"Could you?" she asks. "Could you do something?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know… whatever it is you do. Dealing with people and finding things are your specialties, right? That's what you told me. So you can find people, too, right? I mean, you found me."

"Actually, you found me," I say, hitting pause on the feeds to look at her. "You stumbled right into my path."

"But you would've found me, eventually," she says. "You were looking for my mother… maybe you still are looking for my mother. I don't know."

She pauses, staring at me. She formed it as a statement, but I see the questions in her eyes. I'm not going to answer, though, and I don't think she expects me to, because she moves on quickly.

"I'm just saying, you do things… those kinds of things… so I thought maybe you could find him. For Melody. For me."

"For you."

"Yes," she says. "As a favor."

I lean back in my chair, eyeing her warily. She's opening a door I'm not sure she's ready to walk through. "Tell me something, Karissa."

She hesitates at my serious tone. "What?"

"When you poisoned my food, where did you get the drugs from?"

Her cheeks grow red, a hint of alarm in her eyes as she averts her gaze. "I didn't poison your food. I didn't want to hurt you."

"You're avoiding the question."

"It doesn't matter."

"It does," I say, "to me."

Shaking her head, she stares at the floor near my desk. "What does this have to do with anything? I'm sorry, okay? Is that what you want to hear? I'm sorry I drugged your food. I'm sorry I ran off in the middle of the night. I'm sorry I led you to my parents. I'm sorry I got my father killed."

"I thought you didn't have a father."

"I don't." Her voice has a hard edge to it. "I'm just saying…"

"You're saying you're sorry," I chime in when she doesn't finish. "But what you're not saying… what you're avoiding saying… is that Paul gave you the drugs that sparked all of it."

She has no argument for that.

She just glares at me.

"Bad things happen to bad people, Karissa."

"Paul wasn't bad."

"He endangered you, didn't he?"

"Yeah, well, you were going to kill me!"

"I was," I admit, "but I never pretended to be good."

"What are you trying to say, Naz? Huh?"

"Exactly what I'm saying: if you want me to look for him, I will, but I'm not going to find him. Nobody will."

"How do you know?"

"Because if he was meant to be found, he would've been found already."

Karissa leans against the doorframe, mulling over my words. Shutting the laptop, I stand up and smooth my suit coat.

"Look," I say, "why don't we go out and grab some dinner, celebrate the first day of classes."

"I skipped them, remember? There's not much to celebrate."

"Nonsense. Regardless of if you were there or not, the day happened. There's a lesson to be learned there, you know. Life goes on without you."

"I hear you, Plato."

I smile at her sarcasm as I stroll across the room, pausing in front of her. "I prefer the words of Plautus." I cup her cheek, stroking her warm skin with my thumb. "Let us celebrate with wine and sweet words."

"I don't know Plautus."

"Huh." Leaning down, I kiss the corner of her mouth. "He also said the chap that endures hard knocks like a man enjoys a soft time later on."

She smiles softly when I kiss her again. "What does that mean?"

"Whatever you want it to mean."

"What do you want it to mean?"

I kiss her a third time, nipping at her bottom lip as I pull away. "Maybe I'll show you when we get home."

I forgot all about the goddamn Chocolate Mint Tea.

The full cup is still sitting in the car, perched in the cup holder between the seats, exactly where I set it when heading to pick her up from class. A peculiar odor clings to the interior from the hours old drink.

It makes my nose twitch.

Karissa stares at the cup during the drive into the city. I wait for her to ask me about it, but she doesn't say a word. I can feel the tension mounting, though, the theories forming in the back of her mind.

"I bought it for you," I explain before she even mentions the thing. "I tried to pick you up from class this afternoon."

Her voice wavers when she responds. "I told you I didn't need a ride home."

"That's never stopped me before," I say. "You weren't at the school, though, so I tried to call you."

"Oh, yeah." She finally looks away from the drink to glance at me. "My phone's not working."

"What did you do to it?"

She narrows her eyes. "What makes you think I did something?"

I smile at her defensive tone. "Because I know you. You're hell on that phone."

She rolls her eyes. "So, okay, I dropped it, and like the screen went black and now it won't turn on, but that doesn't mean I broke it. It could be unrelated, you know. Maybe it just died."

"Unlikely."