on to everyone in the department because Trent seemed to know a lot about her. Maybe all of Wyoming had that small-town mentality where information was passed from person to person without regards to privacy.
“Do you have memory issues by any chance?” he asked as they got closer to Oak Creek, not far from the TSC campus.
Oh God, was he about to start comparing her with his mother again?
“Not particularly, as far as I know. Why?”
“I was just wondering if you remembered me.”
Quinn got perfectly still. “Remember you? Have we met before?”
“Not face-to-face. But I would’ve thought you’d know who I was.”
Oh God. Quinn’s eyes grew wide as she stared at Trent harder. There was something slightly off about this uniform—like it was a little bit too big. Like he was playing pretend.
“Who are you?”
“Trenton Ramford, at your service.”
She recognized the name at once, of course.
She’d never actually seen his face before. The scholarship deliberations had been carefully blind to eliminate discrimination. But the name was one she would never forget.
No wonder he looked so young to her. He was young, barely twenty years old.
“It’s all coming back to you now, is it?”
“What are you doing here?” He wasn’t a cop, that was obvious. Why was he in Wyoming?
“I’m here because of you, of course.”
“Why?”
He shot her a smile that held no warmth or humor whatsoever. “To finally finish what I started. Actually, to finish what you started.”
“I don’t understand.” But she was afraid she did understand.
“It’s really very simple. You destroyed my life, now I’m almost finished destroying yours.”
She didn’t want to stay in this car with him. Her hand inched toward the door handle. When he slowed down, maybe she could make a jump for it. Every vibe he sent off suggested he was a lunatic.
“The door handle won’t work from the inside. I reprogrammed the automatic lock so it’s child-proof in the front as well as the back, or escape-proof is probably a better word for it.”
Escape-proof. That wasn’t good.
“I studied cars when I was learning the easiest ways to cause brake and steering malfunctions.”
Oh God.
When she glanced back at him, she saw he now had a gun resting in his lap. He wasn’t actively pointing it at her, but she had no doubt he would if he deemed it necessary. That wasn’t good, either.
“You ruined everything for me. You stole my entire future. By the time you were done, not only did I not get that scholarship, but no other school wanted me either.” He glanced over at her. “You know a little about how that feels now, don’t you? It didn’t take too much effort to get you blacklisted from the academic world. A few computer problems here, a couple of break-ins there... Made you look a little unstable. Unsuitable for shaping young minds.”
“It was you.”
Now his grin was downright evil. “Every single bit of it. The break-in at your office, all those grades you lost, the bank card problems for both you and your ex to make him more suspicious, fucking up your house. I thought it was an especially nice touch when I transferred your fingerprints to the paint can with a piece of tape so they’d think it was you. Hell, I manipulated your phone outside the station just now so you couldn’t make any calls.”
He was beaming with pride. “It was me. All of it was me.”
She should be upset. She should be horrified that someone would hate her enough to do all of that. But all she could truly feel was relief that it hadn’t been her sabotaging herself at all.
She had an enemy, but she wasn’t that enemy.
Within a few seconds, her relief turned to panic. She knew it was him now. He’d shown his face. That meant he planned to take this a lot further than just destroying her career.
“What I did wasn’t personal, Trenton. I didn’t know who you were. I saw a discrepancy and brought it to the attention of the scholarship committee.”
He shook his head. “Do you know the good I would’ve done? The research I had planned? If you had kept your mouth shut, everything would’ve been fine. You didn’t just destroy my future; you cost the entire world the good I would have done. Hurt the people that I would’ve helped.”
Quinn didn’t need Baby’s skill at reading people to recognize Trenton’s superhero complex. Whatever revenge he wanted to extract on her, he felt perfectly justified in it.