The Graduation Trap novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Room Four, 11:48

Braden's POV

The records office at Hollis College had a counter, a bell, and a woman behind it who had not looked up in four minutes.

I rang the bell again.

"Records on the Alumni Hall," I said. "The graduation party, seven years ago. The third floor."

"We don't keep door logs past five years."

"I'm told you kept this one."

She looked up then.

She was sixty, with half-glasses on a chain, and she looked at my suit and at my face, and I watched her fail to place me.

"I'm a donor," I said. "My family built the wing your records room is in."

It was the first time in my life I had used the name as a weapon, and I disliked how well it worked.

She went into the back without a word.

I stood at the counter and thought about Joanna's doorway.

She had not asked me for anything.

She had told me what she'd pay me back, to the dollar.

I had walked out to my car afterward and sat for ten minutes with the engine off.

My phone buzzed on the seat.

Daphne.

Where are you? I'm so scared. Please come to me.

I read it and put it face down.

It was the same kind of message she had sent me four hundred times, and I had answered every one.

I had never once asked myself what she was afraid of.

The woman came back with a gray archive box and set it on the counter.

"Case file," she said. "Student conduct, the Brennan matter. The campus police kept everything. Nobody has asked for it since."

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