Lady Killer (Dead Girls Club #2)

30. Everest

Chapter thirty

Everest

“ A lways gonna groove to a beat that’s right for me . . .”

Clayton Royal was dull as fuck.

“Well, ya stalk a man, stalk a man, stalk a man, oooo yeah!” I sang along to the beat of “Funkytown” by Lipps Inc.

The man was as pretentious as Locke, but far less interesting .

After spotting him in the library, Nixon and I had traded off, and I took over watching Starbright while he had trailed the borehole for the rest of the day.

Since then, one of us had eyes on him most of the time. The man went to his classes, the lab where he spent most of his time, and the gym. On the weekends, he went out with a group of equally stodgy-looking fuckers.

Two weeks later, and we were no closer to linking him to the Virgin Sacrifice Killer than we were at the start.

Stalking Luz? Five out of five stars, highly recommend.

Stalking spoiled, rich prats with no life? Zero out of five stars. Would not recommend.

All of this time wasted tailing him for information when we could have been torturing it out of him.

It’s better to ask for forgiveness . . .

No! I shook my head. Bad Everest.

I was on thin ice with Lucian ever since the whole lips incident, and I needed to save all my brownie points for Luz.

My love could be a grumpy Gus when pushed too far.

It was March 1st tomorrow, which meant there were seventy-three days left in the term.

I was fighting between the urge to go rogue and get answers and the need to save my shenanigans for when they counted the most .

Self-restraint was entirely unlike me, but for my Starbright, there was nothing I wouldn’t do.

That didn’t mean I couldn’t improvise.

The lights in the student offices housed in Erstveld Lab went off, and shortly thereafter, Clayton exited the building with a colleague before they went their separate ways.

It was late enough that no one was about, and I strolled leisurely into the building, swiping the pass that Locke had procured for me. One of the benefits of being an unofficial Blackwell was that there was nowhere on campus I couldn’t go.

I jogged up a set of stairs, then padded down a hall of faded linoleum tiles, the familiar scent of bleach lingering in the air. If anyone ran into me, I looked no different from the average aging PhD student you would find laboring after hours.

“201 . . . 202 . . . 203!”

With another quick swipe of my pass, I was in the offices of the pharmacology doctoral candidates, along with some of the professors as well.

Scanning the hall, a I spied a room with Clayton’s name on it.

No swipe card needed here, the ancient metal door swung open with ease to reveal four pockmarked desks, several filing cabinets, and a sagging bookshelf that obscured most of the room’s one tiny window.

Based on the nameplates, the first desk belonged to an Aadesh Singh, the next a Tiffany Chow, and then, jackpot, Clayton Royal.

His desk, however, revealed nothing.

Unsurprisingly, he had taken his laptop with him, and all that remained were some hastily scrawled notes that I didn’t even pretend to understand.

“Like I said, dull as they fucking come.”

Aadesh, Tiffany, and a Jason Slater, the owner of the fourth desk, also appeared to be equally dull.

I refused to give up, though. Something was here. And I would be damned if I let a slimy little fuck like Royal slip through my fingers.

It was bad enough that Aaron had gotten close enough to Starbright. I wouldn’t let anything like that ever happen again.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

Ali-gator: Anything?

“Rude.”

Me: Hello, Alister, I am well, thanks for asking. It’s a bit nippy out for March but it’s nice and warm in the lab.

Nothing.

I sighed, rolling my eyes .

Me: Nothing, yet.

Me: But there’s something here.

Me: Only a monster would wear boat shoes in Connecticut in the winter.

Ali-gator: You would know.

Me: HOW DARE YOU!!!

Me: I wear Italian leather loafers.

Me: Handcrafted.

Me: Artisanal!

Me: I would cut my feet off before putting them in boat shoes.

The bastard left me on read.

He was with Luz tonight, tucked away in the townhouse.

I would have been jealous of him getting to play with her without me, but I knew she had a midterm in Locke’s class, and nothing closed my girl’s legs faster than the threat of an A-.

Refusing to give up, I poked around the rest of the pharmacology department’s offices. The actual labs were downstairs and required a code to access. I could get it, if I wanted, but I figured I might as well start here and return another night if needed.

With a deliberation that I rarely possessed, I made my way through each room .

You could tell a lot about the hierarchy of the department by their offices. The graduate students shared tiny, often windowless rooms, while the associate professors were two to an office, with a little square footage. The tenured professors had all claimed the large single rooms, complete with actual windows.

Clayton and Melody worked under a Dr. Jeffrey Reed, and his office was one of the largest of all. He must have been pulling in significant funding for the department to get a space like this. Alas, it was just as empty of anything of interest as the rest of the floor.

With nothing to show for it, I made my way back down the corridor. My phone buzzed again.

Daddy Lucian: Family meeting tomorrow, 4:00 p.m.

Daddy Lucian: Leave the girl at the townhouse.

Luz was absolutely coming with.

Although, it might take some convincing. She still wasn’t Lucian’s biggest fan, what with the whole “threat to her life” hanging over her head.

They just needed to spend some more time together.

