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“I don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever met any mafia. That I know of, and he’s a prick, but he’s okay.”
“He is cute.”
“Too old,” I snap, like I’m laying claim.
Laura giggles, and as she squints and searches for her sunglasses, she looks a few years older than me. “For you, maybe, but for this girl? No, introduce us.”
“Not older, acting older,” I amend.
“He’s not a prize. Take Hazard.”
“No thanks. I know you like him.”
“I thought about it,” I say, “but he’s a major numb nuts, and I’m not into those. How’s your art project?”
We discuss our projects for our art class tomorrow, and it’s soon time for me to get to one of my other classes, a double lecture. I don’t want to go, but attendance is part of my grade. It’s a course that isn’t needed for my master’s but something I wanted as it’s cutting edge, so I’m going.
I make my goodbyes and hurry off, and the rest of my day is filled with rushing around from lectures to labs to one-on-ones with professors. The sun’s sinking when I head to the main computer lab to do some last-minute work before I go home.
It’s not even that the computers are all-powerful. It’s that these ones are hooked up to a mainframe that’s meant to simulate big security companies, and I want to run a troubleshoot program.
When I’m done, people are either heading home or hanging out in groups here and there. Some have evening classes. Tomorrow’s first class is front and center. Games are a love for me, and I’m working on one for the software design course, something that could be up there with KonCept. Hell, they might be interested. Caleb, the owner, isn’t too happy he was fucking a seventeen-year-old, even if I was of age in New York, but we keep in touch. It’s all professional friendly because he knows what I can do.
I don’t know which direction I want, gaming or security. Hacking taught me skills, the job taught me to work fast, meticulously, and learn as I go. College is giving me the groundwork for those expanded horizons.
I ignore the guy whose eyes are on me. He’s another version of Hazard, tattooed but with a hardened shell, and he’s older too.
“Hey.”
I keep my head down as my phone pings because there’s a lull in the people around me. Hoping it’s Tizio, I pull out my phone. The message is from Gideon Walker, my art professor, who’s left something for me in his office.
“Hey.” The guy moves, catching up to me, and though he doesn’t touch me, he stops in front, making me stop too.
“I need to get to an appointment.”
“Don’t really give a fuck,” the guy says. “Been watching you and want to know if you can get a message to the Lowlanders since you keep arriving with a De Luca.”
I school my expression into a blank and bored canvas. I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I don’t like him. I don’t like that we’ve stopped in the shadows between the lamps that line the paths. “Do I look like a messenger?”
“Just—”
“Do it yourself.” I dodge past him and into the building up ahead.
Once there, I wait to make sure he doesn’t follow. When he doesn’t, I make my way through to the next building, then cut across to the art studios and find Walker’s office.
The door’s unlocked, and on the clean desk is a brown paper packet with my name on it along with a note.The paints you wanted.
I grin, shove them into my bag, and close the door behind me.
Whoever that guy was, he can deal with his own issues, I’m keeping out it. Not that I know who or what he’s talking about.
The less I know, the safer I am. Sometimes knowledge is safety, other times danger, and I’d rather things stay as they are.
I look at my phone, and though there’s nothing from Tizio, there's no way he’s not here already. I’m running late.
I take a different route to another exit.
“Karlee!”
