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I busied myself typing up the last few notes as they swarmed the doorway, leaving me behind. Tate followed Madelaide, shadowing her steps as she cast me a sideways glare and flicked her hair. I waited for them all to leave before I quietly slid from my seat.
“Miss Eden.”
“I enjoyed your class, found it all very interesting.”
“Did you?” He kept doing whatever it was he was doing, shuffling papers, not bothering to lift his head.
“Yes, and I’d really like to learn more about…lying,so I was hoping there might be some extra classes or something?”
“There’re no extra classes.”
I stilled. No classes? “But I thought…”
He didn't stop, just lifted his open book, not even giving me the goddamn respect I deserved.
“So what might they be interested in?” I clutched my iPad to my chest.
Now he looked up and his warm brown eyes met mine. “Excuse me?”
I glanced toward the doorway and tried to gather my nerves. “You asked them to stay behind.”Finley…you asked Finley to stay behind.“I want to know what you told him—them. I want to know whattheymight be interested in.”
He rounded the desk, leaned back, and crossed his arms, bringing my attention to the strained muscles under his shirt. He was gorgeous, careful, intense in a dangerous kind of way. I was thrown back to my eighth-grade science class where they discussed the boiling water analogy. But when I looked into his eyes, that’s exactly how I felt…paddling…paddling, while the water grew warmer and warmer.
“Are you settling in?”
I frowned at the question. He was looking at me now, that careful stare trying to find a way inside my head. But he didn’t know me. He didn’t know there wasnoway inside my head. Others wore diamonds and expensive clothes and hid behind icy stares. I hid behind a firewall of pretense. A nobody, remember?
Careful, Anna. We keep up the facade, honey. Never let anyone rattle your cage.
My cage. I paced behind the bars and bit my lip before I murmured, “I don’t think that answered—”
Mr. Former FBI was intrigued. “You don’t look like them.”
My frown deepened as inside my head I paced and paced and paced.Interrogation techniques 101was printed on the paper beside him.Defection techniqueswere written underneath.
“You do that a lot, you know?”
I lifted my gaze to his. “What?”
He pushed off the desk and took a slow step toward me, his voice husky. “Bite your lip.”
“You didn’t answer my question before,” I pushed. “What might they be interested in?”
A curt male snarl came over the speaker.“All students required at the fingerprint and crime scene analysis in lecture hall 302. Class begins in five minutes.”
Mr. Former FBI was already moving, sliding his documents from the desk and striding toward the door. “Looks like you’ll be late for your next class, Miss Eden. Enjoy your stay at the Institute.”
8
Anna
I headed back along the hallway, that gnawing feeling welling in the pit of my stomach. I could do this. I could play their games and attend their damn classes. I could become the person I wasn’t.
And not just because our damn existence depended on it. Because I was waiting for my chance to get out of here.
Only, to leave meant…
Finley’s lips on mine were torture. And even though that burn lingered, so did that bite of annoyance.
