“I did see that. She went to see Pink Sugar, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Yeah, I was really busy that afternoon. A lot of people coming in for the concert and stopping by to eat before going over to the venue. I had actually come up with a whole menu of pink treats for the day. Everybody seemed so happy and excited. It was really sad when I heard that someone was missing from it,” she says.

  I show her the picture on my phone. “This is her. Brianna Wright. Does she look familiar at all to you?”

  “Was she here Friday?”

  “No. At least not that I know of. I was just wondering if maybe you had seen her come in here before,” I say.

  “I don’t think so. I’m sorry, I wish I could help.”

  “It was a long shot.”

  She shrugs. “You never know where you could be cosmically drawn to.”

  “Something like that.”

  She drums her fingers on the side of the table. “You know where to find me if you need anything.”

  As she walks away, a text comes in from Roxy. Just as I had with Ethan, I give her the name of the bakery and ask if she can meet me here. I figure it’s easier for me to have her come over rather than going back onto campus, finding her, and still having to choose somewhere to talk. She agrees, and I set the phone aside to eat my croissant before she gets here. When she arrives, I’m on my second cup of coffee and have pictures ready to show her.

  “Roxy?”

  “Yeah,” she says.

  I gesture to the empty section of the booth. “I’m Agent Griffin.”

  “I’m going to grab a tea really fast,” she says, pointing over her shoulder at the counter.

  I nod, and she walks over to Scarlet. She comes back a few seconds later with a clear glass holding something pink I would not immediately think is tea.

  “Thanks for meeting me here,” I say.

  “What’s this about?” she asks.

  There’s little friendliness in her voice. Not that she’s being rude or unpleasant. She’s just not trying to seem approachable either. It’s not an unfamiliar trait.

  “Like I said in my message, I’m with the FBI, and your name came up in a case that I am investigating.”

  “My name?” she asks, sounding both confused and almost offended. “Why would my name come up? I didn’t do anything.”

  “I’m not saying you did. I’m just piecing things together. You went to a party on Friday night, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I talked to a few of the brothers at the fraternity, and they said you were pretty incapacitated at one point in the night.”

  “I wouldn’t say I was incapacitated. I was drunk, but I could handle myself. Why?” she asks.

  “What happened after the party? Nobody seems to remember when you left or if you left with anybody,” I say.

  “I wasn’t really having fun anymore, and I decided to go back to my dorm. I left by myself but ended up meeting up with a couple of people who live in my building, and we walked back together. I can give you their names and stuff.”

  “That’s not necessary right now. But I appreciate the offer. I might take you up on it later. Do you know Brianna Wright?” I ask.

  “That name sounds familiar.” She thinks for a second. “Oh, that’s the girl who’s missing, right? I heard about her on the news.”

  “Yes, she went missing Friday. That’s the case I’m investigating. Do you know her?”

  “No.”

  I show her the picture. “You’ve never seen her?”

  “Not that I can remember.”

  I scroll through and pull up another picture, this one showing Brianna wearing the jacket.

  “Does that jacket look familiar to you?” I ask.

  Roxy shakes her head. “No. Should it?”

  “I would think so since you were wearing it Friday night.”

  She gets a quizzical look on her face. “What are you talking about?”

  “You were wearing that jacket at the party Friday night. The guys I talked to remembered you wearing it, and one of them found it out on the lawn. They actually had it up on display in the living room of the frat house.”

  “Guys suck.” Her eyes widen slightly then says, “Yeah, I was wearing that jacket! I didn’t even think about it. It ended up being a lot colder outside than I expected. I had been out walking around for a while by the time I ended up at the party, and I was cold. I saw that jacket on the side of the road and picked it up. After I left the party, I didn’t want to bring it back with me, so I took it off, and I guess just dropped it on the lawn. I don’t really remember it clearly.”

  “You just found the jacket on the side of the road?”

  “Yeah. A few blocks from the frat house. That’s why I left it. I figured maybe they would know who it belonged to or somebody would see it,” she says. “I was cold, and it looked like a warm jacket. I didn’t think it was a big deal.”

  I find a map of campus and slide my phone toward her. “Can you show me approximately where you found it?”

  Roxy uses her fingers to zoom in on the image so she can pinpoint an area. Like she said, it’s not far from the frat house, just some distance from where I found the smashed pieces of Brianna’s phone. I’m not sure what that means. I don’t know why her phone would have been smashed in one place and her jacket found in another. I guess it’s possible that she could have accidentally dropped her phone and it was run over by a car, but I would think that she would have noticed that she didn’t have it. It’s just little fragments I can’t quite gather together yet.

  “And you didn’t see anybody around it? You didn’t see somebody put it down or walk away from it?” I ask.

  “No, it was just kind of on the sidewalk.”

  “And this was not the first time that you’ve been to a party at the frat house?”

  “No, I’ve been to a couple of them,” she says.

  “Have you ever noticed anything while you were at a party that made you uncomfortable? Any kind of behavior that you thought was out of line from any of the brothers?”

