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“Actually, four people just left, all female,” she said, pointing at the group of girls stumbling away, “so there’s no reason that me and my friends can’t go in now.”
The frat guy and the girls all looked surprised by her comment.
“You’re with them?” he asked incredulously. “You weren’t talking to them.”
“So what?” she demanded. “Sometimes my mind drifts. Now can you please open the door, so we don’t freeze out here? That is, unless you have some other excuse to keep us out. Do you?”
Hannah waited silently for an answer.
The frat guy blinked uncomfortably at her challenging tone but couldn’t think of a legitimate reason to object.
After several awkward seconds during which he hemmed and hawed incoherently, he finally opened the door, marking each of their wrists with a green stamp.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Once inside, the two girls, one blonde and the other brunette, both a little on the heavy side, gave her hugs.
“That was awesome,” the blonde said excitedly. “You totally crushed that guy.”
“I was just tired of being cold,” Hannah replied.
“Still, he looked like he was about to cry,” the brunette said. “We have to get you a drink for that.”
“I thought they were free,” Hannah replied.
“They are, but have you seen the line?” the brunette said, pointing at a queue of people easily thirty long that snaked from a front room and down a long hallway that stretched back the length of the house.
“That’s okay,” she said. “I’m good for now, but you guys enjoy.”
“You can still hang with us if you want,” the blonde offered.
“Thanks,” Hannah told her, already moving off. “Maybe later. Right now I’m going to look for a guy I know here.”
She headed off into the crowd before they could ask any additional questions. As she pushed her way through the mass of bodies, she noted that the house, a pleasantly modern if antiseptic three-story structure, looked like it might have once been quite a nice place to live. But it was in rough shape now, with paint peeling off walls that had dents in them and a stairwell that was missing so many balusters that she was worried it might topple over at any moment.
Despite everything she’d been through, from a kidnapping to attempts on her life to hiding in safe houses, she found herself oddly nervous. Because of the constant chaos she’d endured, she hadn’t been to a ton of parties in high school, and this was her first time attending a real fraternity party. She had to contain the desire to pull out her can of pepper spray and keep her finger on the trigger.
She bobbed and weaved among the revelers until she got to the front room, where the bar was set up in one corner, Several couches had been pushed along the walls to create a makeshift dance floor, which was packed. The floor was sticky with spilled beer. Sweat flew everywhere and Hannah could feel horniness and desperation wafting through the room.
She scanned faces, realizing that finding Finn Anderton might be tricky in this environment. Of course, she knew what he looked like from his official school photos and social media accounts, but she hadn’t ever seen him in person.
She’d tried to track him down but as she’d only established him as a suspect today and the school had almost 30,000 students, it was no easy task. She’d even knocked on his first-floor dorm room twice but got no answer. The second time, earlier this afternoon, a girl walking by said that he was prepping for the party at the frat house, and probably wouldn’t be back at all today.
So now Hannah was reduced to studying every male face in the dark, claustrophobic house, which she feared might crumble if too many people leaned against the walls at once. She was just about to reluctantly ask someone wearing a t-shirt with the fraternity’s Greek letters for help when she caught sight of Anderton.
He was one of three guys standing behind the bar, desperately trying to fill requests for beer from people in the never-ending line. At first she wasn’t sure it was him because he was red-faced and sweating profusely, with dirty blond hair plastered to his forehead.
She watched him at work for a few minutes, hoping that studying him under duress might give her sense of what kind of person he was. But she couldn’t tell much other than that he was overwhelmed and afraid to say so. From the way he and his two compatriots reacted when a fraternity member came over and barked at them, it was pretty obvious that they were all pledges just trying not to screw up.
Eventually, some other young men, also likely pledges, took the place of Finn and his co-workers, and he scurried out from behind the bar. He immediately dashed out of the front room and made his way along the hallway, then veered off to a slightly less packed room near the back of the house. She followed him as unobtrusively as she could and turned into the back room just as he used a key to unlock what she assumed was a private bathroom. She stood just inside the room and waited, trying to look casual.
When Finn emerged, no longer rushing and less anxious, she was able to get a better look at him. He had washed his face free of the sweat and fixed his hair, which now looked presentable. In fact, without the constant threat of a screaming member hovering over him, he was actually kind of cute with pronounced dimples, a crooked smile and the lean but powerfully built frame of a guy who played contact sports.
She set aside that observation as she walked toward him, trying to stay focused on the task at hand. Finn Anderton was her strongest contender for Lizzie’s harasser, and she needed to keep that in mind as she proceeded. Of course, she couldn’t let him know any of that. If she was going to get the truth out of him, she’d have to play her role.
“So only fraternity members get the extra-special, super-secret key to the private bathroom?” she asked teasingly as she sidled up to him, unnecessarily brushing her hair away with her hand.
For a moment he didn’t process that she was speaking to him. But once he caught on, he offered her a broad smile.
