I’m wrong.

Three gentle knocks tap at my door. “Dr. Kaplan?”

That voice. That voice.

My eyes dart up to the open door, crashing into the gaze of the woman from the coffee shop. My heart triples in pace with a swirling mixture of apprehension and exhilaration.

“Yes,” I say, pushing my chair back, its legs grating against the floor.

The woman steps toward the desk and extends her hand.

“I’m Bria Brooks.”

Holy living fuck.

I clear my throat and slip my hand into hers. She’s not a short woman, a bit taller than average, but also thinner than most women her height; her bones seem like they should be brittle. Her hands appear so delicate with those long, graceful fingers. Breakable. Fragile. But that’s not the case at all. Her grip is firm. Strong. Self-assured.

“You’re early,” I say, trying not to let the cringe that’s currently imploding inside me show on my face. I have apparently lost any kind of smooth game under the scrutiny of her gaze. She gives me the hint of a smile, her eyes lashing me with a bemused look.

“Yes. I apologize. I saw your door was open and thought you might like to get started now. If it’s inconvenient, I can leave.”

“No, no.” God no. But also yes. But mostly no. “Please, have a seat, Ms. Brooks.”

“Call me Bria.”

I motion to the chair which seems to draw Bria’s smile out, though not in a way that’s welcoming. It feels more like she finds the gesture redundant or simplistic. Like she’s smiling because I’m quaint.

“How was your espresso?” she asks, a glint of amusement in her eyes. “I prefer Uncommon Grounds on Wayworth, but the staff at Deja Brew are better.”

Bria smiles as though she’s just dropped a steak into a pool of piranhas. Is she calling me out for watching her? Is she baiting me into pledging my allegiance to Uncommon Grounds? I’m considering it already if it means I’ll run into her again. And is that comment about the staff a dig about Marshall? If it’s meant to stoke the flame of jealousy that licks up my spine, it’s working.

I swallow and sit back a little in my chair. Bria’s eyes haven’t left mine. “Grindstone is worth the extra distance. Their espresso is the best in town.”

Bria’s grin sparkles. I don’t know if I’ve just passed some kind of test or failed it miserably. “Duly noted,” she says, then opens her bag to withdraw her folder. “First, I want to thank you for meeting with me. I’m sure you’re busy with the start of the semester.”

A sense of dread climbs up my throat. “Sure. You’re welcome.”

And then without any other preamble, Bria launches into her research on memory and emotion in eyewitness accounts of long-term, chronic criminal activity, describing her work at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. She details her goals for improving interviewing techniques with more robust data on physiological responses to questioning. She outlines her hypothesis and the literature review and the unmet need for this research. I nod and try to keep my brain focused on the words coming out of her mouth and not the lips they pass between.

Bria’s right, there is a need to refine interviewing techniques and obtain better quality data from witnesses for courtroom purposes. I know enough about this niche to keep up until Bria delves into the specifics of her proposal. I manage to successfully bullshit my way through providing her with a few suggestions about additional papers to consider for the comprehensive literature review she seems to have already started. At least, I think it’s successful. Bria doesn’t give much away in her responses, and I can’t see what she writes as she takes a few notes. But then she starts discussing her proposed methodology, and I feel like I’m outside my own body. One half of me is sinking on the Titanic, and the other half is on a lifeboat watching it happen. She asks me questions. I try to answer. My answers are shit. Sometimes I even resort to deflection by turning the questions back on her. What do YOU think would the best process for comparing the data points? Christ. That cringe from earlier is back, swallowing all my organs as it’s becoming increasingly obvious that I have not read her full proposal, and that I am a monumental dick.

I’m starting to sweat. Literally. First, I was bewitched by this woman, but I can’t do anything about it because she’s a student and I won’t go there. Even if she’s not my student or if she’s in another department entirely. Doesn’t matter. It’s a rule I’ve set for myself and I won’t break it. I rarely even date within the city, though for a shot with her I would have stomped on that rule and burned it. But none of that would matter anyway, because I am absolutely tanking this meeting with her.

And I swear that she knows it.

The look in her eyes grows colder by the minute. The temperature of the room feels like an inferno except for where her eyes meet mine. It’s like she’s frozen her gaze onto mine and crystals of ice are splintering into my soul.

She stops abruptly.

Mid-sentence. Just stops.

Her head tilts. Her expression turns blank. There’s no amusement or dismay or irritation. Just an eerie void that draws me in.

Bria takes a sharp breath. Her voice maintains that same rich tone that I’ve been hearing for the last twenty minutes, but the lack of emotion on her face is menacing. “What did you think about my idea to partner with Dr. Li regarding measures of respiratory and cardiovascular activity during interviews? Do you think the attempt to differentiate emotional response to long-term memories versus short-term memories in eyewitness testimony would be a valuable element to the project?”

I blink. A long, slow, resigned blink.

I suspect she might be baiting me into a trap. I’d be willing to bet money that Dr. Li isn’t mentioned anywhere in her proposal. That would be the proof she needs that I haven’t read her document at all. What she would do about it, I have no idea. There’s not much she could do, except to make me feel like even more of an idiot than I already am. Granted, that would be fair. I’m the one that put myself here, not her.

I sigh. Time to get this over with. It’s not as though I could ever have a chance with this woman anyway, especially not now. Just rip the Band-Aid off. “Look, Ms. Brooks-”

“Bria.”

“Bria. It all sounds like great work—” her eyes narrow, “and I can see the need for improvements in not only interviewing techniques, but obtaining quantitative data from eyewitnesses across different crime profiles. But—”

“How would you know if it’s great work, Dr. Kaplan? You never read it.”

Holy shit. She actually went there. Straight for the jugular.

Every muscle in my body seems to harden into plates of armor. There’s no room for bullshitting now. “You’re correct.”

“Why?”

“I’m going on sabbatical. It was just recently approved. It’s not been made public.”

“Forgive me, Dr. Kaplan, but that’s not a reason why.” We stare at one another for a heartbeat too long as she waits for me to elaborate. I don’t. I can’t. “You could still provide advisory support if you wanted to. You agreed that work needs to be done in quantitative analysis of eyewitness responses to interview questions, and yet you did not bother to read further than the summary of my proposal, assuming you even made it that far. That leads me to conclude that something within my summary was insufficient. Was it my methodology?”

“No, Bria. Nothing like that.”

Bria’s jaw hardens. Her eyes grow so dark and foreboding that hell might be visible in their depths. “Nothing like that,” she repeats.

How do I tell her anything even resembling the truth? There’s nothing I can say. I need to place all my focus on Legio Agni. I need to keep my sights on Caron Berger. It’s taken almost two years of work to get this close to him. The patterning, the criminal profiling, the hours and hours spent following the trail of a ghost… No amount of research in eyewitness testimony and interviewing techniques is going to get me closer than I am now to dismantling Caron’s empire.