Chapter 2
Chapter two
Hunt
Becky
I came to Ashford University for one reason.
Carrson Ashford.
It takes me three months to finally see him, and, by then, I already know too much.
This place is deceiving. Century-old brick buildings sit in neat rows, as if nothing bad ever happens here. Spanish moss drips from the trees, sways lazily in the thick, humid air. Church bells clang in the distance, their sound drifting across the quad like a warning no one hears.
Strangers are so friendly that I startle when they approach.
In New York, where I’m from, nobody talks to anybody.
Here, they won’t shut up. People stop me in the grocery store, in the mall, on the street, the moment they hear my Yankee accent.
My words are clipped. Hard vowels, sharp as a picket fence.
Theirs stretch and curl, long S sounds like snakes moving through honey.
They want to know where I’m from. Why I picked a university so far from home.
I give them the same answer every time. Strong academics.
A top-ranked psychology department. Access to new technology, the Internet.
Email. I tell them you can send messages through a computer now, no paper, no pen, and they nod like that explains everything.
As if it’s enough to justify a decision this big.
It isn’t.
Carrson’s like this town, polished on the surface, something else underneath.
From across the quad, he looks like he stepped off a screen. Square jaw. Thick-lashed eyes. Dark hair cut clean and neat. A pale blue Oxford button-down so perfectly preppy I almost laugh.
Heat creeps up my neck as I shove the sleeves of my flannel shirt higher.
I lift the newspaper, hiding behind it, which is dumb.
He hasn’t even glanced my way. The headline catches my eye again.
It’s an old article, from when his dad was still alive.
Senator Ashford. A vote against funding pediatric medical research.
There are more articles like it in my backpack. Newspaper clippings. Notes I’ve jotted down, on him, his family, this place. The kind of documents no one reads unless they’re searching for something specific.
At first, it was nothing. Random names. Random outcomes.
Then patterns started to form.
A judge in Virginia resigned overnight. A hospital director vanished two weeks later. A congressman from Georgia died of a “heart attack” three days before a corruption hearing. Different states, different stories, but the same last names kept repeating.
Men. Alumni of this university.
One mentioned more than the rest.
Ashford.
Not just Carrson. His father. His grandfather. All the way back.
That name was tied through everything, holding it together.
I shove the paper into my backpack, tugging on the turtle charm that hangs from the zipper, a gift from my sister, while I keep my eyes trained on the last remaining Ashford.
Those grainy photographs didn’t do him justice, and I’m not the only one who notices.
Conversations dip as he passes, as if someone turned the volume down on the entire campus.
Heads turn. Not only the girls. Everyone.
And him?
He doesn’t acknowledge any of it.
He stares straight ahead, moving without hesitation. Doesn’t stroll or swagger. He marches along a path only he sees. Shoulders square. Posture perfect. His stride so exact I swear if I laid a tape measure across the ground, each step would land the same distance apart.
Uptight prick.
I trail him across the quad in my ripped jeans and heavy Doc Martens, the foam headphones of my Walkman resting around my neck. Girls in pastel sweaters and pearl necklaces step back when I pass, their penny loafers scuffing against the pavement like they’re afraid I’ll ruin something delicate.
The students here all look like they stepped out of a Ralph Lauren catalog.
I look like I’ve come to rob one.
It’s the mid-1990s. Thanks to Pearl Jam, grunge is everywhere. Except, apparently, at Ashford University.
Carrson disappears into the biology building.
I follow.
The three-story structure is older than the rest of campus, all dark stone and tall windows filmed with decades of dust. Ivy strangles the walls, trying to drag the building back into the earth. Words carved above the doorway catch my eye, the letters worn smooth with age. I squint to read them.
Aptissimus superstes.
Latin. I mouth it silently, pulling the meaning up from memory.
Aptissimus. Best. Or fittest. Superstes. Survives.
Only the fittest survive.
Darwin? Or something else?
The words feel less like a motto and more like a warning. Unease stirs low in my stomach as I stare up at the carved stone, but I force myself forward. I’m not here to admire architecture.
I’m here to hunt.
And my prey just walked inside.
The doors groan in protest when I push them open. I stop in the entryway, where the air is cool and stale, thick with the smell of paper and ink. Of wood and damp stone.
My boots echo against the old tile floor as I scan ahead, searching for the pale blue of his shirt, but there’s nothing.
I move quickly, checking every corridor, every classroom.
Rows of lab tables stretch under flickering lights.
Shelves hold glass jars full of pale shapes in murky liquid, warped beyond recognition.
Portraits of long-dead professors line the walls, their eyes following me wherever I go.
Empty rooms. Empty hallways. He’s not here.
Carrson Ashford is gone, vanished like smoke, like a dream turning to nightmare the moment you wake.
I stop and sweep the space one more time, irritation burning hot in my gut. I was right behind him. There’s no way he could have disappeared that quickly. Unless he knows more than I do.
That’s fine. His disappearance only confirms it. I’m getting closer to the truth, to him.
Because Carrson Ashford isn’t just a man.
He’s a door.
Somewhere behind him are the people who decide who lives…and who doesn’t.
I won’t stand on the outside anymore.
I’m getting in.