The Professor

by Alexandria Clarke

  “And our other options?” prompted Wes.

  “Either the one into the main hall or the one into the art room, though they’re the less pleasant options.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because to get to either one, you have to drop into the sewer system.”

  “Ugh,” I said with a grimace. To my right, Natasha wrinkled her nose.

  “That might work for us,” said Henry. His brow furrowed, and I could almost see the gears turning in his head as he contemplated strategies. “We could get underground off campus and work our way in.”

  “What about the one that leads into the dining room?” asked Wes.

  “Good luck with that one,” said Holden. “The entrance is in the same building as the Morrigan’s office. Research Hall.”

  “Sewer system it is then,” said Wes. He stood up, his Glock hanging limply in his hand. Holden breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Don’t think you’re off the hook, buddy,” said Wes. “You’re going to help us plan this out step-by-step, and if anything goes wrong, I’m coming back here for your ass.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” said Holden. “The Morrigan will kill you if she finds out what you’ve done.”

  “Which is why she won’t find out until the police come for her with handcuffs,” replied Wes. He looked up at Henry. “Splitting up might be our best bet. Two and two? Nicole and I can go through one entrance. You and Natasha could go through the other. That way, if one pair gets caught, the other has a fair shot of making it through.”

  “I won’t go back to Waverly University,” announced Natasha. We all turned to look at her. She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t. It’s too much for me, and I probably wouldn’t do you much good anyway.”

  Henry took his wife around the waist, tugging her close. “In all honesty, I never expected you to go,” he said. “I know how hard this must be for you, dredging up all these memories from the past. You stay here. Keep an eye on Mr. Hastings. Wes and I will go to campus.”

  “And me,” I said. When Henry glared at me, I added, “I’m the one who knows the campus and the clubhouse best.”

  Wes nodded. “We need Nicole.”

  “Fine,” conceded Henry. He led Natasha from the barn, calling over his shoulder. “Let’s get going. We’re doing this tonight.”

  Lauren had rarely ever taken a meeting with Catherine Flynn in the actual office that had been assigned to her aunt when Flynn had begun working as the dean of Waverly’s history department. Flynn had always been adamant about keeping society business separate from her position at Waverly, lest the less fortunate of the Waverly faculty catch wind of the Raptors’ existence. Even though Lauren had fully expected to be confronted about the details of Holden’s kidnapping, she had not expected to sit across from her aunt at the large mahogany desk as if she were a student in need of her dean’s assistance.

  Outside the triptych of windows behind Flynn’s desk, night had fallen. Waverly University was dark and cold. Though Olivia and Lauren had reported Holden’s kidnapping as soon as they returned to campus, Flynn had not been available to address it until later that evening. According to the other Raptors, Flynn had spent the day planning her brother’s funeral and catching up on university business. Lauren found it odd that Flynn had prioritized the university over the Raptors. Maybe the Morrigan was more worried about discovery than Lauren originally thought.

  Flynn had spoken to Olivia first, gathering a first-hand account of what had happened. Lauren had brushed by Olivia as they traded places in Flynn’s office. Lauren hoped that Olivia hadn’t embellished. Otherwise, it would be much harder for Lauren to feign ignorance. She felt her aunt’s cold, dark eyes roving over her, no doubt searching for signs of guilt.

  “So let me get this straight,” Flynn began. She folded her hands together and leaned toward Lauren over the desk. “The very first day I assign Olivia and Holden to watch over you, Holden is kidnapped in broad daylight.”

  “If you think I had anything to do with this, I can assure you that you’re mistaken,” replied Lauren, keeping her voice firm and steady. “First of all, when would I have had the time to plan it? At least one or more of the Raptors has been with me at all times since last night.”

  “You cannot expect me to believe that this could happen without you being in contact with Nicole Costello,” countered Flynn.

  “You confiscated my burner phone,” Lauren pointed out. “That was the only way Nicole could have contacted me. Besides, whoever kidnapped Holden was definitely a man. Not Nicole.”

  “A man you claim you didn’t recognize.”

  “Never seen him before in my life.”

