He walks across the platform and jumps up to sit on top of Professor Hullum’s desk, and I hear a collective female sigh. I roll my eyes.
No doubt, my spidey senses were right. This guy is big fat fucking trouble.
“You have to look beyond the information you’re given to the information you can find,” he continues, and I’m just about to look away—because Jesus, this guy is something else, and I don’t want any part of whatever sexy black voodoo he’s tossing out like candy toward the rest of my female classmates—when his gaze finds mine directly and holds it.
Shit. I don’t miss the amused recognition that flashes behind the sienna hues of his eyes.
He remembers me.
And most likely, he remembers the moans that blared from my audiobook while I bumbled around like an idiot with my phone.
I freeze in my seat, eternally grateful I decided to cross my arms a few short minutes ago, and I can feel his eyes on me like a physical touch. A fucking shiver runs up my spine.
Look away, Ruby! Look away from the sexy man!
I try to force myself to break the intense eye contact, but it’s no use. His penetrating stare holds my gaze, and he starts to speak again. “I’ll give you an example that some of you might relate to. Say you see a pretty woman or a handsome bastard—depending, of course, on your preferences—in…a library.”
Déjà vu hits me like a Mack truck.
What the hell…?
My mind fixates on the word library, while my breath catches in my throat so hard, I nearly choke. It’s all I can do to stay in my seat.
Caplin smirks and continues.
“And you want to see her—or him—again. But you don’t know her name—you don’t know her at all. How might you go about finding her?”
A guy down in front who loves to answer questions raises his hand. Caplin calls on him immediately.
“Yeah?”
“Is she an employee or just a patron?”
Caplin’s smile deepens. “An employee.”
The guy perks up. “Find the library board and request a staff roster.”
Caplin jumps back off the desk and walks across the room again. “Ah, great idea. Except, say you do that, and her information still doesn’t come up.”
The guy frowns, and another law student a few rows up and on the other side of the room raises his hand.
“Go back to the library and see if she’s there.”
“Right!” Caplin snaps his fingers. “Back to the scene of the crime. Of course, when you get there, she’s not there, because let’s not make this too easy. What do you do then?”
The first guy to answer speaks up again. “Ask whoever is there about her. Employees usually know other employees.”
Caplin nods. “Yes!”
My heart picks up its pace, and I squeeze my hands into fists just as Caplin’s eyes find mine again and stick like honey.
“So, you do that. You ask around about her. But when you talk to the employee on duty, he refuses to disclose her information.”
Oh God. Kevin.
Caplin’s smirk gets even…smirkier. “So, what now? What’s the next step?”
The girl next to me, someone I vaguely know as Sandra, raises her hand, and it catches me off guard. I don’t know if I thought I was in some kind of twilight zone bubble or what, but despite being the possible subject matter of an entire classroom, I don’t really feel like I’m in my own body. “But you have his information from the employee roster. And you know what she looks like. Certainly, you could run a simple background check on him and see if it turns up any of her details.”
“Yeah.” Cap rubs at his jaw. “You could go the private detective route, the whole nine yards. But don’t you think that maybe there’s a simpler way to get her information. Something less pricey?”
Before I even realize I’m doing it, my hand is in the air.
Caplin smiles before pointing up at me. “Yes?”
My glare is pointed, and I tilt my head for extra emphasis. “Or you could just leave her alone. If she didn’t give you any of her information, maybe she doesn’t want you to find her.”
His smile deepens, and my chest grows tight. “Sorry. That’s unequivocally, absolutely, wholeheartedly not an option.”
Half of the class snickers, and I clench my teeth.
“Any other ideas?” he asks the class. “Besides the background check? What other kinds of clues could you have gotten from your initial interaction?”
The copies. The file. Jesus Christ. Even though I’m not a regular employee, just a sub, the computer system makes you log your name when you check a file back into the stack and when you make copies.
I shake my head, and then, when no one else raises their hand, decide fuck it.
If nothing else, at least I’ll get to look smart.
I raise my hand again.
Caplin’s smile is downright mind-bending when he looks back up at me. “Yes?”
“If she made copies or handled any files or did anything in the library, really, it would make her log in to the system with her name.” He smirks at my words, and I continue with a challenging smile. “Of course, I’m not sure how the person looking for her would find that information without doing something illegal.”
“Ah, well. That’s easy. All you’d need to do is go back to the information desk when a different employee was working and ask for the file, tell them you couldn’t find it in the stacks. They’d look in the log to see the last person to handle it, and probably, mention them out loud when they promised you they’d look into it. And once you have her name, it’s all gravy from there.”
“So, did you find her?” the dude in front asks, the guys around him nodding.
Caplin tears his eyes away from mine—and it legitimately looks like it takes effort—to glance back at them.
“Ah, boys, sorry,” he murmurs with a wink. “All of this was strictly theoretical.”
I swallow hard as the motherfucker looks up at me and bites his lip.
“But it’s got a point, I promise.”
He heads back to the board and scribbles down some notes. “This, boys and girls, is the kind of thinking you’re going to need to use on a daily basis. Every case, every single one, will have challenges. It wouldn’t be in court without them. It’s your job to think around the challenges—to keep asking questions until you find an answer. Get good at it, and you’ll be surprised just how rewarding it can be.”
My mind races with the possibilities of finding some loopholes. The ones he speaks of with such authority and wit.
Of course, the loopholes I’m looking to find only involve one thing…avoiding Caplin Hawkins like the fucking plague.
Ruby
I gather my things as quickly as possible when class dismisses and head for the back of the room. The rest of the group is in stampede mode going forward, though, and I get caught up in them like a salmon trying to swim upstream.
I turn around like a tornado, trying to fight the momentum of the crowd, which means, unfortunately, every third spin or so, I get a look at Caplin’s smiling face.
He’s not even trying to get to me—and hell, maybe it’s conceited of me to think his little library story is actually true. I mean, what if he just happened to be here, happened to notice me, and then decided to spin his tale on the fly?