7. echo
echo
By the time Professor Garrison dismissed us, Priya had already made plans for lunch without asking whether the rest of us agreed.
She was halfway through listing places when we spilled into the hall with everyone else, Devon walking backward in front of us while he argued that the student union had the only edible fries on campus and Maren reminded him he’d said the exact opposite two days ago.
I let them decide. I’d eaten breakfast; I had nowhere I needed to be for another hour, and Nichlas had disappeared into the business building twenty minutes earlier with one of the men who had started shadowing him since I arrived. I could afford lunch.
The hallway narrowed near the central stairs, forcing everyone coming out of Garrison’s seminar into the same bottleneck as students heading the opposite direction.
Priya caught Maren by the elbow before she disappeared into the crowd as Devon kept talking over his shoulder.
I moved around a pair of students who had stopped directly in front of the stairs and nearly walked into someone coming around the corner.
That’s when a hand closed around my waist before the collision happened. My palm hit a solid chest, his other hand coming up against my arm, steadying me as two students pushed past behind us, and for a second there wasn’t enough room to move anywhere without moving closer.
I looked up, trying to weather my reaction at how much bigger he was than me.
The next thing I noticed was how handsome he was in his fitted black shirt stretched across shoulders that made my hand look smaller where it rested against him and the several pieces of metal stuck through his ears, nose, and well...
everywhere. His gaze dropped briefly to my palm before returning to my face.
I removed my hand but his stayed at my waist.
“Echo Matthews.”
I froze, wondering where someone who looked like him had heard my name.
I hadn’t seen him around and I wasn’t famous or infamous enough for my name to be traveling through any channels.
“Malakai?” I asked, the name clicking into place a second too late.
Priya had given me all three King names, but not faces. “How do you know mine?”
His thumb shifted once at my waist before he finally let me go. “You’re the transfer who’s been appearing everywhere Nichlas does. That makes you easier to remember than most.”
I folded my arms. “So you make a habit of memorizing strangers when they become inconvenient?”
His mouth moved slightly. “Only the interesting ones.”
I pushed lightly against his chest, testing whether he would finally take the hint. He let his hand fall from my waist but didn’t move out of the way. Up close, I could see the tattoos disappearing beneath the sleeves of his shirt and the faint amusement that never quite became a smile.
There was something about the way he talked that made me want to keep him there even as the sensible part of my brain told me this was exactly the kind of conversation I shouldn’t be having with anyone at Aldrich.
People knew I was new. They weren’t supposed to know enough to look at me like Malakai just had. I folded my arms across my chest. “So I have your first name but I do get your last name too? Since we’re using full government names.”
“You didn’t ask for one.”
Before I could decide whether I wanted to shove him again, a voice carried from farther down the hall.
“Kai.”
Malakai looked past me. I followed his attention and saw a dark-haired man standing near the stairwell with one hand in the pocket of his black cargos.
Tattoos ran down his arms beneath the sleeves of a white shirt, and there was something familiar about him too.
He wasn’t calling again. He simply waited, watching us with enough interest that I knew he’d seen more than the end of the conversation.
Malakai’s gaze came back to mine. “Try not to run into anybody else.”
“I didn’t even run into you,” I muttered before just waving my hand at him. He stepped aside at last, leaving enough room for me to pass, but his eyes stayed on me until I moved around him.
Priya caught my arm before I made it ten feet. “What the fuck was that?”
I looked back once. Malakai had reached someone else.
That student said something I couldn’t hear, and Malakai shoved a hand against his chest as they started toward the stairs.
The other man caught his wrist, pulled him closer for half a second, then released him without either of them breaking stride.
“I almost walked into somebody.”
Priya stared at me. Devon and Maren had stopped ahead of us, apparently deciding lunch could wait if there was something better to watch.
“You almost walked into somebody?” Priya repeated. “Echo, he had his hand around your waist.”
“He was stopping me from knocking him over.”
