Really, I had more pressing matters on my mind than the fact that Bax had his hands inside Dovie’s shirt. The weasely little TA had backed down and started babbling as soon as I had cornered him in the empty lecture hall. I don’t know if it was the fact I had picked him up by his collar and shook him like a rag doll, or if it was Bax’s threatening, silent presence, but the guy had started babbling and blubbering immediately and had rushed to admit within seconds that he was tanking Brysen’s grade on purpose. I think if I had pushed any harder, the little slimeball would have peed himself, but the information he was spilling was far more valuable to me than his embarrassment would’ve been.

I let him go and told him he was going to transfer classes, or better yet, transfer schools, and he didn’t argue. I told him to stay the hell away from Brysen. It was then he told me the reason he had been harassing her so furiously, and why he had been dead set on ruining her semester, and it was those reasons that were chasing themselves around in my mind. Yes, Brysen had turned him down when he asked her out and she hadn’t been very tactful about it, but then he insisted that she had proceeded to hassle him online about it. He stammered that she had sent mocking text messages, awful e-mails telling him a guy like him never had a chance with her, that she posted nasty stuff all over his Facebook and just generally made him look like and feel like an idiot. According to him, it was Brysen acting like a typical, spoiled mean girl and he was her target. He called her a bully without actually using the word. So he struck back the only way he knew how, by taking it out on her schoolwork.

The problem I had with the scenario he was laying out was I knew how busy Brysen was and I had torn apart her old computer. She didn’t even have a Facebook page, and the only e-mail she used was the one all students had access to, which was registered through the university. The correspondence I had been able to retrieve was mostly boring stuff related to school and projects. There had been nothing alarming, nothing lining up with the story this guy was spinning, but his reaction and his immediate agreement to get gone had me wondering what was really going on. Someone wasn’t only stalking her, they were messing with her life behind the curtains as well. I didn’t like any of it.

I looked up as Bax made his way back to where I was waiting. I was going to give him shit for groping my sister in broad daylight, but didn’t get the chance because my phone rang. I didn’t want to answer it when I saw it was Nassir, but I did anyways. Business was business after all.

“What’s up?”

“I need you to get your ass to the District.” He sounded furious.

“Uh, why?” I motioned to Bax to hold on for a second. He leaned on the opposite fender and stuck a smoke in his mouth.

“Because someone kicked the shit out of Roxie and told her to give us a message.”

I felt my eyes get big and I looked over at Bax. Roxie was a girl who got around and made a good living at it. She and Bax went way back, well before she started making her living rolling around the sheets. He hadn’t kept in touch with her since he and Dovie became a thing, but this was going to piss him off big-time.

“What was the message?”

Nassir swore and I heard someone moan low and painfully in the background. He barked at Chuck to find out what was taking the doctor so long, and then came back on the line.

“That this is just the beginning.”

“Fuck. Did she have any idea who it was?”

“She can barely talk. It looks like someone stomped on her face. All I could make out was that she had a normal client, a regular, and when she went to answer the door, it wasn’t him. Whoever did this wasn’t fooling around. She’s a mess.”

No one deserved to suffer like that, even if they had a job that was risky.

“I thought you were watching the girls who worked for you, Nassir. How did this happen?”

“Don’t even start thinking you can question how I manage my business, Race. I do have people on the streets keeping an eye on the girls. If they take new clients, if they get bizarre requests, if they think something seems funny, I don’t let them do anything that might put them at risk, or the operation at risk. Like I said, Roxie said this was a routine date, there were no red flags. Whoever this guy is, he knows how places like the District work. He knew she wouldn’t see a new client alone.”

I swore again. “Who was the original date with?”

Nassir went quiet and I heard him ask the question into the room. There was more moaning, then a sharp female voice telling him he was a bastard. That had to be Honor, no one else had the balls to talk to Nassir like that.