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“McGoren,” a deep, masculine voice says from the darkness of the hallway.

  Gavin looks up.

  “Nobody shoots Heather,” my fiancé, Cooper, emerges from the shadows to say, “and gets away with it.”

  Then he fires.

  Chapter 2

  Once in a While

  Once in a while you regret the road not taken

  Start giving up on the plans you made

  Once in a while you feel so forsaken

  Wondering why so many took, not gave

  Once in a while you ask, how could this happen?

  How did I end up in these shoes?

  But once in a while you meet a special someone

  Someone who chose the same path as you

  And suddenly it stops feeling so lonely

  Out on that road that you just had to choose

  And that’s when you know it all was worth it

  Because once in a while dreams do come true

  “Once in a While”

  Written by Heather Wells

  “I told you I heard something,” Jamie says, laughing at Gavin’s stupefied expression as he stares down at the bright green paint splotch on the front of his white coveralls.

  “Uncool, man,” Gavin says forlornly. “You aren’t even on an official team.”

  “Where’d you get that paintball gun?” I ask as Cooper comes over to wrap an arm around my neck.

  “A nice young man at the front desk handed it to me when I asked where you were,” he says. “He told me I was going to need it in order to defend myself.”

  I realize belatedly that Mark, the resident assistant working at the front desk, was calling out to me as I raced up the stairs. I’d been in too much of a hurry to listen.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask Cooper as he kisses the top of my head. “I told you I’d be right back.”

  “Yes, that’s what you say every time you get dragged over here on a weekend,” Cooper says drily. “Then it’s three hours before I see you again. I figured this time I’d hurry things along. You don’t make enough money at this job to be at their beck and call twenty-four hours a day, Heather.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I say. My annual salary as an assistant resident hall director actually puts me at the U.S. poverty level, after the IRS and NYS take their cuts. Fortunately, New York City College’s health care and benefits package is excellent, and I pay zero rent thanks to my second job doing data entry for my landlord, who’s untwined his arm from around my neck and is reloading his paint gun.

  I’m not going to lie: though I disapprove of gunplay in residence halls, the effect is undeniably sexy. Of course, Cooper had to familiarize himself with firearms in order to pass the New York State Private Investigator Exam. He doesn’t actually own a gun, however, and has assured me that in real life being a private detective is nothing like it is on TV shows and movies. When he isn’t home looking stuff up online, he mostly sits around in his car taking photos of people who are cheating on their spouses.

  It’s a relief to know this, since I’d worry if I thought he was out there getting shot at and then returning fire.

  “This time it’s serious,” I tell him. “Campus police got a report of an unauthorized party—”

  “You don’t say,” Cooper says, eyeing the beer.

  “—and someone unconscious,” I add. “No one seems to know who called in the report. Sarah isn’t picking up, and everybody else is spread out across the building, playing paintball war.” I don’t want to seem ineffectual at my job in front of the residents, but the truth is, I’m not entirely sure how to handle the situation. I’m only an assistant residence hall director, after all.

  Cooper has no such reservations.

  “Fine,” he says and levels his paint gun at Gavin and Jamie. “New game plan. You’re all my prisoners, which means you have to do what I say.”

  I can’t help letting out a tiny gasp. I used to fantasize about becoming Cooper Cartwright’s prisoner and him forcing me to do what he said. Full confession: wrist restraints were involved.

  Now my fantasy is coming true! Well, sort of. It’s typical of my luck lately that there are a bunch of undergraduates hanging around, ruining it.

  “Let’s go round up the rest of the players,” Cooper says, “and make sure they’re all accounted for. Then I’ll take anyone who’s interested out for Thai food.”

  Gavin and Jamie groan, which I think is quite rude, considering my boyfriend has offered to buy them dinner. What is wrong with kids today? Who would rather run around shooting at one another with paint than eat delicious pad thai?

