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Mentally slapping myself upside the head, I pulled my thoughts back on the straight and narrow. My best friend needed me, not my erection.
“Did you have questions about today’s session?” Professor Reid prompted, his light green eyes bouncing between us.
“Yes,” Zee hissed. “What. The. Fuck?”
I flinched.
“I’m sorry?” he huffed, leaning back in the seat, his elbows resting casually on the arm rests. Only his hiked-up eyebrows gave away his surprise. “I’m going to need you to clarify.”
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” she shouted, pointing at him before moving around my seat. Getting up in his personal space, her tightly held control spiralled. Zee’s face turned a deep red, her eyes flashing and her body vibrating with anger as she pointed at the timeline. “You think this is funny? That doing a podcast on a dead woman is, what, going to make your career? You think you’re some hot shit, chasing ghosts where they don’t exist? You’re a joke. It’s a witch hunt, nothing more. There’s nothing to find.” Zee gripped the arm rest of his chair and pushed, the castors carrying Professor Reid back a step.
The professor didn’t react. In fact, he looked bored. Completely unaffected by her tirade. He tilted his head, regarding Zee.
When he spoke, his words were quiet and precise. He’d carefully picked them. “I beg to differ. Independent evidence backs up my suspicions. If it didn’t, I would have abandoned my research, and I certainly wouldn’t have run this course.” He paused, seemingly waiting to see if Zee would interrupt him. But she remained still, breathing through her nose, her mouth pursed tight and her blue eyes the colour of flint. He added, “I believe she’s guilty of gross negligence, but I’m interested in hearing your take on Ms Weatherall.”
Zee pointed at him, her jaw tightly clenched as she grated out, “She’s. Dead. Let it go.”
“Zee,” I murmured, looking at her, pleading with her not to go down this path. Threatening the professor couldn’t be a good idea.
“No, Flynn. I’m not backing down on this.” She shook her head, her eyes hard, but underlying that armour-plated strength, I could see the heartbroken little girl, lost and missing two of the three most important people in her life. The fight seeped from my body. I couldn’t dispute why she was doing this, and I wouldn’t. Not when it was someone so important to her whose memory was being tarnished. Zee turned to the professor. “I’m warning you now. Let her rest in peace.”
“Why does it matter so much to you, Ms Stephens?” he asked, leaning back in his chair further as he threaded his fingers together, resting his hands in his lap as he crossed his ankles. The move was deceptive. It looked like he was relaxing, but I could see that he was trying to put some space between them.
The professor was smart.
He was aware of his body language, but it was as if he was trying to provoke a reaction from Zee. Perhaps he wanted to get her kicked out. Maybe it was a perverse curiosity to see just how far he could push before she snapped. Who knew?
Zee reacted instantaneously. She lifted her hand, fingers outstretched. Holy heck, she was going to slap him.
I jumped up. Put myself between them again. “Zee, we should go.”
“Ms Stephens?”
“Shut up, would you,” I barked, my raised voice surprising even myself. Turning back to Zee, I gently gripped her hand and brought it to my lips, brushing a kiss over her knuckles. Wrapping my free arm around her waist, I hauled her curvy frame against my own. My voice was barely a whisper when I added, “Let me take you home.”
“I am going to fucking kill them both,” she gritted out, struggling against me. “Him and Ezra. They’re both going down.”
“The professor’s just doing his job,” I soothed in a murmur, rubbing her back. “He doesn’t know who she is. Maybe he’ll stop if you tell him.”
Zee pulled out of my embrace and spun away from me, pacing toward the window. She paused, resting her hands against on the glass.
“Rosa Weatherall was my mother.” She balled her fist and slammed it against the glass. The whole window shook, bending and flexing under the blow. “She wasn’t incompetent, and she wasn’t negligent. There was a reason why she was recommending those investments.”
The colour drained from Professor Reid’s face, his lips parting as the breath whooshed out of his lungs. “I… I’m so sorry.” He shook his head. “I….” He clasped his hands in front of his face again, his pale green eyes troubled. “I can’t change the podcast. It’s too late. I’ve spent months researching this, and I can’t pick someone else on the fly to do this class on. I’ve got funders—”
She whirled around, her finger pointed at him and her lips curled back in a feral snarl. She shouted, “I don’t care!” She stalked forward again, her eyes narrowed on him. Venomous hatred radiated off her. She added in an eerily calm voice, “All of that is your problem, not mine. But it’s a problem that you’re going to fix. You’re not doing this podcast. You’re not publishing anything that will destroy my mother’s reputation. Got it?”
He shook his head. His words were quiet but had an underlying core of steel. “I can’t. Not in the way you want me to. But give me a second to think.” He stood slowly, moving over to the whiteboard. His hands in his pockets were deceptive. He looked relaxed, but I could see the tension coiling his shoulders tight.
“I’ll change the content. I’ve set it up as a deep dive into Ms Weatherall’s behaviour with background information—financial data, the reality of the economic troubles, that sort of thing, to fill in the gaps. There is no doubt Ms Weatherall managed to set up her company and get investments without complying with basic legislative requirements. Then the company started floundering after she passed away, and a lot of people lost a lot of money. Yet, the investigation was sloppy. Everything was glossed over, then wrapped up in a neat bow and filed away as bad luck.”
“And?” she asked, her tone full of expectation and short on patience.
“I can focus on the shortcomings of the investigation, the way we can do things better in the future. The company failed. Why? It’s still going to be an investigation on your mother, Ms Stephens. I still want justice for the people who invested their funds. But perhaps we can achieve a better balance.”
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“If Ms Stephens is as good as Ez said she is—”