Maren looked past me toward the stairs. “You weren’t knocking him over.”
“I could have.”
Devon’s mouth twitched, but Priya was still looking at me as if I had missed something obvious. “That was one of the kings. Malakai Thorne!”
“I’m aware. Priya mentioned their names and I recognized one of the pictures she showed me.”
I looked back again but they were gone. The noise of the hall filled the space they’d left behind. Students moved around us, somebody laughed near the doors, and Devon finally started walking toward the student union again. I stayed where I was for another second.
One of the Kings.
It finally hit me then. The men Nichlas had wrapped around himself so tightly that nobody at Aldrich seemed willing to touch him.
The same Kings people kept mentioning whenever his protection came up.
The same men whose names changed the way Priya spoke even though she spent most of her time pretending Aldrich’s social hierarchy was something she found funny.
And one of them knew my name.
Priya tugged my sleeve. “Are you coming?”
I started walking with them, but lunch had stopped mattering. Malakai had known exactly who I was before I gave him anything. Maybe all three Kings did.
I’d been careful because I wasn’t going to lose Nichlas again by moving too fast. Malakai knowing my name meant the Kings were already paying attention, and waiting wasn’t buying me anything anymore.
But careful only worked while nobody knew what I was doing. Malakai had known my name before I ever gave it to him. That changed the calculation.
Priya was saying something about lunch again when I pulled my phone from my pocket. I opened the schedule I’d built from what I already knew about Nichlas and checked the time. He had a seminar in forty minutes.
After that, he crossed the east academic building before heading back toward the business side of campus. I’d already watched him do it twice.
There was a section of that route where the hall narrowed near the old faculty offices and the crowds dropped off almost completely between classes. I’d planned to watch it again before deciding whether it was useful.
I didn’t need to watch it again.
I slipped my phone back into my pocket and looked toward the business buildings beyond the windows. If the Kings were already looking at me, then waiting wasn’t buying me anything.
I needed to get to Nichlas before they figured out why.
I barely heard Priya when she asked if I was still coming to lunch. I muttered something about needing to grab a book from the criminal studies building and peeled away before she could argue, cutting across the quad toward the east academic wing.
Nichlas would be coming out of his seminar soon, and all I needed to do was be there so I could finish what I came here for.
I took the stairs to the second floor and walked past the faculty offices without slowing, checking the time on my phone as I went.
I had no elaborate plan for what came next.
That was probably the first reckless thing I’d done since arriving at Aldrich, but standing in a hallway waiting for the man who’d nearly gotten me killed felt more honest than pretending I was still gathering information.
A door opened at the far end of the corridor. Students began spilling out in small groups, talking over one another as they headed toward the stairs. Nichlas appeared near the back of them with a man I recognized from the last few days walking several feet behind him.
The minder stopped when one of the professors caught his arm and pulled him into a conversation, and Nichlas kept going without noticing at first. He turned the corner into the narrow passage leading toward the older faculty wing, probably expecting his shadow to catch up in another thirty seconds.
I moved before I could talk myself out of it.
Nichlas made it halfway down the passage when he heard my footsteps.
He glanced over his shoulder, and everything in his face changed.
He stopped so abruptly that the strap of his bag slipped from his shoulder, one hand catching it against his side while the other went flat against the wall.
For a second, neither of us said anything.
I’d imagined this moment too many times.
In some versions, I killed him before he had the chance to speak.
In others, I made him beg until his throat was raw.
None of those fantasies had included how small he would look when he finally saw me standing in front of him again.
“Echo.”
My name came out thin.
I kept walking until there were only a few feet between us, and Nichlas stared at me like his brain had stopped somewhere between recognition and deciding whether screaming would help.
“Oh, so you do remember me.” I smiled, and the way his face went pale made it spread farther than it should have.
“I was wondering if you’d forgotten. It has been a while since you tried to get me killed and all. ”