15. Rowan #2
He doesn't ask me to define it, and I'm grateful for that.
Makari knocks after seven with coffee, medication, and a security report. By then, Erik and I have moved to opposite sides of the bed again, though the six inches between us no longer seem important.
Evelyn catches me outside Fenwick on Monday with a folder under one arm. She opens her office door when I approach. "I need ten minutes."
I follow her inside and close the door. "You usually say five when you mean twenty."
"This one is actually ten." Evelyn puts the folder on her desk and motions toward the chair. "The gala shooting is already generating questions about your relationship with Dean Danilov."
"There was barely a shooting in the official report." I sit and take the first article she offers me.
"That may help the foundation." Evelyn takes the chair across from me. "It won't protect you from an academic ethics complaint."
All three articles repeat the attempted-robbery story Richard's office released while police were still clearing the building. I put the first page back on the desk. "Erik doesn't control my grades, admission, or discipline. He filed the recusal before this."
"I know." Evelyn slides a clean sheet toward me. "You need documentation that proves it before anyone asks."
She starts with my transcript and builds outward. Every grade issued before Erik arrived, my clinic assignments, competition results, scholarship history, recommendations, and disciplinary record should be preserved outside systems his office controls.
I read down the list. "You want my entire academic history duplicated."
"I want a baseline nobody can rewrite after the relationship becomes part of the argument." Evelyn adds another item to the page. "You also need the recusal, each decision covered by it, and the identity of whoever made that decision instead."
The advice is exactly what I'd give another student. It also identifies every system that contains information someone might want to alter.
I stop reading.
Evelyn studies me from across the desk. "What?"
"I'm thinking about where the copies should be stored."
"Somewhere independent." She closes the folder. "You should build the file before somebody else builds one for you."
I frown. "That sounds ominous."
Evelyn checks the clock on the wall. "It's practical."
With her, those often mean the same thing. She ends the meeting almost exactly ten minutes after it began.
Richard is waiting near the administration building after my afternoon seminar. He has no assistant or folder, which makes the encounter look accidental if anyone happens to watch us.
"Ms. Bennett, do you have a moment?"
"I have several." I keep walking until he falls into step beside me. "Whether you get one depends on the subject."
"Your academic record."
I stop, and Richard takes one more step before turning back.
"The university can protect you from unnecessary scrutiny if you cooperate with the independent review." He keeps his tone easy enough that students passing us won't hear the threat under the words.
I sound impassive. "I am cooperating."
"You're also participating in a private investigation with Dean Danilov." Richard folds his arms loosely in front of him.
I nod once. "That private investigation found accounts Blackthorne missed."
"Your association with him has become increasingly visible." He lowers his voice when another group of students passes. "Saturday produced photographs neither of us can make disappear."
"Your communications office made the second shooter disappear quickly enough."
His expression barely changes. "The statement reflected information available at the time."
I arch a brow. "Makari and I were giving you different information while you were writing it."
"Public communications have other concerns."
I adjust Evelyn's folder beneath my arm. "What are you offering?"
"If you step away from Danilov's private investigation, I can make certain the university record reflects that you acted responsibly once the conflict became clear."
The threat is wrapped well enough to pass for assistance. I look at him. "You can protect my record."
"I can prevent your conduct from being mischaracterized."
"Which conduct?"
Richard takes a moment before answering. "Your presence in restricted meetings, your residence in the dean's penthouse, your access to private evidence reviews, and your relationship with him."
"You're offering to protect me from an interpretation your office can influence."
"I'm telling you how institutions work." He shifts his weight when I don't answer.
I glare at him. "You demonstrated that Saturday night."
His expression hardens slightly.
The office door across the lobby opens before he can respond, and Vanessa walks out. She stops when she sees me, and Richard turns too late to make her presence disappear.
Vanessa adjusts the strap of her bag. "I had a question about the spirit program."
Richard looks back toward his office. "We finished."
She leaves without another explanation.
I watch her cross the lobby before turning to him. "Students come to your office often?"
"Yes."
"Privately?"
Richard's patience thins. "Sometimes."
I let the answer sit for a moment before moving past him.
"You should consider whether winning every conversation is worth the cost," he says behind me.
I turn back. "I'm trying to determine who keeps creating the cost."
Then I leave him standing there.
Harper is waiting in the clinic workroom when I return, with Liya on speakerphone and a foundation transfer open on the isolated laptop.
She pulls out the chair beside her. "You need to see this."
I put Evelyn's folder with my bag and sit. "What did you find?"
Liya answers from the phone. "A foundation payment tied to the athlete-recovery account. It cleared through a legal-services authorization."
"University counsel?" I ask.
Harper rotates the laptop toward me. "Clinic."
The departmental code belongs to the student legal clinic.
Evelyn's clinic.
I read the authorization line again before looking at Harper. "When?"
"Almost a year ago." Harper opens the underlying transfer. "Long before the current credential breach."
Liya picks up from her end. "The payment route matches one of the corrections Jeremy was tracking. The clinic code appears only at the authorization layer."
"That doesn't mean Evelyn approved it." I open the account history and check the user field.
Harper points toward the blank entry. "We don't have an individual credential yet. Faculty accounts, administrative access, and shared project permissions could all touch that code."
"I know." The answer comes more defensively than I intend.
Harper looks at me, though she doesn't comment.
Richard met privately with Vanessa. A payment connected to Orell's athlete-recovery route carries Evelyn's clinic code. Peter still has the shipping folder, while Orell entered the gala through Liya's credentials. Every new fact gives us another person to suspect without clearing anyone else.
I close the transfer record. "We preserve it offline. Nobody asks Evelyn about it yet."
Harper rests her forearms beside the laptop. "You trust her."
"I do." I look through the glass toward Evelyn's closed office door. "That doesn't change the payment."
Liya speaks through the phone again. "I'll trace the foundation side before tomorrow."
I pack Evelyn's academic-record checklist separately from the transfer report. I don't like putting the two documents into the same bag, though I do it anyway because taking one without the other would be more suspicious if anyone checks.
It's after midnight when I reach the penthouse.
The office door is open. Erik is asleep in the chair behind his desk with Jeremy's files spread around him, while Serena's medication sits untouched beside a glass of water.
He should be in bed, and I should wake him to tell him that.
Instead, I take the throw from the sofa and drape it over him without touching the injured side.
Erik catches my wrist before I straighten. There's almost no strength in his grip when he opens his eyes.
"Don't go."
Last night, he reached for me while unconscious, then spent the morning trying to turn it into something he'd done wrong.
Tonight, he asks.
I lower myself to the floor beside his chair and rest against the desk. "I'm staying."
Erik releases most of my wrist, though his fingers remain loosely around it when his eyes close again.
I leave my hand where it is.