6. hunter
hunter
Nichlas’ file had been open on my desk for most of the afternoon, and the longer I looked at it, the less sense it made.
On paper, there was nothing remarkable about him.
He was twenty-four, enrolled in business, had decent grades, and no disciplinary record worth mentioning.
He’d come through Aldrich the same way plenty of Quorum kids did, routed into the school because someone above them had decided a degree would make them more useful later.
His intake paperwork was clean. Too clean, considering what sat near the bottom of it.
Hansen family protection.
That part had come later. The original placement had been routine, then something changed and my father’s name appeared on the file with no explanation attached.
I’d gone through the intake twice, checked the date against the internal records, then pulled every note linked to Nichlas’ transfer.
The result was the same every time: missing attachments, one sealed entry I couldn’t open, and language vague enough that whoever wrote it had known exactly how little they wanted anyone else to understand.
Continuity of protection. Family-level discretion.
I read it again, then leaned back in my chair and rubbed at the ache building between my eyebrows.
“Still says the same thing,” Malakai teased.
He had been on the small couch against the wall, though he hadn’t stayed there for long.
Somewhere during the last half hour he’d moved from the couch to the arm of it, then to the windowsill, and now he was leaning against the side of my desk with his phone in one hand and my pen in the other.
He’d been turning it between his fingers for several minutes without apparently realizing it belonged to me.
I held out my hand. “Pen.”
Malakai glanced down at it, then passed it over without comment. He waited until I set it beside the keyboard before reaching past me and taking the paper clip from the top of the printed file instead.
I looked at him as he bent it once between his fingers.
“Kai.”
That small change happened around his mouth, his lips curving into a deviant quirk. He put the paper clip down and picked up his phone again.
I went back to the screen. There was no point throwing Malakai out.
He’d come back, and I’d waste more time arguing with him than I was already wasting on Nichlas.
Besides, if there was anything buried in the system that I had missed, Malakai was the person most likely to find it.
Information came to him even when he wasn’t looking for it.
People talked around him, forgot he was listening, then acted surprised later when he remembered every word.
“What did you get from admissions?” I asked.
He stayed where he was, eyes moving over whatever was on his phone. “Nothing different from what you have. His placement was standard until the protection order.”
“And before Aldrich?”
“Nothing that explains Desmond.”
That was the answer I kept coming back to.
My father, Desmond Hansen, didn’t personally protect routine intake students.
He didn’t need to. The Quorum already had systems for that, and Nichlas had been inside them before Desmond stepped in.
There were levels to everything we did. People liked to pretend the word protection meant one thing because it was easier than understanding how much depended on the name attached to it.
A Quorum kid at Aldrich was covered because he belonged to us. That alone kept most people from doing anything stupid. Hansen protection was different. If my father put his name over someone, that became a promise people noticed.
I opened the sealed entry again. The access denial came up immediately.
Malakai looked over my shoulder this time. “You’ve tried that six times.”
“Five.”
“Six.”
“I counted.”
“So did I.”
I closed the window before I gave him the satisfaction of being right. “There’s an authorization number attached to it. It should cross-reference somewhere.”
“It doesn’t.”
“You checked?”
Malakai finally put his phone away and leaned closer to the screen. “I checked before I came in.”
Of course he had. I moved the mouse aside and let him take over. He pulled up the internal search, changed two fields, then ran the number through a different archive. Nothing came back except the same protection notation and Desmond’s approval.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’s what they left.”
The irritation that had been sitting under my skin all afternoon tightened.
I wasn’t bothered because Nichlas was protected.
Protection was part of the Quorum. If people couldn’t trust that the name above them meant something, the whole structure became useless.
Favors only worked because there were consequences for ignoring them.
Territory only worked because everyone knew who answered when someone crossed it. Protection was no different.
If Desmond said Nichlas was covered, then he was covered.