  “Are you serious?” Gavin demands. “Right when we were about to demolish the basketball team?”

  “Yes, I can see you were mere moments from accomplishing that,” Cooper says, one corner of his mouth sloping up sarcastically. “But my understanding is that Heather likes this job, and I don’t think she should get herself fired for fraternizing after work hours with students firing paintball rifles while intoxicated.”

  I stare at my husband-to-be in the half-light. I think I’ve just fallen in love with him a little bit more. Maybe he would have known what to do with my dolls.

  I’m turning back to my cell phone—really, where is Sarah? It’s completely unlike her not to call me back right away—thinking about how I’m going to repay Cooper as soon as we get home (wrist restraints will definitely be involved), when we hear footsteps in the hallway. From the sound of them, they’re masculine. And insistent.

  “That’s them,” Gavin whispers. He grabs his reloader. “The pansies. . . .”

  He isn’t being offensive. The Pansies are the name of New York College’s basketball team. Once known as the Cougars, a cheating scandal in the 1950s resulted in their being demoted from Division I, the highest college ranking, to Division III, the lowest, and their being renamed after a flower.

  One would think this would have taught the college a lesson, but no. Just this past spring “Page Six” got hold of a memo from the office of the president of New York College, Phillip Allington, written to my boss, Stan Jessup, head of the Housing Department, telling Stan to make sure that each of the school’s basketball team players received free room and board for the summer, as some of the Pansies lived as far away as Soviet Georgia and the cost of the flight home was too crushing an expense for their families to bear.

  That’s how Fischer Hall ended up with a dozen Pansy “painters” living here for the summer.

  Since current NCAA regulations strictly forbid providing players with cash or gifts—and Division III players in particular from receiving athletic scholarships of any kind—this memo from President Allington’s office launched what had become known as Pansygate . . . though personally I don’t see how exchanging free room and board for painting nearly three hundred dorm rooms can be considered a “gift.”

  “Those bonehead jocks can’t have figured out we’re in here,” Gavin whispers. “Please lemme shoot ’em.”

  Jamie adds a heartfelt “Please?”

  Cooper shakes his head. “No—”

  It’s too late. As the door to the library swings open, Gavin lifts his paintball gun and shoots at . . .

  . . . Simon Hague, the director of Wasser Hall, Fischer Hall’s bitterest rival, and my own personal workplace nemesis.

  Simon shrieks at the Day-Glo burst that’s appeared on the front of his stylish black polo. His companion—a campus protection officer, from the outline of his hat—doesn’t appear too happy about the bright yellow paint that’s splashed onto the front of his blue uniform either.

  Jamie, realizing her boyfriend’s mistake first, gasps in horror, then says almost the exact same thing to them that she’d said to me: “It comes out in warm water!”

  A part of me wants to burst out laughing. Another part longs to disappear on the spot. Simon, I remember belatedly, is the residence hall director on duty this weekend, which means he must have gotten the same message I did about the unauthorized party
and unconscious student.

  If I wasn’t dead before, I am now, at least career-wise.

  “What,” Simon demands, fumbling along the wood paneling for a light switch, “is going on here?”

  Hide the beer, I silently pray. Someone hide the beer, quick.

  “Hi,” I say, stepping forward. “Simon, it’s me, Heather. We were just doing a team-building exercise. I’m so sorry about this—”

  “Team-building exercise?” Simon sputters, still trying to find the light switch. “This building is supposed to be empty for the summer. What kind of team could you possibly be building, and on a Sunday night?”

  “Well, we’re not really empty,” I say. I hear movement behind me and am relieved to notice out of the corner of my eye that Gavin is discreetly shifting the six-packs of PBR behind the couch. “Dr. Jessup wanted us to keep the front desk open, so of course there’s the student desk staff and the mail-forwarding staff and a few resident assistants, because of the—”

  —basketball team, I was going to say. Conscious that the college president’s favorite students were living in the building for the summer, the head of Housing had asked me to make sure that the team—who are, after all, students first, athletes second—had plenty of supervision, so I’d provided it, in the form of seven RAs, who were also receiving free housing for the summer in exchange for working a few hours in my office or at the desk, but also keeping an eye on the Pansies.

