Crucible Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 5) Read Online Free

most of the students were what you’d consider total drips. NWU was where the parties were.”
    I lifted a dubious eyebrow as we set out toward the building. “You came here to party?”
    My partner gave me a sly smile. “You don’t think I’m fun?”
    “Don’t put words in my mouth.”
    “Oh, but perhaps I should,” she said. “There are too many worthless ones that come out of there without my input.”
    I snorted. “My point is you’re so…responsible. I can’t quite picture you getting sloshed and defacing a treasured university monument or running around with nothing but a paper cone on your head.” Which was a lie, to be honest. I could picture Steele in such revealing attire, and I did so more often than I cared to admit—which was never.
    Steele pulled on the door handle to the main’s interior. “I was never involved in anything quite so self-indulgent—or illegal. Although there was that one time sophomore year…”
    I stopped dead in my tracks. “Oh, come on. You can’t throw out a teaser like that and not finish the story.”
    “Maybe I’m pulling your leg,” she said.
    “Are you?”
    Steele rolled her eyes and smirked before hopping through her own open door. I followed her, knowing she’d string me along with that particular piece of information for hours, but I couldn’t blame her. I’d do the same thing if I were in her shoes. The only reason I hadn’t was due to a lack of wild parties in my past and my complete and utter certainty Shay had no interest whatsoever in my drunken exploits.
    We arrived at the door to the NWU admissions and records office. This time I led the way, pushing through into a room featuring copious amounts of wooden paneling and a line of service kiosks that reminded me of a bank’s. A rope strung between brass posts snaked back and forth for three passes, but lucky for us, the queue to speak to a person was momentarily empty. I crossed to the only station currently occupied and approached the teller, a middle-aged woman with a bob cut and glazed eyes.
    “Admissions, or records?” she asked in a bored monotone.
    “Records,” I said, “though I suppose I should be flattered you think I might be here for admissions.”
    The woman behind the counter blinked slowly, and her lips didn’t move upward one iota. If anything, they crept down.
    I think Steele caught onto the woman’s job-induced malaise faster than I did. She pulled out her badge and presented it. “We’re not prospective students. We’re with the police department. We were hoping you might be able to help us identify an alum.”
    The teller afforded Steele the same unbridled joy that she had me. “Name?”
    “We actually don’t have a name,” I said.
    “You don’t have a name?” she said.
    “No name,” I confirmed.
    That seemed to throw a wrench into the woman’s gears. She looked at us blankly, unsure of how to proceed.
    I could’ve elaborated, but I was starting to become interested in how this might play out. Part of me thought she might be a soulless automaton controlled from within by snickering homunculi as a grand ruse perpetrated against clueless college kids.
    Steele unwittingly ruined my experiment by pulling out our stiff’s ring and the sketch Boatreng had produced. “We’re trying to identify the man in this drawing. We think he’s an NWU alum because of his ring. I’m not sure what sorts of data you collect on students, or what you might still have from back then, but perhaps we could see the files on the class from twenty-nine?”
    “You want to see the files from the class from twenty-nine?”
    I narrowed my eyes and peered at the woman. Her eyes, though dull, didn’t appear to be constructed of glass, and she moved too well to be made of anything but flesh and blood. Nonetheless…
    “Are you familiar with the myna bird?” I asked.
    “A what?” said the woman.
    “Never mind,” I said.
    The woman blinked and shook her head, then broke out of