  Flynn rummaged through the drawer of her desk. She located a photograph and turned it around to show Lauren. “You remember this picture, right? If I recall correctly, you were the one who downloaded it from Nicole Costello’s personal computer, along with several other similar ones.”

  It was a picture of Nicole and Wes together, one that wasn’t entirely appropriate to be seen by the general public. It was true that Lauren had hacked into Nicole’s computer to retrieve it when she was still attempting to fool the Raptors into thinking that she was loyal to their cause. Then, she hadn’t bothered to memorize the outline of Wes’s face, but now, it was clear that the bruised man who had kidnapped Holden was Nicole’s boyfriend.

  “Was this the man who took Holden?” prompted Flynn, flicking the photograph across the desk at Lauren.

  Lauren looked away from it, unwilling to invade Nicole’s privacy any further. She gave an annoyed sigh. “I don’t know, Aunt Catherine. Maybe? I didn’t see his face.”

  “You didn’t see his face.”

  “No.”

  “At eleven o’clock in the morning, you couldn’t see this man’s face.”

  “We were passing through an alleyway,” said Lauren, defiantly meeting her aunt’s gaze. “It was shadowy, and he was wearing a hood. Not to mention, I was terrified, so I apologize if my memory isn’t quite up to par. I thought we were being mugged or something. Ask Olivia. It was awful.”

  Lauren held her breath, waiting for her aunt’s response. She tried to look remorseful, scared even, that Holden had been kidnapped by an unknown attacker, but the task proved difficult when her insides were jumping for joy. Holden’s disappearance meant that Nicole was still safe. And that she was still fighting to take down the Raptors.

  “Olivia recounted the same story,” said Flynn to Lauren’s great relief. “She claims you were on your way to a boutique to pick up something for your father’s funeral when a man attacked Holden out of nowhere. She also mentioned that you immediately told her to run.”

  “For our own safety.”

  “And what about Holden’s safety? It was three against one. You could have defended him.”

  “What if that man had had a gun?” deflected Lauren. “What if Olivia and I had tried to stop him, and he pulled a gun on us? You could have three dead Raptors on your hands instead of just one missing one. What then?”

  For a moment, Flynn actually seemed to be considering the plausibility of this, but before she could answer, a frantic knock echoed from the other side of the office door.

  “Come in,” called Flynn.

  Olivia entered, out of breath. Her forehead was damp with sweat. “Ma’am, the fire alarm in the library has gone off. Everyone’s evacuating the building. I don’t think it’s a drill.”

  “And?”

  “And there are still a few Raptors in the clubhouse,” Olivia went on, bending over to catch her breath. “If there is a fire in the library, they’ll be trapped down there unless they get out as soon as possible. Do you have orders?”

  Lauren knew that the clubhouse had no fire alarms of its own. The protocol for a situation like this had always been to follow the university’s steps for evacuating the building, even if the alarm was just a drill.

  Flynn heaved a dramatic sigh and stood up. “For Pete’s sake. It’s probably n
othing. Some idiot was mostly likely smoking in the restrooms again.”

  “Orders, ma’am?” asked Olivia again.

  “Get everyone out,” commanded Flynn. “I can’t have my Raptors take any chances. We have enough on our plate already. Order them to evacuate. Have them take the passageways if they can’t get up to the library unnoticed. And keep me updated. I’m sure it’s nothing, but if the library goes down, we need a plan to keep our records safe.”

  “What are you going to do, ma’am?”

  “I’ll assist the faculty,” answered Flynn. She retrieved her winter coat from the hanger near the bookshelf, swung it across her shoulders, and headed out of her office. As she passed Olivia, she said to her, “Keep an eye on my niece.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  As Flynn left, Lauren asked Olivia, “What’s going on?”

  Olivia shushed Lauren, leaning out of the office doorway to watch Flynn disappear down the hallway. When the elevator dinged and Flynn stepped inside, Olivia withdrew from the hallway and tossed Lauren her trench coat.

  “Get a move on, Lo,” she said, hauling Lauren up from her chair by the arm. “We’ve got to go.”