  Simon cuts me off before I can finish. “Mail-forwarding staff?” He sounds incensed. I remember belatedly that during one staff meeting at which we were asked to brainstorm ways the college might save money, Simon had suggested cutting all the assistant residence hall director positions—my position.

  He finally finds the light switch, and suddenly we’re bathed in a harsh fluorescent glow.

  Simon doesn’t look so good. I can’t imagine I look any better, though. Then I recognize the campus protection officer, who looks the worst of all three of us.

  “Oh,” I say, surprised. “Hi, Pete. You’re working night shifts now?”

  Pete, who normally mans Fischer Hall’s security desk, is trying to wipe the Day-Glo off his silver badge.

  “Yeah,” he says glumly. “I picked up a few extra shifts. The girls are going to sleepaway camp this summer. Those places are expensive. The good ones anyway.”

  It’s clear from Pete’s expression that he’s regretting his decision to take on the extra shifts.

  “You have students living here for free in exchange for forwarding the mail?” Simon demands, a dog with a bone he refuses to drop.

  Wasser Hall is across the park, in a different zip code than Fischer Hall, and serviced by a different post office. They’re also in a new building where they don’t have to worry about asbestos being exposed and the ceiling of the room below collapsing whenever a toilet floods.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Our post office won’t forward Fischer Hall’s mail, because it considers dormitories transient housing. So that’s what Jamie and Gavin are doing in exchange for free housing, in addition to shifts at the desk.”

  I’ll admit I’ve been playing pretty fast and loose with the rules, basically running the building like—as Cooper refers to it—my own “Island of Misfit Toys,” thanks to the kids I’ve hired to staff it all having nowhere else to go, due to either financial or family pressures. I’m pretty sure nothing I’ve been doing would meet with Simon’s approval, and that if he knew the full extent of it, it would only confirm his conviction that I and my job should both be eliminated immediately.

  “Free housing,” Simon echoes in a cold voice. Outside, a distant siren begins to sound much closer. The casement windows are cranked as far open as they can go—which is only two inches, thanks to the mandatory window-“guard” policy that the college instituted after a few too many Fischer Hall students were pushed to their deaths this past year—so every catcall and car horn can be heard with perfect clarity. Although Fischer Hall has air-conditioning, the system is antiquated.

  “Free housing in exchange for forwarding the mail?” Simon’s face is a perfect mask of incredulity. “And you’re conducting team-building exercises for these mail-forwarders? At night?”

  “Um,” I say. “Yes.” Out of all the hall directors who could have been on call the night I found my summer staff misbehaving so badly, why did Simon have to be the one on duty? Anyone else—Tom Snelling, for instance, who runs Waverly Hall, which houses the fraternities—would have confiscated the beer and paintball guns and kept quiet to the administration.

  But no, it had to be fussy, overbearing Simon. Could things possibly get any worse?

  Yes. Because I’m standing close enough to the casement windows to determine that the siren I heard belongs to an ambulance, and I can see it turning onto Washington Square West.

  Of course, Fischer Hall is one of many buildings along Washington Square. The ambulance could be going to any one of them.

  But what are the chances?

  Simon glares at Cooper. “And who’s this?” he demands with a sneer. “Surely he’s a little old to be one of your mail-forwarding staff.”

  “Cooper Cartwright,” Cooper says, stepping forward with his right hand extended. I’m relieved to see that he’s hidden the paintball gun. “Safety consultant. Heather asked me to be here to make sure all the necessary security precautions were in place for tonight’s team-building exercise.”

  Safety consultant? I feel my stomach sink. No way is Simon going to fall for that one.

