“No. We were finished. Come on in. Cate, I’ll see you around.”

She eased past the other student, retrieved her coat from her locker, and set out for the dorm, a sense of unease tingling through her.

It might behoove County to dig deeper on Evans, beef up the cursory intel they had. The man may not have done anything overtly offensive in either of their encounters, but he exuded a definite creep factor.

And her roommate knew more about that than she was telling.

She pulled out her access card and held it up to the scanner. The door to the dorm clicked open, and she entered.

The challenge was getting the reticent girl to talk. Up to this point they’d barely exchanged a dozen sentences—and not for lack of trying on her part.

Kayla was at her desk when Cate entered their room, head bent over a book. She didn’t greet her or even acknowledge her presence.

Initiating a productive conversation was going to require finesse.

Cate passed behind her, mulling over possible approaches as she dumped her backpack on the bench under the window that separated their domains . . . and chipped her nail polish in the process.

Well, shoot.

She examined the damaged polish.

It had taken forever to do this unaccustomed glitter job. Now she’d have to—

Wait.

Nail polish.

Could that be her entrée?

Kayla had admired her nails on Sunday—one of the few unsolicited comments she’d offered.

It was worth a try.

Cate pulled a storage container from under her bed, dug through it for the nail supplies she’d stocked up on in preparation for her role, and retrieved the small kit she’d assembled.

“I hate it when nail polish chips, don’t you?”

Kayla’s gaze flicked to her . . . then to her own unvarnished nails. “I don’t use polish.”

“Why not?”

“My nails are too short.”

“Mine used to be too—but they get longer if you use polish.” Cate extracted the bottle of clear topcoat, the glitter polish, and a makeup sponge from the kit for her repair job and set them on her bed. “You want to try mine?”

Silence.

She looked over at Kayla.

The girl was watching her, expression guarded.

“What?” Cate lifted her hands, palms up.

“You’d let me use your nail polish?”

“Sure. Why not?”

Kayla studied her. “You’re different than my other roommates.”

“Yeah? How?”

“Slumming with a Black girl was beneath them. They didn’t want to breathe the same air I did, let alone allow me to touch anything of theirs.”

Cate’s heart contracted.

Hard as Kayla tried to affect indifference, there was a world of hurt—and resentment—in her eyes.

But it hadn’t yet congealed into hate, the way it had with too many of the people she ran into on the street every day in the course of doing her job.

For Kayla, there was hope.