"All right. Wait here."
As the woman moved into the large room behind her, she turned to Matt. "I was afraid if you said you were FBI, he'd cut out before we could talk to him. But if he really was my brother's friend, maybe he'd speak to me."
"It was a good call," he agreed.
"Thank you."
A few minutes later, the woman returned. "AJ will see you. Follow me."
She led them through the club room, down a hallway, and opened a door marked Private.
The room appeared to be an operations center. Multiple monitors lined the walls, displaying everything from security camera feeds to what appeared to be complex code. There was a man sitting in front of the monitors, but he had to be in his mid-forties, much older than AJ would be, unless she had the wrong man.
He turned to face them, then raised his hand and waved them toward a door leading into an office. As they stepped into that room, the man who got up from the desk appeared to be in his mid-twenties, around Landon's age, with dark hair and eyes and a full beard.
"You're Landon's sister," he said with a nod. "I saw you at Westbridge six years ago and on the local TV news, begging for information about Landon."
"But I didn't see you. And you were his friend, right? You're Arjun Patel?"
"I go by AJ now. Who's this?" He tipped his head toward Matt, a question in his gaze.
"I'm Agent Lawson with the FBI," Matt replied.
AJ stiffened. "What's this about?"
"We need to talk to you about Landon's death," Matt said.
"Now? Now the FBI wants to talk to me?" AJ shook his head in disgust. "That's crazy. Six years ago, I couldn't get anyone to listen to me."
"Well, we want to listen to you now," Matt said. "What do you know about it?"
"I know it wasn't an accident." His gaze moved to her. "I'm sorry for what you went through. I'm sorry no one would help you."
"Why didn't you help me? Why didn't you talk to me? I was on campus for two weeks after he died. I was in his apartment. I talked to his friends, his girlfriend, his teachers, but no one mentioned you. Why is that? How come I didn't know about you until now?"
His gaze narrowed. "How do you know about me now?"
"Alanna Morris, who worked in the legal aid center with Sabrina Lin, told us you came to see them a few weeks after Landon's death, and you were convinced it wasn't an accident."
"I went to the police, too, but they told me unless I had evidence, I had nothing to offer, and all I had was a bad feeling."
"You had more than that," Matt put in. "You told Sabrina and Alanna that Landon had been having problems with his fraternity brothers and wanted to drop out of school. What was that about?"
"He wasn't specific, but he said the guys in the fraternity were pressuring him to give them test questions, answers, or maybe even share his work so they could get better grades. He said they'd told him it was one for all and all for one, that the group was more important than the individual, that the network, the way they helped each other, resulted in rewards for everyone."
"They wanted him to cheat," she murmured.
"Yes," AJ said. "And who better to help than him? Landon was brilliant—genius-level brilliant. We met in a computer science class our junior year, and he blew me away. I always thought I was the smartest kid in school, but I was nothing compared to him. Landon also worked as a TA and had access to test questions. Some of his frat brothers were in that class."
"He wouldn't have cheated," she said. "Landon had a very heightened sense of right and wrong, and he wouldn't have chosen the wrong path."
"That was the problem," AJ said. "Or at least part of it. I got the feeling they wanted something more than just help on changing their grades."
"Like what?"
"Landon had a special project he was working on. He didn't tell me much about it, but he did say it was a forecasting algorithm that could change the way people invested in the markets, portray various risk scenarios so smaller investors could avoid pitfalls."
Her throat tightened. She knew exactly why Landon would have wanted to protect investors. "He never told me about that," she said, but deep down, she knew why he hadn't said anything. It would have been a painful reminder of a tragedy they had both lived through.