  “What do you mean? What kind of behavior?”

  “Did it ever seem like any of them paid particular attention to a girl who wasn’t interested and wouldn’t take no for an answer? Or seemed like they were doing something that they shouldn’t be? When I was talking to the brothers, I did hear that the administration has not been happy with the fact that underage girls have been at the parties. Have you ever noticed anything involving those girls that would be potentially problematic?” I ask.

  “Are you asking me if I’ve ever witnessed any of them try to date-rape somebody?” She says it with a slight edge to her voice, almost like she thinks that I’ll be shocked by her bluntness or offended by the topic.

  I’m far from either, but I recognize more and more of the traits that the guys described about her. While she’s not jumping up on the table to dance, her attitude and way of saying that give the same type of attention-seeking impression. She’s searching for validation, for something to make her stand out. It’s not unusual for a girl her age, and it doesn’t impact the information she’s giving me, so I don’t acknowledge it.

  “That could be one thing. It could also be taking pictures, doing drugs…” I say.

  “I’ve never seen any of that. And I’ve never had it happen to me. Like I said, I know how to handle myself.”

  “You did say that. All right, I really appreciate your help.”

  She starts to stand up, then leans closer toward me like she is being conspiratorial. I notice Scarlet eyeing her from behind the counter, but she looks away when she notices me looking at her.

  “You don’t think the guys had anything to do with that girl being missing, do you? Like they did something to her?” she asks.

  “I’m still just gathering information. I don’t have any theories right now.”

  She looks a bit disappointed by that, but she gets up. As soon as she is out of the bakery, Scarlet comes over to me.

  “I’ve never seen the girl whose picture you showed me, but I’ve definitely seen that girl before,” she tells me.

  “The one I was just talking to?” I ask.

  She nods. “She comes in here pretty often. Always gets the watermelon hibiscus tea.”

  “Is that what that was?” I ask. She nods. “It was pretty.”

  “I make a butterfly pea flower one too. It’s blue. Anyway, she was here on Friday. I happened to look up and see her through the window as she was walking down the sidewalk across the street. There was a man following her.”

  “Following her?” I ask.

  “Yeah. He wasn’t just walking behind her. He was focused right on her and actually bobbed around a couple of people trying to speed up and get closer to her. It seemed like he called out to her, but she just kept going. He stayed right near her, but then when she crossed the street to come in, he stopped and went the other way.”

  “Did you mention it to her when she came inside?” I ask.

  “I did. I asked if she knew the guy behind her. She was on her phone the whole time, even when I asked her, and she kind of looked up and over her shoulder like she expected him to still be there, then smiled and was like, ‘There was a guy following me?’ It was like she was really flattered by it.

  “But I don’t think she knew him. It’s not like this area is crazy busy. Even when there are a lot of people, the sidewalks aren’t packed. If he knew her, he would have called out her name, and she would have heard it. I think she wasn’t paying much attention, and he was just kind of catcalling.

  “When he stopped and changed direction because she crossed the street, it didn’t look like he was just giving up. He hesitated like maybe he didn’t want to get near a crowded place. I mean, obviously, I don’t know. But it just struck me as really weird. It stood out to me, and after that, I kept looking out the window while she was here and then when she left, expecting him to be there,” Scarlet says.

  “But you didn’t see him again?”

  “No.”

  “Could you describe him?”

  “Um, not really. He was across the street, so I couldn’t see any details. He was probably six feet tall. He had on jeans, either a dark-green or dark-blue hoodie. Maybe black. And he had on a beanie kind of tugged down over his forehead and hair, so I don’t know what color hair he had or anything,” she says.

  “Was he big? Skinny?”

  “Kind of big, like he works out. I’m sorry, I wish there was more I could tell you,” she says. “It’s probably nothing.”

  “No, I’m glad you told me. I can understand why it stood out to you. That’s suspicious. It’s better to be more vigilant than you think you might need to be than be not vigilant enough,” I say. “Remember what you said about being cosmically led somewhere?”

  I don’t genuinely believe that I was brought to the bakery by any kind of cosmic force. The desire for caffeine and luck of the GPS-recommended local business feature, yes. But Scarlet seemed delighted by the attribution, so I’ll go with it.

  On my way back to the frat house, I call Noah to make sure the jacket is being processed.

  “The team has it,” he tells me. “I’ve already been warned about fifteen times that anything found on it will be subject to tremendous scrutiny because of the dubious chain of custody and how many people have handled it without taking proper precautions.”

  “Good to know you’ve never investigated anything,” I say. “You should do some studying in your spare time.”

  “Thanks.”

  I chuckle. “All right. I’m on my way back to talk to Nick again. I got some information after talking to Roxy that gave me an idea. I’ll fill you in later.”

  “I’m going back to the hospital to check on Doe. So far, there hasn’t been any luck with finding any footage of this mystery other driver. But we’re still looking.”

  “Okay, we’ll reconvene later.”

  I hang up as I’m parking. Getting out of the car, I see Nick from the frat house coming toward me down the sidewalk.

