The Sound of Us

Chapter Thirty-Three. “Girl on Fire” by Alicia Keys

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“Girl on Fire” by Alicia Keys

Skye

Exams were over. Christmas had come and gone. I’d gone back to Denver, hugged Jonah, cried in my mother’s arms, and now I was back in the dreariest month of the dreariest year in the dreariest city of all. Noah was back home but not back at work. He’d finally agreed to treatment, and he’d had some good days and some bad, but overall, he seemed to be getting stronger. Bella had moved in to care for him and coordinated visits so Dante and I weren’t there at the same time. I hadn’t heard from Dante since the day Noah collapsed in his office. I didn’t know if I ever would.

“I think Blake wants to talk to you,” Haley said as she pulled down the coffee shop Christmas decorations. “He keeps walking past the shop, staring at you, and then he scurries away.”

“If he wanted to talk to me, he would have done it already. I see him at the gym every day and we always say hello. I figured he had nothing else to tell me, so I moved on with the investigation. I’ve been reviewing all the university’s audited financial statements and finance reports to see if I could find something that indicates a payout, and I’ve started poking around for information again to hopefully fire up the rumor mill. Ballers just love to gossip.”

“Look at my girl back to doing what she does best.” Haley grinned. “I like to see you back in form.”

“Isla gave me a good talking-to before I went home for Christ mas,” I said. “It was the verbal equivalent of a slap in the face. And then I went home, and my mom and brother wanted to hear all about my investigations, and it got me excited about being a journalist all over again.”

“Blake is still there,” Haley said, looking out into the hallway. “He’s acting like informants do in the movies. I’m just surprised he hasn’t slipped you a note asking you to meet him at midnight in an underground parking garage where you’ll be ambushed by two men in dark trench coats driving a black SUV who will shoot him before he can tell you what he has to say. You should probably wear a bulletproof vest in case they shoot you, too. That way, when I come looking for you and start crying because I think you’re dead, you can sit up and say, ‘Ow that hurt,’ and I’ll be so relieved I cry happy tears and then I’ll hug you and we’ll go home and have pizza.”

Haley could always make me smile. “That was frighteningly specific.”

“It was drama time at home over Christmas,” she said. “Too many relatives. Too little space. I hid in the basement and binge-watched crime shows, so I know how these things go. If I don’t make it as a singer, I’m going to apply to the FBI to be a criminal profiler.”

“You almost passed out when I cut my finger the other day,” I pointed out. “They see a lot worse than little boo-boos.”

She gave a shrug. “I don’t have to be in the field. I could sit at the computer, and someone could call me baby girl and make me blush.”

Laughing, I looked up and caught Blake watching me. He jerked his head toward the door, indicating he wanted to meet me outside. What if Haley was right and Blake did have more information about the cover-up? Maybe he’d come here because he didn’t want anyone at the gym to see us together.

“I suppose I should find out what he wants,” I said, taking off my apron. “Cover for me. I want to catch him before he runs away.”

I pulled on my jacket and hat and went out into the bitter cold. Blake was skulking behind some bushes near the front door—as much as a six foot six basketball player could skulk with his head poking up over the hedge.

“Oh hi,” I said, pretending I hadn’t seen him peering over the hedge. “I just came out for a breath of air to freeze my lungs.”

Blake didn’t even smile at my joke. Instead, he looked around and then pulled me into the bushes.

“What the…?”

“I think you stirred something up by asking so many questions around the athletic center,” he said. “Yesterday, the coaches pulled us into a meeting and told us they’d heard that people were spreading rumors about a cover-up involving a member of the team and there was nothing to them. They told us to ignore what we’d heard and focus on playing ball. But every time I turned around, they were whispering or having closed-door meetings. We didn’t even have a coach at our last practice. They’re running scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“Of people finding out that the dude who did whatever they covered up is still around.” Blake tucked his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t tell you last time because I didn’t want to believe it. I told myself it was probably a DUI, or a bar fight or something minor like that. There are only fifteen guys on the team, and we’re close, you know. Like brothers.” He drew in a ragged breath. “But then you started poking around and people started talking and the coaches started acting weird… I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to know, so I went to talk to Dave.” He hesitated. “That’s not his real name.”

