Zoe couldn’t say she felt any kind of misplaced nostalgia for them. She had rarely been invited to parties of any kind, and it was even rarer that she attended them. Then, as now, this kind of party was too overwhelming. The noise, the people in all directions, the intoxication and temptation of forbidden alcohol—and, judging by the smells in the air, other substances, too.
With the benefit of extra years of experience, it was still all Zoe could do to concentrate on studying the faces of those who ran by her. She checked each of them for the youth in the photograph, but although there were plenty of near matches, none of them were the real Jensen Jones. She felt like a stone in the middle of a river, the current washing around her. There were plenty of interesting things that caught her eye, angles and figures and signs, but they went by so quickly that she was barely even able to register them before they were gone.
Shelley reemerged from the third room, shaking her head. Zoe tore her eyes back toward the stairs, just in time to see someone charging down them. A young woman wearing a collection of twelve bottle tops all strung together around her neck, clattering against one another as she ran—
“There!” Shelley shouted.
Zoe pulled her attention back from the girl too late, seeing only another blur passing by her. By the way Shelley was pointing, Zoe knew that it must have been their guy. She swore under her breath—he was through the door already.
She twisted on her feet and sprang after him, keeping him in her sights as he raced away. He was five foot ten, built athletically, muscles straining easily in his calves as his arms pumped up and down. Young, in shape, and clearly an experienced runner.
Zoe had barely gone five steps before she knew she didn’t have a hope in hell of catching him.
In her head, the campus spread out before her like a map, topography and angles of incline included. He was snaking away toward the left, making for a group of small buildings that dotted the edge of the campus. Behind them was a fence, built to maintain a barrier between the college and the surrounding town.
Zoe thought faster than she could run. His path would necessarily have to be curved, following the line of the fence, before he reached a gap and a gate for pedestrians to pass through. That was if he had even brought his student ID with him, which she knew already was needed for exiting at that point, right next to several college facilities.
“Keep on him!” she yelled over her shoulder, seeing Shelley from the corner of her eye as she herself peeled away to the right. At this speed, he would always outrun her. But she could cross a shorter distance in the same time, and calculating his miles per hour against hers, she knew that she could meet him at the gate.
But only if she cut a straight line across an open quad, through a narrow corridor between two buildings, and then directly across the parking lot behind it.
Only if someone didn’t get in her way.
Zoe pumped her arms and legs harder, speeding up even when she thought she was at her limit, straining against the cold night air streaming into her lungs. It was not often, these days, that she had a real athletic challenge to cope with. And she wasn’t as young as he was. But she pushed, intending to make damn sure that she would be there in time—even if there was a stumbling block in her way.
The quad passed by in a blur, then it was a shot through the corridor, the thin gap thankfully empty of any other bodies to stumble into her path. The ground underfoot changed to the harsh, jarring feel of tarmac, punishing her feet for choosing to be clothed in plain dress shoes instead of trainers.
Zoe could still not see the fence on the other side of the buildings, but she could see the gate. She rushed forward with another surge of adrenaline. If she didn’t get there in time…
CHAPTER EIGHT
There was no time to lose. Zoe gave a final, hard push, forcing her body beyond its natural breaking point.
Zoe’s heart pounded in time with her feet across the parking lot, and she crashed to a halt as her body collided with another. She thrust out her arms instinctively to keep hold of him, and pushed Jensen Jones up against the ten-foot fence so that he could not use his superior build to get away.
Shelley was only a few moments behind. She was heavily out of breath and red in the face with strands of hair flying out of her chignon, but she was there. She assisted Zoe in slapping a pair of handcuffs around his wrists, behind his back, as they panted out warnings about running from law enforcement and the right to question him. He only hung his head, trying to catch his own breath as well.
Zoe’s whole body felt like it had woken up. Air and light had supplanted the spaces in between her joints, the stretching out of long-dormant muscles feeling wonderful. Of course, there was also pain; particularly in her ankles, which had not at all enjoyed the jolting across the parking lot. Overall, she felt great. There was something about the rush of wind in your hair as you raced someone else—and won.
***
The apartment building felt different to Zoe, now that it was empty of everyone except for herself, Shelley, and Jensen. The guests had scattered to the four winds, and the residents along with them. No doubt they were going for plausible deniability.
Zoe poked around the apartment that housed Jensen Jones, sniffing at thirteen cups still full of a liquid that was definitely not water and checking four ashtrays. Shelley had sat the kid down on the sofa in the open-plan room, dragging a dining chair over to sit opposite him. There were not many clean seating options left, so Zoe opted to stand and wander.
Despite his apparent inebriation, the kid was not far gone enough to misunderstand what was happening to him. In fact, he appeared to have sobered up quite nicely with the joint impact of his run and the revelation that they were FBI, not local cops.
“It was just a party,” he muttered, his eyes sweeping the floor as if looking for a traitor sign of something more serious. “Since when does the FBI get called to parties?”
“We don’t, Mr. Jones,” Shelley said, with an air of conspiracy. “Actually, we were looking for you specifically. In connection with another matter.”
Zoe was already up to twenty-two cups. Just how many people had been squeezed into this party? Given that they were still running when Zoe and Shelley left the building, she had to guess at more than a hundred.
There was nothing but confusion on Jones’s face. “What other matter?” he asked.
“There was a professor who tragically lost his life here yesterday,” Shelley said. Zoe watched her face, watching her watch him for a sign. She was getting to know Shelley better. It was easier for her to read Shelley than a stranger. “Professor Henderson was your former professor, was he not?”
“Yeah,” Jones said, then sat up straighter with a look of alarm. “Hey, but listen, I wasn’t involved in all that!”
“How did you feel about Professor Henderson?” Shelley pressed.
“Uh, he was okay. I mean. It’s super sad that he died. Everyone’s in shock.”
There were seven stubs of cigarettes in the ashtrays. They looked hand-rolled. Probably not tobacco. Zoe lowered her nose slightly and sniffed, her suspicion confirmed by the scent coming off them. And in Jones’s apartment, too. He wasn’t going to be able to put up much of an argument that it wasn’t him, or that he didn’t know the party was going on.