He shifts in his seat. “No.”
I nod slowly. “Not surprised.”
I close the syllabus with a softsnapand lean back against the corner of my desk.
“Do you at least know what type of cleaner the killer used? The one that rendered every standard forensic method useless and forced the department to bring in a specialist?”
Davis straightens, and the embarrassment crawls up his “No.”
The door slams open—loud enough to slice through my sentence.
The class turns. I don’t.
Not at first.
Because I don’t reward disruptions.
But when I do glance up, she’s already halfway down the aisle.
Blonde hair streaked with red, soaked and clinging to her jawline. Half-shaved scalp exposed like a threat. A white t-shirt molded to her frame, red bra vivid beneath. Combat boots. Baggy jeans hanging low on her hips. A jacket limp over her arm.
“Here class, you have two examples of my non-A students.” I announce, as my heart ricochets irregularly in my chest. “An unintelligent jock, and a soaking wet late student on the first day of class.”
I watch the girl’s flushed strawberry cheeks as she ducks into a row three from the front. “Now, Miss…”
“Rivera.” She answers sharply, and my head shoots up with unnatural interest. So, this is the girl Landon asked me to watch. A flicker of static under my skin. Heat coils low in my spine. My hands still.
For a moment—just a second—I forget how to breathe. Then her eyes catch mine. And Iknow.
No one else in the room sees it—but she does. The real me. Not the person masking to be human, because I know the look she gives me. It feels like she knows the monster underneath, like she just stood in my abyss and screamed to be let out. The version no one should see before their last breath.
It’s a lightning strike—sudden, electric, dangerous. My lungs tighten, chest burning like I’ve just come up from underwater. Her gaze slices through me, clean and sharp. My carefully crafted armor buckles without warning. The fear rushes across her features, the soft part of her lips. I want to consume her. I want to hunt her.
I force myself to look away. Tomove. To reset my tone.
“Miss Rivera, do you know the Shepard-Coleman case—” I don’t even finish the sentence before she cuts in, voice steady, clear, and maddeningly confident.
“The Manchester case,” she says. “You were brought in as a specialist.”
My brow lifts. Barely. But the smirk that tugs at the corner of my mouth betrays me.She’s a fan.
Most students Google me just enough to pad their opening emails with praise. They parrot articles, mention old cases like they’ve done more than skim headlines. But this was one of my earliest successes, not covered by the media and only known if you are a student of forensics.
I clear my throat and lean a hip against the desk.
“Correct,” I say. “Eight victims. No viable DNA. The local forensics unit botched the scene, mistook phosphate-free cleaning agents for common industrial bleach. They scrubbed the walls and lost everything.”
Jasmine crosses one leg over the other, unfazed. Her grey eyes meet mine like she’s waiting for me to go on.
“The room was sterile,” I continue, slow and deliberate. “Not an inch of DNA to be found, some would say an instant cold-case.”
“But you recovered a mitochondrial trace embedded in the grout. Non-nuclear. Contaminated. But usable. That was enough to rebuild the blood spatter trajectory and prove the killer's angle of entry.”
She hums the last part like it’s just another fact. Like I didn’t spend three weeks living inside that scene, sleeping four hours a night, methodically tearing through chemical residues and shadows.
“As I recall,” she adds, flipping her screen open with wet fingers, “they called the reconstruction an eighth wonder of the world.”
I smirk.Against my fucking will.
