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Riley’s head throbbed. She’d been bounced on asphalt, forced to team up with her scummy ex, and now Dr. Harris and Dr. Sparks were obsessing about word choice. When they’d asked her to help polish an FBI-approved statement, she figured five minutes. Ha! Thirty and counting.
She understood Chancellor Harris’s jitters. His words would go out via radio, podcast, email, text message and phone. Riley thought two jiggers of rum might help more than wordsmithing.
“Let me try again.” Dr. Harris cleared his throat. “Campus security is working closely with the FBI. The email may be a hoax. But, if it isn’t, these professionals will track down this hate group before anyone is harmed.” The tremor in his voice channeled fear.
Sparks tried to calm his boss. “That’s fine, Henry. Go on.”
Dr. Harris glanced at his notes. “Today is the last day of final exams for spring semester so most of our students are headed home. However, we will tighten security, lock down the campus, and impose an eleven p.m. curfew to protect those who remain on campus.”
Harris looked up, seeking approval. When Sparks nodded, the chancellor continued. “I make you two promises. First, we will keep everyone informed. Second, the safety of our university community will always be our top priority in every decision.”
Sparks shot his boss a thumbs-up. “Good, Henry, but remind folks that Onward has declared war on all higher learning.”
Sparks jotted a note, and Dr. Harris’s lips moved as he silently read the new closing.
With the dress rehearsal complete, Riley was eager to get going. Dr. Harris was stalling.
She felt miserable and grumpy. Dressing for work, she found her classic black blazer wouldn’t fit over her sling. She felt hot and self-conscious dressed in a stoplight red sweater.
Her cell phone vibrated. Patty, her admin. She excused herself and walked to a corner of the conference room. “What’s up?”
“A patrol just spotted a phalanx of the enemy headed your way. Doris Hillman and Reverend Jimmy are in Doris’s Rolls Royce with the WHYG-TV van on their heels.”
“Arrghh. Thanks for the warning.”
She’d expected the media to swoop in. But why were Doris and the preacher leading the parade? Had they learned about Onward’s threat and come to point fingers?
Doris had sued BRU for control of the Hillman Foundation created by her granddad seventy-five years ago. The stock he’d donated, now worth $300 million, served as the university’s primary financial artery. The lawsuit claimed BRU had violated its verbal contract with Doris’s Bible-thumping progenitor, who expected his endowment to be used to promote Christian values. Doris wanted to transfer the entire Foundation to Reverend Jimmy Long’s ultra-right His Way University.
When Ms. Hillman and her smarmy televangelist ventured on campus, they usually headed straight to the chancellor’s office to be filmed before the building’s fluted columns while they painted BRU as a den of iniquity. Security officers had a standing BOLO—be on the lookout—for the holy terrors.
Dr. Harris walked to a window. “Good heavens, they’re headed inside.”
The chancellor opened the conference room door.
“Where’s Dr. Harris?” Reverend Jimmy’s booming bass overrode the chirpy protests of the ninety-pound coed on receptionist duty.
“Right here.” The chancellor matched the preacher’s volume and outrage. “What’s the meaning of this ... this assault? My office is always open, but I expect the courtesy of an appointment.”
Quivering double chins signaled Dr. Harris’s discomfort, his fight against his ostrich tendencies. Riley mentally applauded his moxie. She edged out the door to stand beside Harris and Sparks on the second-floor landing.
“My, my, the complete cabal.” The preacher scurried halfway up the curved rotunda stairs and pivoted to gesture at the TV crew below.
Riley knew the reporter, Brad Able. While she maintained friendly relationships with most members of the Fourth Estate, this slug ranked below slime. Riley noticed a green light blinking on a shouldered TV camera. Uh, oh. Live and livid.
Reverend Jimmy pointed at the BRU triumvirate. “These godless traitors know Blue Ridge University is in grave danger. Yet they hide their shameful secrets at the peril of students. Another example of the cancer eating away at BRU’s moral backbone.”
The televangelist lasered his wrath on Riley. “Last night that woman ordered a student, Darryl Thomas, to hide the fact that young men and women attending BRU are in imminent danger. Fortunately her intimidation didn’t stop him from confiding in his parents.”