  31

  Before we left the farmhouse, Henry spent hours researching the sewer system around Waverly. His office didn’t match the rest of the house. It boasted three high-tech computer monitors and a variety of other equipment. As Henry accessed maps of the sewer system and other private records that might help us on our trip to Waverly, I wondered how Natasha had never suspected anything of his alternate job. His fingers moved deftly across the keyboard. He and Wes spoke like comrades. It was clear that Henry’s skill was wasted on managing a farm. Then again, perhaps Natasha had only seen what she had wanted to see.

  We parked Henry’s pickup truck a few blocks away, along the curb closest to the drain that would allow us access to Waverly’s underbelly. We ran into a slight problem with the equipment to remove the cover from the manhole, but Henry’s quick thinking and Wes’s brute strength kicked in just in time. As the gaping hole in the ground beckoned, I tried to clear my mind of everything that could go wrong. What if the Raptors were already on to us? I could picture Flynn ordering her cohorts to close up the manhole, trapping us in the sewer system forever.

  As a precursor to our trip underground, I’d gone to the lengths of dousing borrowed handkerchiefs with Natasha’s expensive perfume to cover our mouths and noses with, but no amount of Chanel Number Five could deflect the steaming smell of the sewers beneath the Waverly campus. My eyes watered as we lowered ourselves inside, and when my rubber work boots—also courtesy of my mother—slipped against the unmentionables below, I fought the express urge to vomit. This was what my life had come to, shuffling through excrement in the middle of the night.

  We hiked in silence with only the monotonous drip of water to accompany our thoughts. I went through the plan again in my head. Henry had recruited his inside source to cause a diversion. All we had to do was wait for the all-clear, sneak inside the clubhouse, grab the charter, and get out. It sounded too easy, and when it came to the Black Raptor Society, nothing was ever that easy.

  “This way,” said Henry, consulting the map of the sewer system that he had downloaded onto his phone as he led us down another cramped corridor. Naturally, the map didn’t include the secret passageways that had been carved out by the original Raptors, but Holden had given us directions as to where they were located. With Wes’s gun pressed to his temple, he hadn’t had much of a choice.

  Henry’s phone vibrated. He checked his text messages. “Everything’s going according to plan so far,” he reported. “The diversion is set. Everyone’s evacuating the library, including the Raptors. Shit—”

  “What?” asked Wes and I in unison.

  Henry’s shoulders tensed then relaxed again as another text message came through. “Never mind. Everything’s fine. There was a possibility of meeting some Raptors in the passageways, but apparently none of them will deign to use the ones that lead to the sewers.”

  “But of course,” I quipped. “They would get their designer shoes dirty.”

  Both Henry and Wes chuckled. I smiled, happy to ease some of the stress that weighed so heavily on our shoulders right now. It didn’t last long though. I slipped, bracing myself against the wall to avoid falling in the puddles of questionable material below.

  “Ugh,” I groaned, as my hand came away from the wall covered in grime. I wiped it on my coat, hoping that if we made it out of the sewers alive, I wouldn’t come down with some kind of mysterious disease.

  “Don’t worry, Nicole,” said Henry, shining his flashlight ahead. “We’re almost out of here. If Hastings didn’t mislead us, the entrance to the passageway should be right about here.”

  We paused at a kink in the wall, where a line of the bricks that made up the sewer system had sunken a little further in than the others. There was no sign of a secret passageway.

  “That rat bastard,” muttered Henry. He squinted at his phone, double-checking Holden’s directions. Wes peered at the map over Henry’s shoulder. “I swear I’m going to kill him.”

  I aimed my flashlight at the impression in the wall. It was the only flaw in the construction of the sewage system, as if someone had intentionally lined the bricks up at an odd angle.

  “Before you contemplate murder, you should know that the Raptors love puzzles and games,” I said, still sweeping the beam of my flashlight across the strange line in the bricks. A strange gleam caught my eye, and I moved closer to the wall, noticing some kind of metal locking contraption between the bricks. “I thought you would have figured that out by now, Henry. Did either one of you happen to bring a knife?”