  “I wasn’t aware,” Simon says, shaking Cooper’s hand, “Fischer Hall had enough money in its budget to hire a safety consultant—”

  “Well,” Cooper says, giving Simon a knowing wink, “what with all the tragedies that occurred here this past year, I was more than happy to waive my fee. We can’t have kids calling this place Death Dorm forever, can we?”

  I see Simon’s face change. Although normally I hate it when anyone says the words “Death Dorm,” Cooper made the right call bringing it up. Fischer Hall had the highest number of deaths of any residence hall in the entire nation last year, including a semester-at-sea cruise ship that experienced a freak norovirus outbreak, killing three. (Only one was a student. The other two were faculty. No one in residence life cares about faculty, really, but technically their deaths do count.)

  Still, the number of students entering New York College as freshmen who asked for a transfer to “anything other than Death Dorm” after finding out they’d been assigned there has been quite high . . . nearly 97 percent. That’s part of the reason why Fischer Hall is being shut down for the summer for a makeover, so the kids who don’t get their requested transfer—which will be all of them, there being no other halls to transfer them to because all the savvy entering freshmen requested Wasser Hall—will at least have nice white walls when they check in to their room at Death Dorm.

  It’s starting to look like our longest streak at being accident-free is coming to an end: the ambulance outside pulls up in front of Fischer Hall.

  I am in a perfect position to see not only the ambulance but also the person who darts through Fischer Hall’s front doors—directly beneath the proudly waving blue-and-gold New York College banners above those doors—to greet the ambulance.

  It isn’t anyone on the Fischer Hall staff, but it is someone with whom I’m more than a little familiar, and someone who I’m certain wouldn’t want Simon Hague poking into his business.

  Simon is standing too close to the second-floor library door to see out the windows, and all his attention is focused on what’s happening inside, not outside. He seems to have softened a bit since Cooper brought up the Death Dorm thing. Simon is, after all, in this for the children, as he points out so frequently during staff meetings that Tom and I have begun keeping a running tally.

  “I understand,” he says, raising his voice so he can be heard over the siren—so ubiquitous in this neighborhood that he doesn’t even pause to ask what it is or wonder if it might
have anything to do with our current situation—“but if this is a programming activity, what’s with this report Protection received about an unauthorized party with an unconscious student?”

  “That’s a good question,” I say. Though it’s one I completely understand now that I recognize the tall, lanky frame and handsome features of the person speaking with the EMTs in the bright security lights that flood the front entrance. “Maybe it has something to do with the basketball team?”

  Simon goes pale behind his neatly trimmed mustache. “You mean . . . the Pansies?” His voice falls into a hushed whisper. Since the siren has been abruptly shut off, his next words sound absurdly loud. “You think they’re involved?”

  “I can’t think who else it could be.” I keep my gaze averted from Cooper’s as he crosses the room to stand beside me, even when I see him glancing curiously out the window. “The paintball war is student desk staff against the student paint staff . . . the basketball team. I thought I mentioned that before—”

  “You didn’t,” Simon interrupts, tersely. “Where are they?”

  “The Pansies are in the cafeteria.” Gavin is suddenly being very helpful . . . not because he thinks any of the basketball players are in trouble, but because he’s seen a way for his paintball game to continue. “Want us to show you?”

  “Yes, of course,” Simon replies, spinning toward the door. “It’s nice that someone around here knows what’s going on. . . .”

  Gavin throws me a mischievous smile; then he and Jamie follow Simon toward the door. Since Simon’s back is to Gavin, he doesn’t see the paintball rifle in Gavin’s hand.

  But Pete does. He snatches the guns from both Gavin’s and Jamie’s hands, giving them each a baleful look as he does so. They slink out, looking disappointed. As soon as they’re safely out of earshot, Pete glares at me.

  “Really?” he asks. “I’m supposed to follow those knuckleheads down there and let myself get sprayed a second time?”