it to me.
“Chandler Branson,” he says. “Number’s on the card. If that detective so much as looks at you again, you call me, okay?”
I stare down at the shiny piece of cardstock for a few seconds before I glance back up and meet his pointed gaze. “Did Carley hire you? Did the school contact her or something? Is that why you’re here?”
Chandler shakes his head, his lips twitching in amusement. “Let’s just say, when Saint Angelle texts, I don’t hesitate to act. I’ll be in touch, Mallory. Remember, don’t talk to anyone without me.”
With that, he turns and walks down the hall, leaving me staring after him stunned and speechless.
Saint sent him?
Why?
How did he even know I was being questioned by the police?
In a daze, I make my way down the hall and out of the administration building. I need to find Saint and demand to know what’s going on. I need to know why he did this, and why he didn’t warn me Chandler was coming.
I make my way across campus to the dorm building he was relocated to after Angelle House burned down. I haven’t been to his new room yet, but I know exactly where it is. I couldn’t help myself when I first got back to campus after winter break, and drilled Loni until she spilled the beans and told me he was living on the top floor of Crawford Hall.
I make my way up to his floor and to his door. Without pausing, I raise my hand and knock. It strikes me that I don’t even know if he’s in his room right now, but the next second the door’s pulled open and he’s standing in the threshold.
He stares down at me, clearly surprised. His surprise morphs into irritation the very next second, however. “What do you want?”
“Why’d you hire me a lawyer?” I ask, getting right to the point.
He snorts. “Because you’re poor as fuck and can’t afford a decent one yourself.”
“Saint, I’m serious,” I hiss.
He rolls his eyes and turns to walk back into his room. He leaves the door open, though, which I interpret as an invitation to come in. Stepping inside, I freeze and gawk as I take in the space. Somehow, it’s more luxurious than his last one. Higher ceilings, wider windows and his kitchenette is twice the size of mine. He’s got brand new furniture and no doubt a closet full of new clothes, too.
It’s obvious he dropped several hundred thousand dollars to replace everything he lost in the fire, but that would only be a drop in the bucket for him.
I close the door behind me, and he turns to face me, leaning against his desk and arching his brow expectantly.
“Well?” he growls. “I’m waiting for my ass-chewing.”
I sigh. “I’m not here to chew your ass, but I need to know why you keep helping me? It’s getting ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous? You mean you don’t want one of the top criminal lawyers in LA to keep your stubborn ass out of jail?”
“That’s not…” I take a deep breath and anxiously race my palms up and down my uniform skirt. “Saint, I am appreciative, I just—”
“Do you think a birthday stripper is tacky?”
His question completely throws me off, and my head jerks back in shock.
“Wh-what?” I stutter. “What the hell are you talking about?”
He shrugs. “Birthday strippers. Tacky or no?”
“I’m so lost,” I confess, clenching handfuls of my skirt in frustration. “Why are we talking about birthday strippers?”
“Just trying to figure out some final details for my special day,” he explains with a cocky grin that gives my chest a brutal pulse. “It’s at the end of the month, you know. The twenty-eighth.”
“Oh.”
He tilts his head to one side as he skims his gaze over my body, from my black flats to the braid unraveling on my head. “You going to get me a present?”
I’m trying to have a serious conversation with him, and he’s talking about a goddamn birthday party? “Saint, can you be serious for one minute, please?”
“I am being serious, Mallory,” he says sarcastically, pushing away from his desk to prowl toward me. “Birthday strippers need to be hired with care.”
“Why do you keep helping me?” I demand, lifting my chin so that our eyes lock. “You’ve made it perfectly clear what you think of me, so why do you keep stepping in to save me?”
He stares down at me for several long, silent moments, and I’ve no idea what’s going on in his complicated, fucked-up mind.
“I just can’t seem to help myself,” he finally bites out, as if the words were being yanked from him against his will. His hand comes up to cup my chin as his mouth descends toward mine. “When it comes to you and these situations I’ve helped create, I find myself constantly pulled back in whenever I try to ignore you.”
Situations he helped create.
That’s not the answer I expected.
Not at all.
“Did you set the fire that burned down your old dorm?” I manage to whisper.
“No.” His tone is firm, his cold gaze intense.
I have one other question for him. I’ve asked it before, but I didn’t believe him then. “Did you have anything to do with Jon Eric’s disappearance?”
He smirks, as if he finds the question funny, but then he shakes his head. “No, I didn’t have anything to do with that shithead’s disappearance.”
I glare up at him, frantically trying to find something in his expression to tell me that he’s being honest with me. His expression is his usual one of arrogance and superiority, and I can’t read anything more in it.
I want to believe him. I honestly, really do.
I just don’t.
20
Jon Eric’s smug face stares back at me beneath the word “MISSING” in big black letters. I sigh and roll my eyes as I rip the poster from my door, and then all the others accompanying it. It’s the tenth day in a row I’ve come back to my dorm to find my door covered in these stupid posters.
Storming into my room, I smash them all up into a big crumpled ball and toss them into my trashcan, then dig out a box of chocolates Carley had sent me for Valentine’s day from my nightstand drawer.
The last few days have been shitty. I mean, most of my days at Angelview have been pretty shitty, to be honest, but this past week has been especially fucked.