What pissed me off was being told to enforce something on my ground while being denied the reason for it. I closed the laptop halfway. “He’s not worth this.”
Malakai picked up the paper clip again, turning it between his fingers as he looked at Nichlas’ photograph. “Worth what?”
“My father’s attention.”
He gave the picture another second before setting it down. “Probably not.”
That was as close to agreement as I was getting from him.
I pulled the file toward me again. Nichlas looked exactly like what he was: lanky, blond hair pulled back, glasses, expression too careful even in a student ID photo.
I’d spoken to him enough times to know the picture was flattering.
In person, he watched people before he answered them and folded the second anyone pushed hard enough.
He had a Quorum tattoo and none of the confidence that usually came with knowing what stood behind it.
There were useful cowards. Nichlas might even be one of them. That still didn’t explain Desmond.
Malakai reached over and moved the file half an inch to the side so he could see the date beneath my hand.
His attention stayed on the paperwork for a few seconds before he said, “The protection order came three days after his intake was finalized. Which means something happened after they accepted him.”
“Or someone finally told my father who he was.”
Malakai looked at me, and I could see him working through that without needing him to narrate it. That was why I kept him close. My other right hand, Ronan, would give me ten possibilities and enjoy every one of them. Kai usually waited until he had something worth saying.
Before either of us could get farther, the office door opened and Ronan walked in. Ronan came in with his phone still in his hand and shut the door behind him with his heel. He took one look at the file spread across my desk before dropping into the chair opposite me.
“Nichlas asked for more coverage.”
That got my attention. “For what?”
Ronan leaned forward, forearms braced on his thighs, and glanced once at Malakai before answering.
“He says somebody’s watching him. Same person keeps turning up around campus.
He’s noticed her outside the library, near the café, around the east hall.
Nothing he can point to and say she followed him from one place to the next, but enough that he’s started changing his routes. ”
Malakai went quiet beside me as he set Nichlas’ file down and looked at Ronan properly. “Who?” he asked.
“The new transfer. Echo Matthews.”
The name landed with more recognition on Malakai’s face than I expected. It was slight, barely there, but I knew him too well to miss it.
“You know her?” I asked.
“I’ve seen her.”
Ronan looked over at him, then back at me. “She’s been around enough to notice if you’re paying attention. She hangs with the unofficials. Priya, Devon, and Maren.”
I opened the student directory on my laptop while he talked. “What exactly has Nichlas seen?”
Ronan shifted deeper into the chair and gave me the useful version instead of Nichlas’ panic.
Echo wasn’t approaching him. She wasn’t confronting him.
She wasn’t leaving messages or making herself obvious.
She was choosing places that happened to give her a view of his exits.
She would sit near a window and keep talking to whoever she was with while Nichlas passed outside.
She would take a different stairwell and end up where he was headed instead of directly behind him. If he doubled back, she didn’t follow.
That was the part that bothered me.
Most students who decided to watch someone were terrible at it. They stared too long, moved too quickly, or kept repeating the same route because they thought distance made them invisible. Echo wasn’t doing any of that. If Nichlas hadn’t already been nervous, he might not have noticed her at all.
Malakai reached for my laptop and turned it slightly toward himself when Echo’s student profile came up. “She watches doors.”
Ronan nodded. “That too.”
I looked between them. “You’ve both noticed this?”
Malakai kept his eyes on the screen. “Noticed her. Then noticed what she was doing.”
That answer told me enough. Kai did not spend his time tracking random students because they were attractive, no matter what Ronan liked to imply. If he had started paying attention to Echo, she had given him a reason. Her profile gave me less.
Twenty-three. Criminal studies. Transfer.
No visible connection to the family business, Quorum.
No family name tied to anyone I recognized, no donor affiliation, no recommendation that led back into one of the families who routinely moved people through Aldrich.
Her application history was neat. Her address checked.
Her previous school existed. Everything was in order.
Which meant very little.
“What did you pull on her?” I asked Ronan.