29. Rowan
ROWAN
Iwake with my left cheek against a pillow I've never seen before, my head hurting near the back where somebody struck me.
My right shoulder protests when I roll onto it, so I stay down long enough to check everything else before moving.
My abdomen doesn't hurt, I have no cramping, and there's no blood between my legs.
That is the only good information available.
The room belongs in an expensive rehabilitation brochure.
Pale walls surround a carved wooden bed, an upholstered chair, a television, and a private bathroom.
Somebody has disguised most of the medical equipment well enough that an athlete with money could pretend he's recovering at a resort.
A call button sits beside the bed, commercial locks are built into the window frames, and the air carries the faint smell of disinfectant beneath floral cleaner.
Evelyn sits in the chair near the window with a white cup near her knee. Rahil stands beside the closed door in a black shirt with one sleeve rolled up. Medical tape crosses his cheek where I caught him during the fight, though he looks considerably better than I do.
I look at Evelyn's shoes before her face.
The practical black heels are low enough for a full day on campus and familiar enough that I've watched them cross Fenwick Hall for four semesters.
They're the same pair I saw coming through the conference-center lobby before somebody drove me into the gravel.
Evelyn follows my gaze. "I wish you hadn't seen me there."
"That would make this easier for you." I push myself upright, using the headboard for support when the room tilts slightly.
Rahil takes a step away from the door. Evelyn turns toward him before he comes closer. "She's allowed to sit up."
He returns to his previous position while I adjust the pillows behind me until my shoulder hurts less. "Where are my mother and sister?"
"They're safe. They never left the memorial dinner." Evelyn stays where she is instead of approaching the bed.
"I know that now." I study her while the pieces settle into place. "You built the trap around the phones. You collected them at the door, then somebody took Mom's purse and arranged for her car to leave."
Evelyn places the cup on the small table beside her. "A valet working for Orell drove the car. Laura never knew it left the venue."
I turn toward Rahil. "What about Callie's phone?"
"One of our people took it from the collection basket." He crosses his arms again and settles beside the door.
That leaves Evelyn's part. I look back at her. "Then you called me."
"Yes." She doesn't try to qualify it.
Hearing her admit it hurts more than the blow to my head.
She knew which details I would verify and which authority I would trust after every other source failed.
She taught me to question easy answers, preserve evidence, separate suspicion from proof, and protect my future when anger made that inconvenient.
She used every lesson to build a lie I would believe. "You told me you'd called the police."
Evelyn leans back against the chair. "I knew you wouldn't go near that building without another source confirming the threat."
"That wasn't my question."
"No. I didn't call them."
Rahil checks the hallway when a cart passes outside, then closes the door more firmly. I push the blanket aside and lower my feet to the floor. Cold comes through my socks, though standing matters more than comfort.
Evelyn watches me without getting up. "You should move carefully. You were unconscious for several hours."
"I'm not asking for medical advice from the woman who arranged my kidnapping."
"I understand."
I stand and wait for the brief dizziness to pass. The bathroom is six steps away, and Rahil moves enough to keep me visible without blocking the door. There is no mirror above the sink. The latch has been removed too, so I close the door as far as it will go and examine what I can.
Purple bruising spreads over my hip and shoulder.
One side of my face hurts where I hit the gravel.
My sweater is stretched at the shoulder, with dirt ground into one sleeve, but my underwear is clean.
I stay there for several seconds, letting that fact settle before I wash my face with cold water and drink from the tap.
When I return to the bedroom, Evelyn has moved her untouched tea to the desk.
I sit on the edge of the mattress rather than spend strength standing out of spite. "How long?"
Evelyn looks at me. "You'll have to narrow that."
"You've spent four semesters teaching me to ask better questions. You know this one." I rest my forearms on my thighs. "How long have you been working for Orell?"
Rahil glances toward her, but Evelyn ignores him. "Ten years ago, your father came to the legal clinic."
That isn't the answer I expect, and she knows it. I wait instead of helping her.
