Chapter 4

I turned to face Quinn Whitney, my eyes steady. "Professor, this has to be investigated all the way to the bottom, and my name has to be cleared. Otherwise I won't let it go."

But watching Quinn Whitney and Professor Norris stand there without a trace of panic, I frowned.

The two of them were far too calm.

When something felt this off, there was always something rotten underneath.

My gut told me it wasn't going to be that simple.

Sure enough, Quinn Whitney let out a sigh.

He looked at me like a man in genuine pain. "Leah, things have blown up this far. Even if I wanted to keep covering for you, there's just no way to keep it quiet anymore."

Professor Norris, who had said nothing for a while, finally spoke too. "Hmph. She's an ungrateful little snake. She'll never understand the trouble you went to for her sake."

Quinn Whitney closed his eyes for a moment, wearing the look of a man disappointed by someone he'd hoped better of.

"Leah, the truth is I knew from the start that your thesis was plagiarized. But we're teacher and student, after all, and I didn't want to make it ugly. You're the one who insisted on escalating this, so don't blame me for what comes next."

With that, he pulled a flash drive out of his pants pocket and held it up for everyone to see.

"A week before you published this thesis, I'd already seen an article somewhere else that was almost identical to yours."

He plugged the flash drive into both computers.

A moment later, a thesis appeared on the big screen at the center of the auditorium.

The content was seventy percent identical to my thesis.

But its publication date was a full week earlier than mine.

Instantly the auditorium broke into chatter again.

"What is this? After all that fuss, turns out her thesis really was copied off someone else's."

"I said there was no way she could've written a thesis that good. So it was stolen."

"Honestly, how does someone like that still have the nerve to stay at our school?"

Once Officer Simmons saw the content, he frowned too.

He looked at me, suspicious.

I said nothing. I only smiled once I read the byline at the end.

So that was it.

So this was the whole show they'd staged, and this was what they'd been after.

They really had put some thought into it.