One Major Distraction

“Nothing,” he said as he placed his plate on the tray that already sported a small bowl of salad. Next would be the apple pie, laid out at the end of the line for the diners to snag as they passed, just like last Thursday. Dr. Barber insisted on structure, even in the dining hall. “Why do you ask?”

She screwed up her nose a little, as if she wasn’t sure about what she was about to do. “Stick around?” she asked softly.

There wasn’t time to ask why. A couple of giggling girls were coming up behind him. “Sure,” Flynn said as he moved toward the pie. “Why not?”

Tess didn’t want to do this, but who else could she turn to?

“Mind telling me what we’re doing here?” Flynn asked as she led him up the narrow stairs. “I’d like to think you just couldn’t stand it anymore and have been overcome with the need to jump my bones, but…”

She glanced over her shoulder and glared at him.

“But every now and then you look at me like that and I know I’m not going to be so lucky. So, what’s going on?”

In the second-story hallway, there was plenty of space for him to walk beside her, and he did. Mary Jo was downstairs, finishing up the last of the dishes. The older woman mistakenly thought that Tess’s meeting with Flynn was some sort of date, and since it pleased the older woman so much and was, after all, a plausible explanation, Tess had allowed Mary Jo to assume away.

“Mary Jo and I each have a room up here. The rooms aren’t anything to brag about, but they’re convenient and they come with the job.” She pointed down one short hallway. “We’re down this way, along with an old office where Dr. Barber sometimes comes when she wants to work uninterrupted. The other rooms up here,” she continued down the hallway, rather than making her usual turn, “are used mostly for storage. Books, records, old furniture, that sort of thing. Dr. Barber is paranoid about school property being stolen, so the rooms are always locked. Always,” she said again, with emphasis.

The hallway had a musty smell, as if the scent of old paper had seeped from the books and records and into the very walls.

“This morning, when I was headed down to start breakfast, I noticed that the door to the corner room was not only unlocked, it was slightly ajar.”

“What time?” Flynn asked, all business now that he knew why she’d asked him to come upstairs.

“Five-fifteen. When I checked later, the door was closed and locked.”

He nodded. “Did you ask Dr. Barber about the open room?”

“No. I went to see her after breakfast, but she’d gone to a one-day seminar in Atlanta. She won’t be back until later. I didn’t want to tell her secretary, especially after I found the door locked again. What could she do? Call the sheriff and tell him I saw a door ajar? They wouldn’t take something like that seriously. They’d just laugh at me.”

Outside the door that was once again locked, Flynn looked down at her. The lighting at this end of the hallway was dim, but she could see very well the stern cut of his jaw and the deadly serious gleam in his eyes. He believed her, thank goodness. She’d known he wouldn’t laugh at her for being alarmed about something so apparently inconsequential.

“Why me?” he asked. “Why come to me with this?”

She pursed her lips, slightly. “Because you’re one of those guys who fixes things when they’re broken. A woman hands you a problem, and you solve it. It’s part of your caveman mentality, your need to be leader of the pack, your macho and occasionally useful need to solve every mystery that crosses your path.”

“Thank you, Red,” Flynn said, adding after a moment, “I think.” He tried the doorknob, and found it locked tight. “Hairpin?” he said, thrusting out his palm without turning to look at her. Of course, he knew she wore a few hairpins, when her hair was pinned up and back for work. At least she’d stuck the hairnet in her pocket as she’d led him up the stairs.

She gave him a hairpin. He bent it with capable fingers, then dropped down and gave his attention to the lock. In a matter of seconds Tess heard the tumbler turn. The door opened.

“Where did you learn to do that?”

“Misspent youth,” he answered. “Surprised?”

“Not really.”

They stepped into the room, which was exactly as it had been this morning. Cold, musty and apparently undisturbed. Tess reached for the light switch, but Flynn stopped her.

“No light. Someone might be watching.”

She let her hand fall. “Right. I didn’t think of that.” And he had, of course. Those guys always thought of such possibilities.

“What’s stored in here?” he asked as he walked to the corner of the room. Moonlight shone softly through the uncovered windows, keeping the room from being completely dark.

“Records, looks like,” she glanced at a battered cardboard file box that caught a shaft of moonlight. “Old ones, it seems.”

Flynn studied the boxes for a moment, puzzled and lost in thought. He looked at the old books stored on the bookshelves with just as much interest, and then he moved to the window. There were two windows in this corner room. Tess walked up behind Flynn to try to see whatever it was that he saw. There wasn’t much. One window looked over the front entrance to the campus and the soccer field. The other faced the largest of two girls’ dormitories.

Flynn let out a long, slow breath, and then he opened one window. Not only was it unlocked, the windowpane lifted easily and without making a sound. He closed and locked the window, then seemed to think again and unlocked it. The second window opened just as easily and silently. Flynn ran his fingers along the windowsill.

“It’s been recently oiled,” he said softly.

“Why?” Tess asked, her voice just as low.

“I can’t think of any good reason,” Flynn said, and then he muttered a vile word beneath his breath.

Movement caught Tess’s eye, and she pointed to the figures that were running between this building and the dormitory. “Look. Someone’s out there in the cold.”

“I see them,” Flynn said, unconcerned. “It’s just the janitor and the math teacher, headed for the gardener’s shed. Again.”

“Oh,” Tess said, deflated but more than a little relieved. Everyone knew about Dante Mangino and Serena Loomis. Everyone but Dr. Barber, that is, who would probably have a stroke if she thought anyone was having sex on the grounds of her school. The fact that the odd couple were so obviously enjoying themselves would be another strike against them.

Flynn left the windows, and everything else in the room, as he’d found them, and he locked the door as they stepped into the hallway. For a moment, he leaned against the wall and gave the matter some thought, and then he looked down at her. He had never seemed quite so tall and imposing as he did at this moment.

“Why did you come to me?”

“I told you, you’re one of those guys who…”

“No, that’s not what I mean. You didn’t have to go to anyone with this. It’s no big deal, right? Someone was snooping where they didn’t belong. Anyone with a credit card or a hairpin could get into this room in a matter of seconds. Could’ve been some bored student poking around…”

“At 5:00 a.m.?” Tess asked sharply.

“There are a hundred logical reasons for this room being unlocked this morning. Why does it alarm you so much?”

She wasn’t sure how to answer that. “Intuition,” she said. “I don’t know what Dr. Barber told you, but this month there have been a couple of break-ins. Nothing was taken, that I know of, but something just isn’t right. If there’s anything going on here that might in any way endanger—” she almost, almost, said my daughter “—the students,” she continued after a very short pause, “then I want it taken care of.” And Flynn Benning was the man to do it. How did she know that? Intuition, again, she supposed. “Do you really think it was just a bored student?”

“No. I wish I did.”

They walked back down the hallway, moving slowly. Instead of proceeding down the stairs when they reached them, Flynn sat on the top step. After a moment’s hesitation, Tess lowered herself to sit beside him. As usual, he looked slightly ill at ease in his khakis and button-up shirt, as if they were a costume he put on in order to do his job. She knew how he felt. There were times she felt like she was in costume, pretending to be someone she was not, in order to be here. His brow furrowed, a little, and his mouth thinned.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Maybe I do.”

He relaxed there, sitting on the step, looking very much as if he belonged here, in spite of his outfit and the stern expression. Wide-shouldered and tougher than he had to be and cynical in a way that cut to the core…he was oddly fetching. The cut of his jaw and the width of his neck were masculine and handsome. Much as she wanted to think otherwise, she did not have time for fetching men who weren’t going to stay. Even fetching men who were going to stay would distract her from her reason for being here.

Still, it couldn’t hurt to look.