What a loose-lipped idiot! Couldn’t you wait for daylight, Darryl?
For one wild moment, Riley considered putting a bullet in the rose-encrusted plaster ceiling to stop the reverend and let Dr. Harris claim the floor.
The preacher sucked in a deep breath. “An hour after that travesty, this woman who was hired to protect people, killed an unarmed man—”
Out of desperation, Riley clapped her hands. Hard. A jolt of pain boomeranged from her wrist to her damaged shoulder and back again.
“Dr. Harris would have made his announcement by now if you hadn’t interrupted. Let him speak.”
The chancellor fumbled with the paper, swallowed twice, and began reading.
The instant he finished, the reporter yelled, “Will you comply with Onward’s demands?”
Dr. Sparks picked up the ball. “Student safety will guide all decisions. We’re sure officials at the four sister universities threatened by these terrorists will do the same. Hate groups like Onward are anathema to every legitimate institution of higher learning.”
He glared at Jimmy. No need to actually identify the preacher’s institution as a cow-patty college. However, the recipient of the scorn appeared unfazed.
“Miz Reid,” the reporter yelled, “what about the allegation you killed a man?”
“False.” She answered, her tone flat. “Early this morning, a motorcyclist attacked me using deadly force. A fellow officer yelled a warning. The biker’s continued attack forced the officer to shoot. The Leeds County Sheriff’s Office investigated.”
“Was your attacker a student? Any connection to Onward?” Able asked.
Dr. Sparks intervened. “No, he was not a student. Sorry, no more sound bites. The FBI and the sheriff are investigating these matters. It’s inappropriate to comment further.”
Riley’s gaze snagged on Doris, who huddled a foot behind the preacher. The heiress was dressed in a rich person’s version of sackcloth. Gray silk. Muted lipstick. Salt-and-pepper hair pinned in a bun so severe it yanked her eyelids into an Asian slant. Her potato face was a notch lower than plain. But one thing was clear. She was gaa-gaa over Reverend Jimmy.
Her personal savior or something more?
Doris wasn’t dumb. She’d been a B+ student when she and Riley were BRU undergraduates.
What makes her buy into Reverend Jimmy’s claptrap?
Suddenly Doris stared straight at Riley. Her look pulsed with hatred.
Riley figured she knew why. You idiot. I’m not going to blab about ancient history.
Twenty years before, Riley saw an unglued Doris lunge at a coed with scissors while she screamed “Whore!” at the top of her lungs. Doris blamed the girl for stealing her boyfriend.
The attack took place in the dorm’s communal showers. Riley and a friend separated the squirming naked bodies. After the dorm mother forced Doris to get professional counseling, the victim—only bruised—agreed not to press charges.
Riley broke eye contact with her former classmate. She followed Sparks and Harris back inside the conference room. Once the door closed, the chancellor collapsed in a chair.
“Well, wasn’t that fun? Even if this threat’s a prank, it’s a PR nightmare.”
Sparks waved his hand as if he were shooing away a fly. “This will blow over. Surely Doris and Jimmy realize they go too far if they align themselves with maniacs threatening to kill students.”
BRU’s chancellor took off his wire-rimmed glasses and polished them with his silk tie.
“That preacher is an expert at twisting the word of God to tap into a wellspring of hate,” he grumbled. “I still cringe when I think about those depositions. They used every trick to make it sound as if BRU professors encourage homosexuality, abortion, and pornography.”
Sparks sighed. “I attended the Valdes deposition. Jimmy’s attorneys must have memorized every sexual passage in his book. Hell, many of our own alumni think Firelight is porn. Have you read it? The sex scenes could singe your eyebrows.”
Riley held her tongue. How would her bosses feel if they learned her gymnastics helped inspire the incendiary prose?
Dr. Sparks walked to the window. “At least this Hillman Foundation mess will be over soon. We have a court date in three weeks. Just wish we’d drawn a judge appointed after the Civil War. Judge Jones is eighty-five and right of Attila the Hun.”
Dr. Harris’s sausage-sized fingers rubbed his chest. Riley wondered if she should dispense some of her pain pills. The way things were going the campus infirmary should restock.