“You see—what’s your name?”

“Rebecca Knox.”

“Have we met before?” he asks.

Rebecca isn’t sure what to say. “I kind of went to a party at your house a couple of years ago.”

“Kind of? How can you ‘kind of’ attend a party?”

“Well, I was there. Yes. My friend invited me.”

“You see, Rebecca Knox, Dr. Nye has been having some personal issues for a few years now. I’m sure you’ve heard about them.”

“I guess I know about his wife dying and stuff.”

“Right. Everyone seems to know about his new book, the one that I guess you can buy in some of the finer retail establishments and grocery stores all over Gatewood. The one he toiled laboriously on for . . . what? Three weeks or so before he published it? I thought it sounded familiar when he discussed it at the library, but most of those thrillers sound the same. I don’t read them. Well, things have been kind of unstable for our friend Connor for a while. And now he finds himself in the middle of something that doesn’t look good at all. I’m not really at liberty to say more than I already have.”

Hoffman remains slightly reclined in his chair, his thumbs moving over and over each other in tiny loops. Rebecca tries to make up her mind about him. He seems to talk just to hear himself talk. She wonders how much more interesting he would be if he talked about something relevant to her.

“Okay,” she says. “I see. So can Dr. Nye still direct my thesis?”

“Oh, no. He won’t be working with any students anymore. Not at all. He’s already faced the wrong kind of scrutiny once. And this latest incident isn’t going to look any good either.”

“There was an incident?” Rebecca asks.

“Do you remember Madeline O’Brien?” Hoffman asks.

A sizzle of electricity shoots up Rebecca’s spine. She stiffens in the hard wooden seat. “I know who that is.”

“Well, our friend Dr. Nye was the last person to see Madeline alive. Did you know that? This is all a matter of public record, of course. Not that you students follow the news. But it never looks good to be the last person to see someone alive.”

Rebecca flashes to Madeline—if that was actually her—in the back of the library. Is Rebecca now the last one to have seen Madeline?

Or was Nye right—Rebecca was just seeing what she wanted to see?

“And now,” Hoffman says, “well, let’s just say . . . the wicket’s getting stickier.”