“Call my cell if you need anything,” Jay threw after her, rattling off his number. Kristi lifted an arm but didn’t turn around as she headed toward the library. From there, she cut to the gate near her apartment house, aware that she was memorizing his number against her better judgment. She didn’t need Jay in her life.

She didn’t look behind her, but heard the sound of a truck’s engine cough, then catch. Good. She’d cleared the air with Jay and she was okay with it.

A second later, she heard the pickup drive out of the lot and she was on her way, hurrying across the dark campus, feeling the wind pluck at her hair.

There were a few other students out, but not many, and the shadows between the security lamps were thick and gloomy, seeming to shift with the rattling of the branches and the turn of the wind. The rain had stopped sometime during the past three hours, but the smell of damp earth was heavy in the air, the grass covered in dewy drops that shimmered in the moonlight.

Kristi angled toward the other side of the campus, to the gate near her apartment building. She cut behind Wagner House and saw a movement…something out of the ordinary. Red flags went up in her mind and she flipped open the flap of her purse, her hand sliding into the pocket where she kept her pepper spray.

Don’t be silly, she told herself, it’s probably just a dog.

But she felt nervous sweat gather at the base of her spine. It wasn’t so much what she could see as what she couldn’t. She moved rapidly, on the alert, her pepper-spray canister clutched tight in her fist. She hated being a wimp. Hated it. She’d worked hard to be observant, to pay attention to her surroundings, to trust her feelings, and she’d been trained in self-defense so that she wouldn’t have to rely on anyone but herself.

But there was no reason to be foolhardy.

She thought of the weird sensation she’d gotten from the dark car rolling down the street before class, and the feeling every so often that she was being observed, watched by unseen eyes.

The result of all her research on the missing girls. The disturbing conversations she’d had with their families—people who truly didn’t care—were getting into her psyche.

She studied the shadowy shrubbery as she rounded a corner and cut across the quad. A person in a dark hooded jacket was walking in her direction. Kristi tensed, her muscles suddenly tight, her senses honed on the approaching figure.

Until she realized the person approaching her was a woman. A slight woman.

Kristi let out her breath as they passed. She caught a glimpse of a face in the dark hood and recognized Ariel, who, upon spying Kristi, veered a step away.