“I remember,” I assured him. “He’s the football guy who hooked up with the former personal assistant to one of the basketball coaches. What did he say?”

Blake looked around and lowered his voice. “I told him I’d overheard him talking in the locker room about a cover-up on the basketball team, and I was trying to decide whether to transfer schools and I just… needed to know the truth. He was cool about it. Like I said before, he’s a good guy and the idea that the university covered up a sexual assault—”

“Sexual assault?” My stomach tightened. I would definitely have to stop talking about the case in front of Isla. “How could they let a known rapist stay on campus? He’s dangerous.”

“Exactly.” Blake’s face tightened. “When he told me, it made my transfer decision easy. I can’t play on a team knowing one of them hurt a woman and got away with it, and I can’t respect an institution that would cover it up to protect their reputation. I have a little sister…”

“I totally understand.” I was still reeling from the revelation. “Did he know the name of the baller they’re protecting?”

“No. The personal assistant had signed an NDA and since she works on campus she had to be careful. She only told him what she did because she’d been seeing pictures of the bastard splashed all over the news and it pissed her off that he was about to become rich and famous when he should be in jail.” Blake shuddered. “My sister wanted to come to Havencrest. I called her up right after I talked to Dave and I told her no way, but what about other people’s sisters? There’s a fucking rapist loose on campus—a dude I practice with every day.”

“Do you have an idea who it might be?” With only fifteen players on the team, it wouldn’t be hard for Blake to figure out who the university was protecting.

Blake’s jaw clenched and he shook his head. “I can’t go there, Skye, because if I knew for sure, I’d do something that would mean the end of my basketball career. That’s why I’m coming to you.”

I wanted to promise him that I’d blow this out of the water, that I’d expose the cover-up and bring the bastard down. But I couldn’t do much with what he’d given me. I needed facts, evidence. I needed to get to the source. “I’m going to do everything I can to get to the truth.”

“You’re pretty good at this journalism thing.” Blake hesitated. “We never got to have that drink…”

I liked Blake but there was only one guy I wanted to be with. “I’m still sort of with the guy you met in the lounge. It’s… complicated.”

“If it ever gets uncomplicated…”

I leaned up to kiss his cheek. “I’ll let you know.”

Blake may not have wanted to reveal any names, but now that I knew the personal assistant still worked on campus, it didn’t take me long to search through past administrative directories for the athletic center and cross-reference them with current university admin listings. I came up with a list of five names, and all it took was another tray of coffee and a box of lemon squares to get my new friends in the athletic center admin office to confirm that Marisa Staples, now executive assistant to the chair of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, was the key to my investigation.

Of course, Marisa wasn’t interested in talking about her time working with basketball team. She’d responded to my email inquiry with a big fat “no comment” and brushed me off when I approached her in the hallway. I’d even sent her a coupon for a free coffee and lemon square, but she never showed up.

“Why don’t you wait outside her office and spill coffee on her?” Isla said, flipping over the next card for our game of Texas hold ’em. Chad, Haley, and Nick had joined us for lunch and I’d given them a brief outline of what I knew so far. I hadn’t mentioned the sexual assault because I was worried about triggering Isla. The last thing she needed was to hear that there was another rapist loose on campus.

“Because that’s too obvious. She’ll probably get angry and then she’ll never tell me what I want to know. That will be the end of my story.”

“Is this for our year-end project?” Chad asked. “I’ve been struggling to find anything worth investigating.”

“I have something else I’m working on for the year-end project,” I said. “But if this turns out to be something big, I might just use it instead.”

Chad rubbed his hands through his hair. “It’s not fair. You get something so juicy you might have to throw coffee on someone, and I can’t even find out if the gluten-free flour they use in the gluten-free pizza is safe for celiacs.”

