Where are you, Aldiss?
It was just after eight o’clock now. Alex looked out the window of her room, down at the twinkling Jasper campus. Everything was still, still and silent. Black’s men would be waiting and Aldiss—would he come back here? Would he return to the campus to finish off the class? They were all here, after all, all in one place and so easy to find.
Once again she reached beneath her mattress and felt for the false Fallows book. She removed the book and opened it, saw the gun gleaming inside. Had Aldiss given her a way to save herself from him? Did he want Alex to end his life? She thought about Iowa again, about the awful person she’d met there, the true Dumant killer.
Unless that too was a lie.
Unless all they had found there had been put in place by Aldiss.
Jesus, Alex, get ahold of yourself. That’s impossible.
She returned to the window, wondered how long until something happened—
There was a knock, and she turned around quickly.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me,” said a familiar voice. “May I come in?”
“Please do, Dean Fisk.”
The door opened and the dean was there. He waved Matthew Owen away, and the nurse—his eyes fearful and quick—disappeared down the hall.
Fisk pushed his chair into the room and Alex sat at the foot of the bed, looking at the frail old man. A spike of regret for what had happened tore through her.
“I’m so sorry, Dean Fisk. I thought Professor Aldiss was—”
“Shhh,” the man said. “Now is not the time or the place for apologies.”
She nodded.
“I came up here to speak to you in confidence.”
She looked at him. “Please, go on.”
The dean began, and then stopped himself. This hesitancy was so unusual for Fisk that Alex was taken aback. She waited for the man to continue.
“It seems,” he said, “that I have not been completely honest with you, Alex.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I have lied,” the dean said. He stared blankly at her, his eyes wet and pleading. “What happened to you in Iowa—I feel partly responsible for that. I lied to you on your visits during the night class and I live with those lies every day of my life.”