with her right now. She just wasn’t ready to face the dorm again.
As Riley stood at the door, she too felt weird about it. Of course, she’d spent the night there. She lived there.
But having spent some time outside, where a return to normality had been declared, was she ready to go back inside the building where Rhea had been killed?
She took a deep breath and walked on in through the front door.
At first she thought she felt OK. But as she continued into the hallway, the feeling of strangeness deepened. Riley felt as if she were walking and moving underwater. She headed straight to her own room and was about to open the door when her eyes were drawn toward the room farther down the hallway, the room that Rhea and Heather had shared.
She walked to it and saw that the door was shut and sealed off with police tape.
Riley stood there, suddenly feeling horribly curious.
What did it look like in there right now?
Had the room been cleaned up since she’d last seen it?
Or was Rhea’s blood still there?
Riley was seized by an awful temptation—to ignore that tape and open that door and walk right inside.
She knew better than to give in to that temptation. And of course the door would be locked.
But even so …
Why do I feel this way?
She stood there, trying to understand this mysterious urge. She began to realize—it had something to do with the killer himself.
She couldn’t help thinking …
If I open that door, I’ll be able to look into his mind.
It made no sense, of course.
And it was a truly terrifying idea—to look into an evil mind.
Why? she kept asking herself.
Why did she want to understand the killer?
Why on earth did she feel such unnatural curiosity?
For the first time since this whole terrible thing had happened, Riley suddenly felt really afraid …
… not for herself, but of herself.
CHAPTER SIX
The following Monday morning, Riley felt deeply uneasy as she slipped into her seat for her advanced psychology class.
It was, after all, the first class she’d attended since Rhea’s murder four days earlier.
It was also the class she’d been trying to study for before she and her friends had gone to the Centaur’s Den.
It was sparsely attended today—many students here at Lanton didn’t feel ready to get back to their studies just yet. Trudy was here too, but Riley knew that her roommate was also uncomfortable with this rush to get back to “normal.” The other students were all unusually quiet as they took their places.
The sight of Professor Brant Hayman coming into the room put Riley a bit more at ease. He was young and quite good-looking in a corduroy-clad academic sort of way. She remembered Trudy telling Rhea …
“Riley likes to impress Professor Hayman. She’s got a thing for him.”
Riley cringed at the memory.
She certainly didn’t want to think she had a “thing” for him.
It was just that she’d first studied with him back when she’d been a freshman. He hadn’t been a professor yet, just a graduate assistant. She’d thought even then he was a wonderful teacher—informative, enthusiastic, and sometimes entertaining.
Today, Dr. Hayman’s expression was serious as he put his briefcase on his desk and looked at the students. Riley realized that he was going to get right to the point.
He said, “Look, there’s an elephant in this room. We all know what it is. We need to clear the air. We need to discuss it openly.”
Riley held her breath. She felt sure she wasn’t going to like what was going to happen next.
Then Hayman said …
“Did anybody here know Rhea Thorson? Not just as an acquaintance, not just someone you’d sometimes run into on campus. Really well, I mean. As a friend.”
Riley cautiously put up her hand, and so did Trudy. Nobody else in the classroom did.
Hayman then asked, “What kinds of feelings have the two of you been going through since she was killed?”
Riley cringed a little.
It was, after all, the same question she had overheard those reporters asking Cassie and Gina on Friday. Riley had managed to avoid those reporters, but was she going to have to answer that question now?
She reminded herself that this was a psychology class. They were here to deal with these kinds of questions.
And yet Riley wondered …
Where do I even begin?
She was relieved when Trudy spoke up.
“Guilty. I could have stopped it from happening. I was with her at the Centaur’s Den before it happened. I didn’t even notice when she left. If only I’d just walked her home …”
Trudy’s voice trailed off. Riley gathered up the nerve to speak.
“I feel the same way,” she said. “I went off to sit by myself when we all got to the Den, and I didn’t pay any attention to Rhea. Maybe if I had …”
Riley paused, then added, “So I feel guilty too. And something else. Selfish, I think. Because I wanted to be alone.”
Dr. Hayman nodded. With a sympathetic smile he said, “So neither of you walked Rhea home.”
After a pause, he added, “A sin of omission.”
The phrase startled Riley a little.
It seemed oddly ill-suited to what Riley and Trudy had failed to do. It sounded too benign, not nearly dire enough, hardly a matter of life and death.
But of course, it was true—as far as it went.
Hayman looked around at the rest of the class.
“What about the rest of you? Have you ever done—or failed to do—the same sort of thing in a similar situation? Have you ever, shall we say, let a female friend walk somewhere alone at night when you really ought to have walked her home? Or maybe just neglected to do something that might have been important to someone else’s safety? Not taken away somebody’s car keys when they’d had a drink too many? Ignored a situation that might have resulted in injury or even death?”
A confused murmur passed among the students.
Riley
