three students were now lounging, poring over the books spread out over the coffee table.
Colt headed upstairs to the floor Ronnie’s dorm was on. He had a feeling about where the thrash metal blasting from the end of the hallway was coming from, and wasn’t surprised when he followed it to the room number he had charmed out of the secretary at the housing office.
He stood in the hall for a moment, gathering his thoughts. He ran a hand through his hair before wondering why the hell it even mattered what he looked like. This was about making sure Ronnie was safe, and hopefully getting the chance to apologize for… Everything, really. Getting him involved with Vaughn and Peter, putting him in yet another traumatizing situation, and failing to be there for him afterward.
If Ronnie was willing to give him another chance, he would never make that mistake again.
He knocked on the door once, and then a bit louder when he realized the room’s occupants probably couldn’t hear the sound over the shrieking electric guitar solo that was currently pouring through the gap under the door.
Colt was about to knock again when the door finally opened and a twenty-something guy answered, looking at Colt with a vague expression of irritation. His eyes were bloodshot, and Colt could smell the weed from the hall. He looked like more of a burnout than an Ivy League student.
“Can I help you?” the guy asked in a thick Rhody accent.
Colt cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’m looking for your roommate. Ronnie Brown?”
The guy’s eyes widened slightly in recognition, and he nodded. “Yeah, he was my roomie.”
“Was?” Colt echoed. He told himself not to jump to conclusions. Maybe Ronnie had just gotten tired of smelling like a smoke shop all the time and asked for a transfer.
“Yeah, he just left one night and never came back,” the student said with a shrug.
“Never came back to your room, or never came back to campus?”
“I don’t know, man,” the student said, leaning against the doorframe. “I heard he dropped all his classes and I haven’t seen him since, but who knows? Guy was weird, and kind of a loner.”
Colt ignored the twinge of agitation he felt at the student’s words. “Yeah, thanks,” he said gruffly, turning to head back down the hall.
It didn’t make sense, but there was no way the guy was lying. Why would he bother?
And yet, Colt knew Ronnie had talked to Susan about his classes as recently as the last time they’d spoken. He had given her no indication that anything was wrong, let alone that he had dropped out.
Even though Colt’s first instinct was to fear that Peter had something to do with Ronnie’s disappearance, it was obvious Ronnie had been covering things up for a while.
Weeks…
Why the hell would he lie about that? And more importantly, where was he?
Chapter 32
Ronnie
The days since Ronnie had dropped out of school and left campus all seemed to blur together. He had no routine to speak of, other than avoiding people as much as possible and cuffing himself to the bed railing each night before he fell asleep.
He had eventually given up on trying not to sleep at all. The daze his exhaustion led to seemed as dangerous as unconsciousness, even if neither state was truly restful.
The nightmares never stopped, but at least they had stopped getting worse. Ronnie knew that was only because there was no way for them to be more realistic than they already were. He was beginning to lose track of what was reality and what was a mere glimpse of every sin Vaughn had committed in his long life.
If there was one comfort the constant nightly barrage of horror afforded him, it was the fact that he had never seen Vaughn shed so much as a drop of blood from his victims. Of course, that did nothing to erase the literal blood that had been on his hands, and in some ways, it felt like it had never been fully washed off.
Over the last few days, the air in the hotel room itself had seemed somehow sinister, as if filling his lungs with its dark intentions every time he took a breath. Ronnie knew the isolation was probably driving him insane, even though he had never considered himself a people person. There had always been people around to be annoyed at, if nothing else. The only company he had those days were the silent attendant at the local gas station where