I was on my way out the door when my eyes snagged on a small alcove across the way from Clayton’s shared office. Empty coat hooks lined its walls, and a large pine wardrobe that screamed Ikea had been pushed against the far wall .

Opening it revealed nothing but a large collection of white lab coats, and I was about to shut it when I peeked at the top shelf.

At first glance, it appeared empty. It wasn’t.

Shoved away in the farthest corner was a familiar-looking white mask.

“Oh Clayton, you’ve been a baaaaaaa-d boy.”

“No.”

“Pretty, pretty please with a cherry on top?” I clasped my hands together, falling to my knees and doing my best imitation of begging.

“The answer is still no,” Lucian said sternly.

It was the following day at the estate, and I had just triumphantly delivered my evidence that Clayton was involved with the Virgin Sacrifice Killer, certain that he would soon be taken to Locke’s second office for interrogation, only to be denied by my love.

“But—?”

“But nothing. The mask is certainly encouraging, but it’s not enough to justify kidnapping and murdering the son of a former senator. Not when you didn’t even find it in his office,” he said with a wave of his hand .

He’d been in a pissy mood since we’d shown up with Luz in tow, something that, I could concede now, may have been a strategic error on my part.

My Starbright was currently studying in the east library, in an equally foul mood at having been forced to come along under threat of losing her visits with the redheaded girl.

“Statistically speaking, it’s unlikely that it’s a coincidence,” Alister tried to argue. At least he was on my side.

“Except that he wasn’t found with it. Everest found it in a random cupboard in a shared office space that any number of students and faculty could have accessed,” Locke retorted.

My knife danced across my knuckles. The stuffy asshole didn’t need all his parts, did he? Like, who needed two ears, really? One would be just as good.

“Everest.”

Lucian’s deep voice broke me from my reverie. He shook his head.

Sigh.

He was too perceptive sometimes.

“If I didn’t know better, I might think you wanted the killer to roam free,” Alister said.

Lucian bristled. “Excuse me. ”

“He is our best lead to stopping whoever is killing without consequence in our territory, and you want us to play it safe, big brother.”

I swore my girl’s pussy was magic because I had never seen Ali push back against Lucy like that. Consider me a fan.

“Locke doesn’t have to kill him, and the Royals are just one family. Whoever is working to undermine us poses a bigger threat if our credibility is compromised.”

“And I said no, or do you fancy yourself head of this family now, Alister?”

“He’s got a—?”

“SILENCE!” Lucian’s voice echoed throughout the office. “Push me on this again and she is gone, am I clear?”

The knife embedded itself in the arm of the leather club chair I was seated in.

“You would go back on your word?” Alister said.

Lucian lightly shook his head. “I don’t have to kill her to make her disappear”—he adjusted his tie before turning to arch an eyebrow at me—“and Everest, you’re paying to replace that.”

Locke crossed one leg over the other and sat back with a grin. If anything happened to Starbright, his was the first blood I would shed, Blackwell or not .

“If I may.” Nixon had been uncharacteristically quiet during the debate, and my attention snapped to him to see what fuckery he was about to propose.

Lucian gave him a nod.

“Royal is our best lead so far, but we don’t have enough to hang him yet.” Nixon sat forward playing with the lighter in his hand. “So, let’s give him a little more rope.”

Lucian’s and Locke’s brows furrowed while Alister remained expressionless.

“Luz said that Clayton sought her out once. We’ve been keeping him away from her, but maybe that’s the wrong idea.”

The implication of his words hit me. Absolutely not.

“I know you have issues with her for stabbing you and stealing Ali’s attention, but if so much as a hair is harmed on her head, the Blackwells will be out half a set of twins and an economics professor,” I snarled.

Nixon smirked, continuing to flick his lighter on and off. “No one is talking about handing over your precious Starbright . I was merely suggesting we play it smart and set a trap. And what better bait than the girl who is at the center of all of this?”

Yeah, I still didn’t like it.

“Go on,” Lucian said, earning an incredulous look from me.

Daddy, no!

“Have Luz reach out to Royal. She said he was interested in talking about Melody. She can tell him she thinks she might have a lead on her disappearance.”

“What makes you think he would reveal himself so easily?” Locke said.

“I wasn’t finished, cousin. We need to create a temptation the killer can’t resist. So, we have her suggest somewhere isolated to meet, and at the same time, she baits whoever has been texting her.”

Lucian frowned in a way I was far too familiar with. He was considering it.

“The killer has been extremely precise and methodical thus far. Why would they risk anything now?” Locke challenged.

“They were until they couldn’t get to Luz on Valentine’s Day,” Alister said. “They’re likely to spiral now, which is why we’ve been keeping Luz so close.”

“You agree with your brother’s plan then?”

Ali twisted his head from side to side, cracking his neck before responding. “I don’t like it, but in lieu of extracting information from Royal, logically, it’s our next best move. ”

I opened my mouth to protest, loudly, but was interrupted by the sound of the door to Lucian’s office slamming open.

“She’s gone!” Luz cried, her eyes wide and her voice choked with distress in a way I had never seen before, immediately sending Alister and me to our feet.

“Who’s gone?” Alister growled.

“Autumn. Autumn’s gone.”