Truth be told, part of her was a little envious of Rachel's free spirit. While Savannah had fretted and worried the night away, Rachel was probably having a great time with Professor Keaton. Correction: Bill, she amended with a roll of her eyes, trying not to imagine her roommate gasping out Professor Keaton's name in the throes of passion.
God, how she was going to get through class today without the involuntary--totally unwanted--mental picture of the pair of them naked together?
Savannah rounded the corner onto the university campus on Commonwealth Avenue, still considering the potential awkwardness of it all when the sight of police cruisers and a parked ambulance with its lights flashing in front of the Art History building stopped her short. A pair of reporters and a camera crew jumped out of a news van to push their way through a gathering crowd outside.
What on earth...?
She hurried over, a heavy dread rising in her throat. "What's going on?" she asked a fellow student toward the rear of the onlookers.
"Someone attacked one of the Art History profs in his office late last night. Sounds like he's in real bad shape."
"At least he's alive," someone else added. "More than you can say for the student who was with him."
Savannah's heart sank to her stomach, as cold as a stone. "A student?" No, not Rachel. It couldn't be. "Who is it?"
The reply came from another person nearby. "Some chick in his freshman Antiquities class. Rumor is they were engaged in a little extracurricular activity up in his office when the shit went down."
Savannah's feet were moving underneath her, carrying her toward the building entrance, before she even realized she was in motion. She ran inside, dodging the cops and university officials trying to keep the growing crowd outside and under control.
"Miss, no one's allowed in the building right now," one of the police officers called to her as she dashed for the stairwell. She ignored the command, racing as fast as she could up the three flights of steps and down the corridor toward Professor Keaton's office.
The news crew she saw arrive a few minutes ago hovered in the hallway, cameras rolling as the police and paramedics worked just inside the open door. As she drew nearer, a stretcher was wheeled out into the corridor with a patient being administered to by one of the ambulance attendants.
Professor Keaton lay unconscious as they pushed his gurney toward the elevators, his face and neck covered in blood, his skin bone-white above the blanket that covered him up to his chin. Savannah stood there, immobile with shock, as Keaton was whisked off to the hospital.
"Coming through!" a gruff Boston accent shouted from behind her. She jolted back to attention, and took a step aside as another gurney was pushed out of the professor's office.
There were no medics attending this patient. No urgency in the way the emergency responders wheeled the stretcher into the hallway and began an unrushed march toward the second bank of elevators. Savannah brought her hand up over her mouth to hold back the choked cry that bubbled in her throat.
Oh, Rachel. No.
Her petite body was draped completely in a sheet mottled with dark red stains. One of her arms had slid out from under the cover to hang limply over the side of the gurney. Savannah stared in mute grief, unable to tear her gaze away from that lifeless hand and the dozen-plus bangle bracelets gathered at Rachel's wrist, sticky with her blood.
Reeling in disbelief and horror, Savannah stumbled into the professor's office, her stomach folding in on itself.
"Outta here now, everybody!" one of the police detectives working inside ordered. He put a hand on Savannah's shoulder as she slumped forward and held her midsection, trying not to lose her breakfast. "Miss, you need to leave now. This is a crime scene."
"She was my roommate," Savannah murmured, tears choking her. Nausea rose at the sight of the blood that sprayed the wall near Professor Keaton's desk and sofa. "Why would someone do this? Why would they kill her?"
"That's what we're trying to find out here," the cop said, his voice taking on a more sympathetic tone. "I'm sorry about your friend, but you're gonna have to let us do our work now. I'd like to talk to you about when you last saw your roommate, so please wait outside."
As he spoke, the news crew seemed to think it was the opportune time to crowd in with their camera. The reporter inserted himself between Savannah and the officer, shoving his microphone at the detective. "Do you have any indication of what happened in here? Was it a random break-in? Robbery? Or some kind of personal attack? Should the campus be concerned for the safety of its students and faculty?"
The cop narrowed his eyes on the vulture with the mic and heaved an annoyed sigh. "Right now, we have no reason to believe anyone else is in danger. There are no signs of forced entry, nor any obvious evidence of a struggle beyond what occurred here in this office. Although it doesn't appear anything was stolen, we can't rule out theft as a motive until we've had a chance to fully review and process the scene...."
Savannah couldn't listen to any more. She drifted out of Keaton's office and into the adjacent study lab where she, Rachel and the other students had been working less than twenty-four hours ago. She dropped into a chair at one of the work tables, feeling outside her own body as the discussion of Rachel's murder and Professor Keaton's narrow escape continued in the blood-splattered office.
Savannah's gaze roamed aimlessly over the reference materials stacked on the lab tables, then over toward the archive storage room. The door was wide open, but no cops or university officials were inside.>While Rio wrapped up his recon report, Gideon executed a quick binary code program, using the flip toggles to load the instructions into the processor. The machine's capacity was limited, its functions even more so, but the technology of it all fascinated him and his mind was forever thirsty for new knowledge, no matter the subject.
"Good work, everyone," Lucan said, as the meeting started to wrap up. He glanced at Tegan, the big, tawny-haired warrior at the opposite end of the table. "If Rio's intel shakes out, we could be looking at a nest of upwards of a dozen suckheads. Gonna need all hands on deck down there tonight to clear the place out."
Tegan stared for a moment, green eyes as hard as gemstones. "You want me to go in, take the nest out, say so. It'll be done. But you know I work alone."
Lucan glowered back, anger flashing amber in the cool gray of his gaze. "You clear the nest, but you do it with backup. You got a death wish, deal with it on your own time."
For several long moments, the war room held an uneasy silence. Tegan's mouth twisted, his lips parting to bare just the tips of his fangs. He growled low in his throat, but he didn't escalate the power struggle any further. Good thing, because God knew if the two Gen One warriors ever went at each other in a true contest, there would be no easy victor.
Like the rest of the warriors gathered around the table, Gideon knew about the bad blood between Lucan and Tegan. It centered on a female--Tegan's long-dead Breedmate, Sorcha, who'd been taken from him back in the Order's early days. Tegan lost her first, tragically, to an enemy who turned her Minion and left her worse than dead. But it was by Lucan's hand that Sorcha perished, an act of mercy for which Tegan might never forgive him.