“One of my psych profs said that when you want someone to open the door, you don’t break it down; you make them want to open it for you,” Haley said. “Maybe there is a reason she doesn’t work for the basketball coach anymore. She might want to talk but since she still works for the university, she’s afraid of losing her job.”

“Is that how you took all my money?” Chad asked Isla, who had cleaned him out in the first two hands. “You made me want to give it to you?”

“Chad, Chad, Chad.” Isla shook her head as she threw five dollars on the table. “Don’t try to blame me for your ego getting the better of you. Were you not at the bar when I hustled those guys at pool? Did you think my skills were limited to sticks and balls?”

Nick snorted a laugh as he folded. “I’m not even going to touch that one.”

“Who thinks Isla’s bluffing?” I studied the cards on the table. I still had some skin in the game, but Isla was a master.

“Look at this cute face.” Nick rubbed his knuckles gently over Isla’s cheek. “Do you really think she could hide anything from you?”

“Don’t be fooled. She’s trying to get us to fold.” Haley folded, but I threw in my five dollars. I might have played it safe at the beginning of the year, but now I wasn’t afraid to take a risk. “I’ll see you…” I trailed off as an idea took root in my mind. “What if I bluffed and told people I had enough evidence to run my story?”

“I thought you didn’t have any evidence,” Isla said, fanning out her hand of nothingness for everyone to see.

I’d never beat Isla before, so I made a big show of scooping up the money. “And you didn’t have anything in your hand, but I paid to see you anyway.”

“Won’t you get in trouble if you go around saying stuff that isn’t true?” Nick asked. “How bad is the thing the baller did? Is it a crime?”

“Yes.”

“Then shouldn’t you just go to the police?”

“I have no proof,” I said. “I have a guy who said he talked to another guy who said he talked to a girl who said she knew something. Not much to go on. And the university has already covered it up. That means they’ve buried the evidence.”

“I’m beginning to think my gluten flour story isn’t so bad,” Chad mused. “It’s low risk, easy to investigate, and yet it could save lives.”

“Maybe I tell Blake I’m planning to run the story and he ‘misunderstands.’” I punctuated the last word with finger quotes as I put the pieces together. “He tells someone I’ve got the evidence and that person tells someone else, and soon the people who are the most worried will crawl out of the woodwork and expose themselves to try and stop me from going public. I don’t have to spill coffee on anyone or hunt them down. They’ll come to me.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Isla said. “What if they threaten you? Or worse?”

“They can’t risk doing anything until they know what evidence I have and who I’ve told.”

“I don’t like it.” Nick folded his arms. “What if they break into your apartment looking for evidence like they do in crime shows? You and Isla aren’t safe. I’ve got a friend in engineering who used to be a locksmith. I’m going to bring him by your place to check your doors and windows.” He pulled out his phone and stepped away to make the call.

“What the hell was that?” I asked Isla.

“I told Nick everything,” she whispered. “I wanted him to know why I couldn’t get into a relationship with him, even though we really click.”

“That was very brave.” I squeezed her hand. “How did he take it?”

Isla’s eyes watered even as her lips quivered with a smile. “He was furious. I’d never seen that side of him. We were in the food court, and he threw his tray on the ground. He couldn’t believe the police hadn’t caught the guy. He wanted to go down to the police station right then and demand they reopen the investigation.”

“He’s protective of you,” I said. “Not that I’m condoning violence toward plastic trays, but it was kind of sweet.”

“Now, he waits for me after my night class to walk me home, and when I’m studying late at the library, he shows up with a pizza picnic. Next week, after I get back from visiting my parents, he’s taking me to learn Krav Maga. He said he’s in no rush and he’s happy to be friends for as long as it takes. He said I’m worth waiting for.”

“Oh, Iz.” I was happy for her. She deserved someone as kind and thoughtful as Nick. She deserved to be someone’s everything. I just wished I could be someone’s everything, too.