The Murder Rule(58)

They sat at the little table. Hannah picked at her bagel while Camila talked about her latest family drama—one of her sisters had more boyfriends than their mother approved of and it was causing fireworks at home. Hannah let the monologue flow over her. This was what Camila did. She distracted you with chitchat, but her own clever brain never real y stopped watching and analyzing.

“So Sean thinks you might have had a panic attack.”

“Maybe,” Hannah said slowly. “I don’t know. It definitely threw me off balance. The prison. The pressure. The whole environment.”

Camila nodded. “How do you feel now? If you’re feeling better, want to walk with me to the office? If you’re not up to it, that’s okay.

But if you are, I figured it would be nice to go in together.”

They walked along in afternoon sunshine as other students streamed around them, going to class or the gym or coffee with friends. The normalcy of it was jarring. Hannah tried to tel herself that the scar meant nothing, changed nothing. It was just a coincidence, that was al . Maybe both men had had similar scars.

That could happen. It didn’t work. Nothing worked. A crack had opened in her mind and now other thoughts were seeping through.

Questions she’d pushed aside over the years were now demanding her attention. She needed answers. She should make her excuses now, go back to Maine, talk to her mother. But could she be sure that Laura would tel her the truth?

“You know what’s weird?” Camila asked, in her most conversational tone. “I filed some motions last week in a few different cases, just preliminary stuff, you know. Anyway, after the screwup with the Dandridge court filings I went and checked al of mine. Like I said, I figured, if the system glitched with Dandridge, no reason it wouldn’t glitch with everything else, right? But guess what I found?”

“What?” Hannah said, dutiful y. Maybe it was Dandridge she needed to talk to. The thought was frightening. Could she do that?

Go back into the prison and confront him?

“Nothing! Everything’s perfect. Nothing misfiled. Al the document numbers line up perfectly.”

“That’s great.” Hannah wasn’t listening to Camila. She was thinking about how she could approach a conversation with Dandridge. How she could use the secrets she held to provoke him, to get to the truth.

“Mmm. It’s good news for me, sure, but it’s not great news for the Project, is it?”

“No?”

“Wel , I think it’s pretty clear that what happened with Dandridge was sabotage, right? It wasn’t a computer glitch. Someone deliberately screwed with our files.” That final y got Hannah’s ful attention.

“You think Pierce and his cronies hacked into our system?”

“Either that or it was an inside job.” The words were delivered so lightly, so delicately, that it was almost possible to miss their intention. They hung in the air between the two women as they walked down the busy sidewalk, and Hannah, working hard to keep a cool facade, tried to figure out how best to respond. She wasn’t capable of dealing with Camila this morning. She was far too distracted and conscious al the time of the looming deadline. It was now Friday, and the case was before the court on Monday. They were almost out of time.

Camila stopped short in the middle of the sidewalk. “Wait a minute.” She put a hand on Hannah’s arm. “Isn’t that Hazel? Just over there?” She pointed to the other side of the road and waved her free hand high in the air. “Hazel! Hey, Hazel.”

On the other side of the street Hazel El ison, hat pul ed low over her curls, cast a quick glance over her shoulder in their direction and then hurried in the other direction. Surprise froze Camila in place, then she exclaimed under her breath, tightened her grip on Hannah’s arm, and tugged her across the road.

“Hazel,” Camila cal ed again, hurrying her steps. Hazel final y slowed, defeated, and turned to face them.

“Camila.” Hazel’s voice and face were tight. Her eyes flicked to Hannah’s face, but showed no signs of recognition.

“You’re the last person I expected to see today,” Camila said, smiling tightly. “I thought you’d be in New York by now. Getting al set up for your big interview.”

Hazel drew in a breath, as if she had just been slapped. “So it was you then? You were the one who set me up? Man, you’re a good actor, Camila. I real y thought you were pissed I was leaving.”

Camila stood there, brow furrowed, looking utterly mystified.

“Don’t give me that innocent thing.” But Hazel looked unsure, and her eyes searched Camila’s face, looking for confirmation of her suspicions.

“Hazel, I have no earthly idea of what you’re talking about,”

Camila said.

Hazel blinked back tears of anger and disappointment. “There was no interview,” she said. “I went to New York. The woman who was supposed to be interviewing me had never heard of me. I asked to speak to Gabe, the partner I’d worked with in the summer. He came down to see me. He had no idea what I was talking about.

There never was any interview. Somebody played a hilarious, hilarious joke.”

Camila drew in a horrified breath. “Oh my God,” she said.

“It was awful,” Hazel said. “I could see that Gabe thought I had . . . I don’t know. Made it up somehow. That I was delusional, or hoping to . . . I don’t know. I got out of there as fast as I could, but the story is already everywhere.”