CALLUM
“She’s up there,” I said, then rushed out of the room. A few of the officers were in hot pursuit, and I didn’t care whether it was to stop me from getting up there, or trying to just check it out for themselves.
We found the door which led up several flights of stairs, and while the elevator would’ve been easier to take, there was no time to backtrack now. I was in impeccable shape, which was not something all of the other officers could say, so I reached the rooftop first. The cold air and wet precipitation hit me the second I stepped out onto the roof. At first, there was nothing there, but when I saw what looked like a flash of something dark on the other side of an AC unit, my heart rate sped up.
I rushed over there, and this time, two of the officers held me back as another knelt down in front of her. Nicole was there, tied to a chair, and her skin was pale white. She was so still, her head hanging down in front of her as if she was... No, I wouldn’t go there.
“She has a pulse,” one of the guys said, and I nearly sank to my knees .
They photographed her as she was, then quickly undid the rope holding her limbs to the chair. Without anything to prop her up, she almost tumbled face first onto the concrete below, but she was saved in time from face-planting. The one officer stood and picked her up in his arms. It was then that I saw her face. It was heavily bruised, and there was blood smeared on her cheek. Something else was there, too. As I looked at her chest and part of her hair, repulsion filled me.
Travis had assaulted her sexually. I knew that now, and knowing he had to tie her up in order to do it said all I needed to know when it came to how close romantically they were. One of the detectives called for EMS, and when they wouldn’t let me touch her, rage filled me. I was going to kill Travis. I decided it right then and there, and ignoring the order to stop as I raced back to the door, I did eventually when Travis appeared in the doorway.
There was a wild look in his eyes, especially when he saw them tending to Nicole. His expression straightened when he looked back at me. Raising the gun, he pointed it at my chest. I knew this kid hated me, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know why.
“It was you,” I said, then continued. “It was you all along. You couldn’t stand the fact that Nicole love—”
“She doesn’t love you,” he sneered, and I begged to differ, but keeping him talking was the only thing between life, and being shot dead on the rooftop.
“What the hell is this?” One of the detectives said out loud, and when I turned to look, Travis bumped with me the gun. “Put that down, or else I will splatter his guts all over this fucking rooftop.”
I could see that the gun was the same kind the other officers had, and my next thought was about Jessie. “What did you do to him?”
Travis chuckled, and it was nearly maniacally like the Joker in those movies. “Nicole’s mine, and no one will live to come between us. ”
“She never wanted you in that way,” I tried to point out to him.
“Shut up. You treated her like a dirty little whore, and she deserved better.”
“I agree,” I told him, and I actually meant it. Nicole had deserved to be paraded around in public, and on my arm like anyone else would have with their own girlfriend. It should’ve been the two of us at the theater, dinner, and walking hand and hand along the pier in California. And I had wanted were all of those things with her, but our love was forbidden, at least as long as she was my student.
“Why did you do it?” I asked Travis, even though I knew the answer. The other detectives were calling for backup, and I knew I needed to keep him talking.
“She’d left you which should’ve been the end of it. You wouldn’t let her go, though. I was so close to showing her how good things could be between us, then you’d kissed her. She kissed you back ,” he spat out the last words as if they tasted sour on the tip of his tongue.
She kissed me back because she couldn’t fight what was between us, but I certainly didn’t throw gas onto the fire by telling him as much. “What did you do to her tonight?”
While I didn’t want to hear the details, I had to know. Nicole was alive, although just barely, and I was inwardly cursing the lack of emphasis from the EMTs that had been called. My displeasure must’ve conjured them up because a flurry of sirens came racing toward this building. If I could only keep him talking for a few more minutes.
“I brought her here so I could tell her that I loved her.”
“Did she tell you that she loved you back? ”
“Shut up!” he told me, then nudged the gun deeper into my ribs. “Not at first, but she does, especially after I’d told her everything I had done for us.”
“Such as?”
“I knew you were hurting her which was why I’d followed the two of you around at the masquerade ball...” As he continued to speak, the tape the Dean received now made a hell of a lot of sense. “You fucked her like some cheap slut in a hallway. Professor Callum fucking Meyers, Titan of Chicago, and abuser of women. I know your reputation. The tabloids were right. You’re a damn monster, every one of you are. I’d tried to show her what a real man does for the woman he loves, but she’d still chosen you. Time and time again, she canceled plans with me, or flat out denied them, for you . Then, you invited her to the holiday bash before I could do it. I was there, though. You saw me...”
My mind flashed back to the elevators, and it all made sense. The photographs from that night had been taken by Travis, then delivered to the Dean. Travis had previously mentioned seeing us kiss more recently in my office, and that had to have been what set him completely off. No matter what he did to try to keep her from me, our attraction was too strong. It was too real. Nicole could deny her love for me all that she’d wanted, but when she was in my arms and her soft lips planted against mine, I knew. She knew it, too.
“She was even more broken after you, and basically holed herself inside her condo. I wanted to show her who you were, so I sent her reminders from the various times you had hurt her. I knew if she remembered how you’d destroyed her over and over again, she would finally let you go for good.”
“What else did you do?” I knew it had to have been more than that for a restraining order to be issued, and I needed to know what it was that pushed her over the edge .
Another maniacal laugh sounded. “I sent Nicole a textbook with a picture of her at the holiday bash. She’d looked so beautiful that night, but she didn’t look the same leaving in the dead of the night as she did when she’d first arrived. Nicole used to talk about Costa Rica all the time, and the society pages always talk about the sordid vacations you take to those types of places. I’d issued her a warning, and she had finally seen you for the monster you were, or at least I thought she had. Nicole tried talking to the Dean on your behalf, so I knew it was time to get rid of you for good.”
She tried to talk to the Dean? That was news to me, but not the kind that was important at this moment. He then pushed at me, and I stumbled slightly. Three other officers arrived, and blocked the doorway. He waved the gun from side to side as he tried to think about how and where he would escape.
“Falloray is down,” one of them said, and I turned to the man.
“Is he going to be—”
“He’s going to live. He told us to nail this crazy bastard.” They then pointed their guns at the perp, as did the other officers on the rooftop deck. “Travis Harrison, the third, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for—”
A shot rang out, then a piercing pain ripped through my calf and I stumbled. Another few shots rang out, and as I tried to hobble to the wall for support, I slipped in something warm and sticky. When I looked over to see what it was, Travis was lying motionless on the concrete. Jessie’s gun was beside him, but the kid was completely still. Blood seeped out from under the back of his head, but I knew the kill shot had been the wound in his chest, which was heavily bleeding.
I was immediately approached, and the EMTs finally arrived on the scene. About a half hour later, Jessie was being lifted into one ambulance, while Nicole and I were lifted into two others. One final stretcher was out on the street, only Travis was completely covered. His destination wasn’t the emergency room at Northwestern, but the morgue.
I was being loaded onto the stretcher at the exact moment his time of death was called. I had turned my focus away from him, and over to Nicole, who was still unconscious. I was actually glad she hadn’t seen any of the encounter on the roof. It wasn’t long before we ended up in an ambulance together. As it raced toward the hospital, I picked up my phone and dialed the first of two numbers – Logan, then I would call Jonas.