Page 62 of Dead Girls Don’t Forget

When the lecture ended, he gathered my notebook and pen, slipped them into my bag, and handed it over with the strap already adjusted.

“I’ll text you later,” he said.

“Mm.”

Outside the hall we split off in different directions.

The rest of the day passed in a blur of lectures and half-finished notes. By five I was at my desk with the curtains drawn and the laptop open.

I still knew too little about John Mercer.

Most of what I had came from the pack’s own carelessness. Their internal pages used a password that hadn’t been updated in years; once I was in, the shift rotation was right there. His address came from an outdated county property record. Everything else lived in the open on Facebook—profiles left public, privacy settings ignored. Pack members. Their wives. John’s own page, empty of any wife or recent relationship.

Careless. All of it.

I'd spent the better part of an hour going through months of posts. Every Wednesday someone uploaded the same photo sooner or later. Five middle-aged men crowded around the same card table, beer bottles everywhere, every face tagged. The timestamps clustered around ten. By then, the game was always in full swing. Reliable enough to build a plan around.

That was the window.

If the pattern held, tonight the game would pull him out of the house. The gate rotation changed at the same hour, thinning patrols along the outer perimeter. Darkness would cover the rest.

The only real problem left was distance. The compound sat eight miles from campus—twelve by the back roads I needed to use. Too far to run with the full kit and still arrive sharp. Too far to escape on foot if something went wrong.

A rental car solved both problems at once.

I leaned back and stared at the screen. The plan was clean. The timing worked. The only variable left was me.

I spent the next hour preparing with the same care I always used. Black layers first, then the tac pants and soft-soled boots. Climbing gloves went on over the titanium inserts. I packed the compact hand drill with spare bits and color-matched filler, six freshly wiped pinhole cameras with new SIM cards, and my phone set to airplane mode. Scent neutralizer went in last. Everything that needed to stay hidden went into the bag.

When the kit was ready I sat down and forced myself to eat. The food had no taste. I finished it anyway. Fuel was fuel.

At seven forty I took a rideshare thirty minutes east to a regional rental lot I hadn’t used before. I used the second of Brian’s fake IDs, kept my face angled down under the cap, and handed over a prepaid card for the deposit. The clerk barely glanced up from the screen. Ten minutes later I was driving out in a plain midsized sedan.

I drove east toward the ridge. Eight miles on the state route, then onto the county road. Four miles in, I pulled off onto a logging spur I’d scouted weeks earlier, tucked the car deep into the trees until it was invisible from the road, and killed the engine.

The forest was already dark, but my eyes adjusted within seconds.

I sprayed scent neutralizer on my throat, wrists, the back of my neck, and the soles of my boots. I secured the knife against my thigh, swung the pack into place, and started walking.

Three miles on foot.

I stayed low through the creek bed, climbed the steep gully on the far side, and skirted the two known patrol loops. The shift change was underway, and both loops were down to a single walker each, if that.

By nine forty, I reached the wall from the cover of the woods. Fifteen feet of stone on the east stretch, right between the corner tower and the next camera.

I pulled on the gloves and started up, keeping three points of contact wherever I could. The stone was cold and slightly damp under my fingers. At the top I stretched flat along the capstone and held still for a slow count of ten, listening.

Nothing moved. No voices. No footsteps.

I dropped silently onto the inside and crouched in the deep shadow of a hedge. From here the route was simple. Three streets in. Second right at the junction. Cross the open green without lingering. Slip through the narrow gap between the two houses with matching pickups. John’s place was the third on the left.

I moved fast and low, keeping to the shadow lines of every hedge and skirting the edges of the streetlight cones. Two houses had kitchen lights on. A third had a man standing on the porch with a cigarette. I cut wide behind that one and stayed in the dark until I was well past him. He never looked up.

John’s house was completely dark.

I approached the back slider from an angle that kept me out of any residual light. The pin tumbler took less than thirty seconds. I eased the door open just far enough to slip through and closed it behind me without a sound.

Quiet.