Once Forsaken

She turned slowly around, peering into the seemingly endless darkness.

Finally, an overhead light switched on.

Riley was stunned with horror.

Hanging from a beam was a girl just a couple of years older than April.

She was dead, but her eyes were open, and her gaze was locked on Riley.

And scattered all around the girl, on tables and on the floor, were hundreds of framed pictures showing the girl and her family at different times of her life.

“April!” Riley screamed.

No answer came.

Riley awakened and sat bolt upright on the couch, almost hyperventilating with terror at the nightmare.

It was all she could do to stop herself from yelling at the top of her lungs …

“April!”

But she knew that April was upstairs asleep.

The whole family was asleep—except for her.

Why did I have that dream? she wondered.

It took only a moment for her to know the answer.

She realized that her instincts had kicked in at long last.

She knew that April was right—something was very wrong with Lois’s death.

And it was up to her to do something about it.

CHAPTER FIVE

Riley felt a distinct chill when she got out of her car at Byars College. It wasn’t just from the weather, which was cold enough. The school had a weirdly unwelcoming vibe about it.

She shivered deeply as she looked around.

Students were wandering the campus, bundled tightly against the cold, hurrying to their destinations and barely speaking to one another. None of them looked happy to be here.

Small wonder this place makes students want to kill themselves, Riley thought.

For one thing, the place seemed to belong to a bygone age. Riley almost felt like she was stepping back in time. The old brick buildings had been kept in perfect condition. So had the white columns, relics of times when columns were required for this kind of setting.

The parklike campus was impressively large, given that it was planted right in the nation’s capital. Of course, DC had grown up around it during the nearly two hundred years of its existence. The small, exclusive school had thrived, producing alumni who went on to success in the nation’s most prestigious graduate schools, then into positions of power in business and politics. Students came to schools like this to make and maintain high-level connections that would last a lifetime.

Naturally, it was far too expensive for Riley’s family—even, she felt sure, with the scholarship support they occasionally gave for excellent students from significant families. Not that she would ever want to send April here. Or Jilly, for that matter.

Riley went into the administration building and found the dean’s office, where she was greeted by a stern-looking secretary.

Riley showed the woman her badge.

“I’m Special Agent Riley Paige with the FBI. I called earlier today.”

The woman nodded.

“Dean Autrey is expecting you,” she said.

The woman showed Riley into a large, gloomy office with heavy, dark wood paneling.

An elegant, somewhat elderly man stood up from his desk to greet her. He was tall, with silver hair, and he wore an expensive three-piece suit with a bow tie.

“Agent Paige, I presume,” he said with a chilly smile. “I’m Dean Willis Autrey. Please have a seat.”

Riley sat down in front of his desk. Autrey sat down and swiveled in his chair.

“I’m not sure I understand the nature of your visit,” he said. “Something to do with the unfortunate passing of Lois Pennington, isn’t it?”

“Her suicide, you mean,” Riley said.

Autrey nodded and steepled his fingers.

“Hardly an FBI case, I would think,” he said. “I called the girl’s parents, gave them the school’s heartfelt condolences. They were devastated, of course. The whole thing was so unfortunate. But they didn’t seem to have any specific concerns.”

Riley realized that she had to choose her words carefully. She wasn’t here on an assigned case—in fact, her superiors at Quantico wouldn’t approve of this visit at all. But maybe she could manage to keep Autrey from finding that out.

“Another family member has expressed misgivings,” she said.

She figured there was no need to tell him she meant Lois’s teenaged sister.

“How unfortunate,” he said.

He seems to like using that word—unfortunate, Riley thought.

“What can you tell me about Lois Pennington?” Riley asked.

Autrey was starting to seem bored now, as if his mind were elsewhere.

“Well, nothing that her family hasn’t told you, I’m sure,” he said. “I didn’t know her personally, but …”

He turned toward his computer and typed.

“She seems to have been a perfectly ordinary first-year student,” he said, looking at the screen. “Reasonably good grades. No reports of anything untoward. Although I see that she did get some counseling for depression.”

“But she’s not the only suicide at your school this year,” Riley said.