"He wasn't a client. He trusted one of the faculty members and wanted advice about financial irregularities he'd found at Blackthorne.
" Evelyn shifts in the chair before continuing.
"It wasn't the operation you've been investigating.
Zaitsev Athletic Management didn't exist in its current form, and Orell wasn't moving money through athletics the way he does now. "
"What did Dad find?"
"Restricted money shifted into operating accounts, donor funds covering expenses they were never approved to cover, and several transactions cleaned up after the fact."
I scowl. "That's financial misconduct."
"Yes."
I straighten. "You buried it."
Evelyn looks toward the window for a moment before facing me again.
"Richard Caldwell came to my office after Jeremy raised the issue.
Blackthorne was already under accreditation pressure, and several programs were operating on emergency financing.
Richard believed public exposure could cost the university access to federal funding. "
"You're giving me his justification."
"I'm giving you mine." Evelyn leaves the chair and crosses to the desk, though she keeps several feet between us.
"Four hundred students were within a semester of completing degrees.
Nursing students, teachers, international students, and people carrying debt they could never discharge were all at risk if Blackthorne collapsed.
Richard put their files in front of me."
I get up too, anger making sitting impossible. "You believed him."
"Yes. I also believed the misconduct could be corrected internally without destroying those students."
"That doesn't make what you did legal."
"No." Evelyn says it without hesitation, then turns her back long enough to move the cup farther onto the desk. "I knew that then too."
I wanted denial. I wanted her to tell me she'd had no choice so I could take apart the excuse and hand it back to her. Instead, she stands in front of me with the same answer she would have demanded from a student.
I move toward the window and pull the drape aside.
A landscaped courtyard sits one floor below, with brick paths crossing between low buildings designed to look residential.
Every entrance has a card reader. Two men stand near a black SUV, while another walks along the fence beyond a row of trees.
No public road is visible. I let the drape drop. "How did Orell get you?"
"He learned what I'd done." Evelyn returns to the chair but doesn't sit. "He had copies of emails and a memorandum I drafted but never filed. He knew I'd helped redirect the complaint into an internal process, and he knew what exposure would do to my career."
"He blackmailed you."
"At first." She looks at me directly when she says it.
The qualifier is worse than the confession.
"The first request concerned an athlete's representation agreement.
Nothing illegal on its face." Evelyn sits again, with both feet planted on the floor.
"Later he wanted contract-review dates, names, schedules, complaints, and internal discussions. Each request made the next one easier."
"And eventually you stopped pretending you were protecting Blackthorne."
Her mouth presses into a hard line. "I stopped pretending years ago."
A knock interrupts us. Rahil opens the door far enough to accept a tray from a man in dark medical scrubs, then sets it on the desk beside Evelyn's tea. Soup, bread, a banana, and sealed water fill the tray. I look from the food to the room around me. "This place actually treats athletes."
"Yes." Evelyn turns toward the tray. "Orell built legitimate rehabilitation services around the rest of his business. Athletes recover here, recruits disappear from public view for a few days, and clients can avoid ordinary hospitals when publicity would cost them."
Aaron's athlete-recovery billing lines return to me. We kept passing over them because medical expenses looked ordinary beside shell companies, donor fraud, and equipment contracts. I walk closer to Evelyn. "How much did you give him about us?"
Her attention drops to the carpet. "Enough."
"That answer wouldn't survive ten seconds in your class."
Evelyn looks up. "When you brought documents into the clinic, I copied them."
The chain-of-custody forms after Aaron's death. Jeremy's records. The access logs. Every conversation where she asked what we had and where it was stored. "You told me to preserve evidence."
"You needed to."
"You also needed to know where I kept it.
" I move another step toward her. "You warned me somebody had accessed sealed clinic files, then you redirected us toward Harper.
" Evelyn doesn't answer immediately, and that's enough.
"You knew Erik would look at her differently because she was close to me.
" My shoulder hurts when I fold my arms, so I drop them again. "You knew exactly where to push him."
"I knew how he assesses risk."
"You knew he loved me."
Evelyn looks away.