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I deleted the word murder and replaced it with dead, doing the search all over again. This time different results popped up, and I clicked on the headline that read Wealthy Tycoon’s Youngest Child Found Dead. My eyes scanned the article quickly.
The wealthy tycoon was James Salvatore. He was an avid donator to Hillcrest, and had apparently made his money off of privatizing some kind of pharmaceutical company. Basically making drugs cost so much that people in America had to make a GoFundMe page to cover the cost of their needed medications. About halfway into the article, I finally found out who was found dead.
Sabrina Salvatore. A seventeen-year-old girl, the youngest of the Salvatore children, was found dead, hanging off the banister in the living room by her parents, who were out of town for the weekend.
Hanging meant suicide, not cold-blooded murder.
I tore my eyes off my phone, moving them to Declan, who’d turned to look at me. He’d taken off his headphones and set them on the desk. The way he stared at me, silently judging me, it was almost like he knew what I’d just looked up.
“Was anything on the door when you came back?” he asked, barely moving his lips as he spoke. Was he baiting me, already knowing someone had put something up, or was he genuinely curious? I wasn’t sure how to respond.
“No,” I lied. I didn’t view myself as a fantastic liar, mostly because I never lied. What was the point? Lying only created more misery and heartache. Lying was a coward’s way out, and I was not a coward.
But meeting his brown stare, in that moment, I was a huge coward.
Declan said nothing else, returning to his laptop.
As I did my nightly routine, I couldn’t help but wonder who Sabrina Salvatore was to Declan. Not related to him in any way, since his last name was Briggs and he was the dean’s son. Girlfriend? Lover? A friend? Was that why Declan’s face looked haunted and his expression empty?
And then I wondered why someone would tape a piece of notebook paper to the door with the word murderer scribbled on it with red marker. The only reason someone would do something like that was because they thought he was one.
As the clock turned late and I crawled into bed, I couldn’t help but Google it again, this time reading a few different articles, and finding out a few new things. One—no one in Sabrina’s life, including her brother, believed she’d killed herself. Two—Sabrina had left a suicide note, but her handwriting was off. And, maybe the biggest one, three—there were no nearby chairs to her hanging legs, and she was too far from the staircase to have leaped from the top floor.
How could someone hang herself without jumping off a chair or a table?
The suicide note blamed her ex-boyfriend, though none of the articles named names for the privacy of all parties involved. Through the darkness of the room, I turned my head to see Declan in his own bed, seemingly fast asleep.
This…this was so not what I needed. Classes were going to be hard enough without me wondering if I was rooming with a killer.
Chapter Five – Ash
I didn’t get much sleep that night, mostly because I couldn’t stop thinking about what I read. Sabrina Salvatore. I’d kept myself from looking at pictures of her, mostly because I didn’t want to put a face to the name. Doing so would only make her more real.
I could never imagine how much sorrow a person would have to feel in order to think that taking their own life was the only way out.
Sabrina’s death was ruled a suicide, but everyone had their own suspicions, myself included. My mind was a wonderland of imagination, and it wouldn’t stop until I knew the truth.
The next morning I woke up early and got ready, heading to class all without waking Declan. As I sat in my classes and listened to my professors drone on and on, going through syllabuses and generally being boring, I knew I had to talk to him about it. I couldn’t let something so huge stay in the back of my mind.
I had to know the truth, or at least Declan’s version of the truth, and if he wouldn’t talk to me, I’d go to Dean Briggs.
I wasn’t going to play around here. I was going to figure it out.
I had a two-hour break between blocks of classes, and I skated to my dorm room, hoping to find Declan there. He wasn’t, of course, so I helped myself to whatever was in the fridge and turned on my TV for the mindless sound. I supposed I could’ve texted Kelsey, but if I told her about the whole Sabrina Salvatore thing, she’d flip.
So would my mom.
Flipping out was a natural response to what I discovered last night, but I didn’t need to hear them each flip out in turn. I’d handle this. I was an adult, pretty much. This was my problem to handle…and if it came to be too much, then I’d ask for help.
The microwave beeped, signaling that my hot pocket was done, and as I got off my bed to grab it, a knock echoed from the door. Strong and firm. It was a knock that said I mean business. Business was about to be had.
I peered through the peephole, not recognizing the boy standing outside. He had one hand in his pocket, the other holding something I couldn’t quite see. Undoing the lock, I opened it, immediately hit with the smell of cologne.
Yes, because in Hillcrest, even the students sported cologne and the kind of clothes one wore when they were plotting to take over the world.
The man before me—because, even though he was a student, maybe a year or so older than me, he was definitely not a boy—wore dark jeans, a button-up grey shirt and a jacket that practically screamed country club. His blonde hair was styled up, its side cut short. His eyes were a color so pure and vivid they were like emeralds, instantly amused the moment he laid those orbs on me. He was tall, too.
So tall, like wow. Definitely over six feet, at least a foot taller than me.