  Wes produced a switchblade from his boot and handed it over. “What for?”

  I flicked open the knife. “See how the mortar is missing between this line of bricks and the next? Also, everywhere else, the bricks are staggered. Here, they’re in a straight line. Not exact standard building grade. Shine the flashlight there, would you?”

  As Wes held the light steady, I wedged the knife into the space between the bricks. With some wiggling, the lock mechanism sprang free, and I tugged on the facade that hid the secret door. It swung forward easily, revealing a clean stone corridor, set higher in the wall than the rest of the sewage system.

  “Damn,” said Henry, hoisting himself up into the passageway. “Nice job, Nicole.”

  Wes boosted me up after Henry then climbed in himself. “I have never been so attracted to you,” he whispered in my ear.

  I elbowed him, grinning. “Save it for after we get the charter, Casanova.”

  The passageway was blessedly short, but there was no mistaking it for property of the Raptors. Although the members of the society might not have used it to get out to the sewage system, there were enough paired initials etched into the stone walls to know that this was a popular getaway for young Raptors in love. I wondered if my father had ever been down here. If I looked, would I find his initials carved into the wall next to Flynn’s somewhere?

  “Door number two,” reported Henry, stopping short at the end of the passageway. “Give me a minute.”

  Henry busied himself with his phone again. We waited patiently for a few moments. The phone buzzed again, and Henry nodded. “All the Raptors are out. Let’s get inside. You’re up, Nicole.”

  Wes prodded me gently, and I tore my gaze away from the names on the walls. The door into the clubhouse was much more ostentatious than the one in the sewer system. The Raptors’ insignia had been painted in black on the stone, but again, there was no obvious door handle to let us in.

  I examined the edges of the passageway, then the Raptors’ emblem itself. I remembered the seal well. It was similar to the one inside the clubhouse, less detailed perhaps, but like the intricate crest in BRS’s headquarters, two polished rubies serves as the painted raptor’s eyes. Experimentally, I pressed down on them. To my satisfaction, they retracted, and the wall pivoted for
ward to reveal the warm glow of the Raptor’s inner sanctum.

  “How did you know to do that?” whispered Henry as he poked his head through the trapdoor and looked around for lingering Raptors.

  “Honestly, the Raptors aren’t all that original,” I said back in an equally quiet tone. “Once you figure out one door, you pretty much have them all figured out.”

  Henry gave me an A-OK gesture then slipped through the trapdoor and into the clubhouse. “All clear,” he called.

  I maneuvered through the hidden door next with Wes close behind me. As we emerged in the main hall of the clubhouse, a shudder ricocheted from my head to my toes. No matter how warm and inviting the golden glow of the lamps were, the Raptors’ headquarters gave me the creeps. A deep stairway opposite the mantle led upward to the Waverly library. The faint screech of the fire alarm echoed feebly from its dark ascent.

  “Let’s get the charter and get out,” I said, shaking off the feeling that something was watching me. On this side of the trapdoor, the Raptors’ crest was displayed in all its glory above a noble mantle. This version was much larger, and the ruby eyes of the highly-detailed painted raptor bore into me as if the creature was sentient.

  “Lead the way,” said Henry, gesturing for me to go ahead of him. “Wes, stay here and keep a look out. There’s no telling when that fire alarm will shut off. If you hear anyone coming down that main stairwell, give us a holler.”

  “Will do.”

  We left Wes near the exposed passageway, and I led Henry down the long corridor, peering cautiously into each open door. There were signs of the Raptors’ quick evacuation. In the dining room, remnants of a cafeteria meal littered the table. A heap of half-eaten mashed potatoes and the scraps of a piece of roast lay abandoned in a takeaway container. A few doors down, in one of the dorm-like rooms, the blankets on the bed had been disturbed as though one of the Raptors had been in the middle of a nap when the alarms went off. As Henry and I passed another door or two before we reached the library. Here, someone had left an immunology textbook out and open, an uncapped highlighter, and pages of handwritten notes strewn across the desktop.