  “Um. Hey, Agent,” he says.

  “Hey, Nick. I was just coming back to talk to you.”

  “To me? I really told you everything I know. There are some other guys at the house now if you want to talk to them,” he says.

  “I’m sure you did. I’m not here to ask you anything else about the party. I was hoping you could help me,” I say.

  “Sure, but I’ll be late for class, and my professor likes to play attendance roulette, so I’ve got to go.”

  “‘Attendance roulette’?” I ask, falling into step beside him as he continues down the sidewalk.

  “It’s a lecture class, so there are about three hundred people in it. He obviously can’t call everybody in every class, and he doesn’t use virtual check-ins because he says people can just do it for their friends. Which, clearly, they do. So he randomly chooses a few names from his roll every class and calls them. If you’re there, you get full credit. If you’re not, you get a zero. It’s the grade for the entire semester.”

  “Unless he picks your name again?” I ask.

  “So you see the issue,” he says.

  “I had a teacher do the same thing when I was in college,” I tell him. “I sat in the front row of his class every single class for the two semesters I took his classes, and he never once called on me.”

  “That’s fucking anxiety-inducing.”

  “I mean, not if you go to class,” I point out.

  He looks at me out of the corner of his eye, and I feel approximately two hundred years old.

  “What can I help you with?” he asks.

  We take a sharp turn onto the next road, and I realize we’re walking right along the same path where Roxy found the jacket. There’s nothing unique about the stretch of road, nothing that would make it stand out in any particular way. When we’re on the block she indicated, I see there’s nothing to hide in or behind, no alleys. It’s bordered on one side by a chain-link fence at the perimeter of a practice sports field, and on the other, by academic buildings. However Brianna’s jacket ended up being here, she isn’t here anymore.

  “I need your help with the Hive. The school’s internal network,” I say.

  “Right,” Nick says, looking both ways at the same time as jogging across the street.

  “Are there different ways to search for people, like if you didn’t know their name?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like if Roxy’s picture hadn’t shown up when you put her name into the search, what would your next step have been?” I ask.

  “I would have probably done an image search. The system is set up so that you can scan an image in or take a picture of it and then run it through the recognition program.”

  We go down a narrow cobblestone path between two academic buildings and cross a courtyard toward another one.

  “That seems problematic,” I say.

  “Well, it doesn’t give you any personal information about anyone on the images. It’s not like the directory. That’s information that the students themselves have provided. A lot of people don’t have anything but their student email on there. There’s a collection of pictures on the network that students put up there, kind of like a virtual yearbook. It’s mostly things like school events, games, those kinds of things, but people add pictures of their regular lives too. You saw the ones that were on Roxy’s page. The program can find faces and show you results with certain tags. Anything that has the school, a club, or the team tagged will be searched.”

  “Okay, I still have my issues with that. But moving on. Can you run a picture of Brianna through the recognition program for me?” I ask.

  “Didn’t you say she’s in high school?” he asks.

  “She is. But she went to a party at your fraternity too. That could mean that she has attended other events or activities on campus,” I point out.

  “Yeah, I can do that for you. But I’ve got to get inside. Can we do this later?” he asks.

  “What class is this?” I ask.

  “Ancient Greek History,” he says.

  “Is there a particular dream career path you are pursuing that firmly requires extensive knowledge of ancient Greek history?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “And would your professor notice an extra in his three hundred students?” I ask.

  “I doubt it.”

  “Then I’m coming with you.”

  He hesitates. “Um…”

  “Look,” I say, stepping up closer to him, “the last time I was in this town, I was working a case that involved digging a group of four out of the ground, getting the heat off a woman falsely accused of stabbing a man to death, and chipping a preserved corpse out of a layer of wax. Things escalate very quickly in my world, and I just frankly don’t have the time to sit around waiting for you to finish your class.

  “Brianna is missing. Every second that she stays missing makes it more likely she’s never coming home. I could search for images by myself, but it’s not just pictures I want. I need context, and it will be a lot more streamlined and save a lot of time if this system works.”

  He blinks at me like he’s feeling vaguely ill. “Chipping a body out of wax?” he asks.

  Clearly, he does not put much attention into keeping up with the news. The media went wild last spring for the story of the movie prop that turned out to be a real murder victim.

  “A preserved corpse,” I repeat. “Much like a mummy. So… look at that, I’m practically a lesson in your class already. Which room is it?”

  I’m not giving him any more chance to get out of this. I’m sure not going to sit out here in the cold and wait for him to come out of class, or go back to my car and stake out the frat house like I’m in a disturbing made-for-TV movie. I walk into the building, and Nick follows after me.

  “You expect me to do this for you while I’m in class?” he asks.

  “It can’t possibly take you that long to run a search. Look, I’ll pay attention to the lecture for you so you don’t have to worry about that. Like you said, the professor won’t even notice I’m there. And no one else will either. Statistically, someone will be absent. I’ll just fill in their place. I’ll be one of the three hundred. Come on, tonight we dine in the Hellenistic Period.”