Page 41 of Mayhem

“He got caught using an exam key that wasn’t supposed to exist. Callum asked us to make sure the professor decided the evidence was too thin to pursue.”

Echo glanced at me. “And in exchange, he gives you alumni access.”

“The list has more than names. Personal numbers, secondary emails, assistants, private foundations, event contacts. People who don’t answer students will answer someone who already knows which office to call.”

She nodded once and kept walking. “So he got what he wanted immediately and now the part he owes hurts more than it did when he agreed.”

That was close enough that I let the silence sit for a few steps. Callum’s mother had moved onto an alumni committee recently, and handing over the access would expose enough of her network that he’d started panicking after the fact. Hunter hadn’t included that in the summary. Echo had reached the shape of it without needing the detail.

“He’s protecting somebody,” she continued. “Probably family, because if this was just about access getting harder, he would’ve brought you proof and renegotiated instead of hiding. People stall when the original price suddenly lands somewhere personal.”

I looked at her then. She was watching the path ahead, expression loose, like we were discussing somebody else’s homework instead of a favor we might end with blood on the floor. “You used to collect like this?”

“I used to collect everything.” She kicked a wet leaf out of her path and kept going. “People think favors are soft because there isn’t always money attached. They’re worse. Money has a number. Favors grow teeth while you’re not looking.”

That sounded like something learned through repetition rather than theory. I asked how many people she’d kept on her books at once, and Echo gave me a rough number without pretending she couldn’t remember. She told me enough to understand the ring had been larger than Hunter probably expected, built through students who needed alibis, introductions, things retrieved, problems made quieter, and information moved between people who didn’t want their names touching. Nichlas had kept the physical ledger. Echo had kept everything else.

The last part interested me more than I showed.

Callum opened his door after the second knock and went pale when he saw Echo standing beside me. He knew me well enough to understand why I was there. Echo was the variable, and he spent too long looking at her before stepping aside.

His room looked like somebody’s parents had paid extra to make dorm living feel temporary. Leather chair, expensive speakers, framed photographs from sailing trips, a desk that had never seen anything heavier than a laptop. Echo took it in without wandering, then chose the chair nearest the door and sat with one ankle over her knee.

Callum looked at me for instruction. I gave him none.

Echo waited until he finally sat across from her. “You owe them access to the alumni list.”

His attention flicked toward me again before he answered her. “I already explained that the permissions changed. My mother’s committee tightened security after the spring leak, and I don’t have the same login anymore. I can’t give something I can’t reach.”

Echo let him finish. She didn’t interrupt, didn’t smile, and didn’t start threatening him when the lie came out polished enough that he’d clearly rehearsed it. She asked when the permissions changed, who controlled them now, whether his old credentials had been revoked completely, and what happened when committee members needed temporary access from personal devices. Callum answered the first two too quickly, slowed on the third, and gave her far too much information on the fourth.

I watched her register it.

“So you still have access,” she said after he finished explaining the temporary-token system. “You just don’t want to use it because the request will show under your mother’s account.”

Callum’s jaw tightened. “That isn’t what I said.”

“You didn’t need to.” Echo leaned back, comfortable now that he’d done the hard part for her. “You told us the system changed, then explained exactly how you still get in. Your problem isn’t access. Your problem is that somebody might ask your mother why her credentials touched a list she wasn’t supposed to export.”

He looked at me again, and I understood why Malakai liked watching her work. Echo didn’t fill silence for him. She let Callum sit inside the mistake he’d made until he started trying to repair it himself.

“My mother has nothing to do with my arrangement with you.”

Echo’s expression barely changed. “Then stop using her as the reason you can’t pay.”

That landed harder than a threat would have. Callum started talking again, this time about family expectations, the committee, how much damage it could do if the access were traced, and how the original deal hadn’t included exposing his mother. Echo listened long enough to separate fear from bullshit, then asked him what he thought happened to everyone else’s favors if Hunter let him decide afterward that the price had become inconvenient.

Callum tried to make it personal again. Echo refused to follow him there.

“You asked them to make your roommate’s problem disappear because it mattered to you,” she said. “They did it before you paid. That was trust. Now you’re telling them the thing you offered is too expensive because the consequences finally reached somebody you care about. You can hate the deal. You can regret making it. You still made it.”

His mouth flattened. “And if I say no?”

Echo looked at me for the first time since we’d sat down. “What happens if he says no?”

“Then Hunter decides whether the debt gets collected another way.”

She nodded and turned back to Callum. “There you go.”