What else should go on it? I wondered. It would be a miracle if Ivy let me top it with everything I usually did. Deciding not to even attempt the cashews, I pulled out the mundane toppings. “Peppers,” I muttered. “Mushrooms.” I glanced at Ivy. She looked like a meat kind of a gal. “Bacon left from breakfast.”

The marker squeaked as Ivy drew a purple line from the campus to the Hollow’s more hazardous strip of nightclubs and bars by the riverfront. “So,” she drawled. “Are you going to tell me what’s bothering you, or am I going to have to order pizza in after you burn that one?”

I put the pepper in the sink and leaned against the counter. “Trent runs biodrugs,” I said, hearing the ugliness anew as I said it. “If he knew I was going to try and tag him with that, he’d kill me quicker than the I.S.”

“But he doesn’t.” Ivy drew another line. “All he knows is you think he runs Brimstone and had his secretary murdered. If he was worried, he wouldn’t have offered you that job.”

“Job?” I said, turning my back to her as I washed the pepper. “It’s in the South Seas—running his Brimstone plantations, no doubt. He wants me out of the way, that’s all.”

“How about that,” she said as she capped her pen by pounding it on the table. Startled, I spun, flinging drops of water everywhere. “He thinks you’re a threat,” she finished, making a show of brushing away the water I had accidentally hit her with.

I gave her a sheepish smile, hoping she couldn’t tell she had me on edge. “I hadn’t thought about it that way,” I said.

Ivy went back to her map, frowning as she dabbed at the stains the water had made on her crisp lines. “Give me some time to check around,” she said in a preoccupied voice. “If we can get ahold of his financial records and a few of his buyers, we can find a paper trail. But I still say it’s just Brimstone.”

I yanked open the fridge for the Parmesan and mozzarella. If Trent didn’t run biodrugs, then I was a pixy princess. There was a clatter as Ivy tossed one of her markers into the cup beside her monitor. My back was to her, and the noise startled me.

“Just because he has a drawer full of discs labeled with diseases once helped by biodrugs doesn’t mean he’s a drug lord,” Ivy said, throwing another. “Maybe they’re client lists. The man is big into philanthropy. Keeps half a dozen country hospitals running alone with his donations.”

“Maybe,” I said, unconvinced. I knew about Trent’s generous contributions. Last fall he had been auctioned off in Cincinnati’s For the Children charity for more money than I used to make in a year. Personally, I thought his efforts were a publicity front. The man was dirt.

“Besides,” Ivy said as she leaned back in her chair and tossed another one of her markers into the cup in an unreal show of hand-eye coordination. “Why would he be running biodrugs? The man is independently wealthy. He doesn’t need any more money. People are motivated by three things, Rachel. Love …” A red marker clattered in with the rest. “Revenge …” A black one landed next to it. “And power,” she finished, tossing in a green one. “Trent has enough money to buy all three.”