Free Mountain Peril by Sandra Robbins

right of Jeff’s desk. His steel-blue eyes reminded her of frosted glass, and she shivered at the scrutiny of his cold gaze.
    Jeff turned from talking with Nathan and smiled as she walked in. “Come in, Danielle. Landon’s on his way. We’ll start whenever he gets here.”
    Nathan pulled a chair forward. “Sit here, Danielle.”
    Without speaking, she eased into the chair to Jeff’s left and glanced at Jack across the desk. He directed a half smile at her, and she wondered what kept his stony face from cracking into a hundred pieces.
    The door opened, and they all turned to see Landon walking in. “Sorry, I’m late. I couldn’t get away from some students.”
    Jeff pointed to a chair in front of his desk. “That’s quite all right. Detective Denton came to see me, and I decided all of you need to hear what he has to say.” He sat down and motioned for everyone else to sit.
    Danielle glanced around at the group. She had ended up on Jeff’s left with Nathan beside her and Landon on the far side of him. Jeff took his seat behind his desk, but Jack continued to stand.
    When everyone had settled, Jeff spoke. “I’m going to turn this meeting over to Detective Denton now. There are some developments he wanted to share.”
    Jack cleared his throat and stood beside Jeff. “I brought a piece of information to Dr. Newman’s attention, and he wanted you informed.” He held the same notebook Danielle had seen that first morning, and he looked down at it. “Ourtech guys have located the origin of the encore message left on Carter’s Web site.”
    Danielle scooted to the edge of her chair. “That’s wonderful news.”
    He shook his head. “You may not think so when I tell you where it is.”
    She tilted her head and frowned. “What do you mean?”
    His gaze drifted over each of them before he answered. “The message was sent from this school.”
    Nathan bolted from his chair. “What? Are you telling us the killer used one of our computers to send that message?”
    Jack nodded. “Yes. Our tech people traced the ISP to Webster University.”
    Nathan fell back into his seat and gripped the arms of his chair. “Oh, this is horrible news. There’s a killer among us, and we don’t know who it is.”
    Danielle reached over and covered Nathan’s hand with hers. “I think we knew this might happen. Now we have to help the police find out who it is.”
    He glanced down at her hand on his and smiled. “Thank you for that voice of reason, Danielle.” He looked up at Jack. “We’ll cooperate with you any way we can to catch whoever sent that message.”
    Landon leaned forward in his chair and nodded. “What do we need to do?”
    Jack picked up his notebook from Jeff’s desk and stuck it under his arm. “We’d like to bring in some experts to check out all the computers on campus. Our guys tell me that even when a message is erased from a computer, it can still be retrieved. With any luck we can locate the one where the message originated. Maybe then we can find witnesses who were nearby at the time.”
    Danielle let go of Nathan’s arm as he stood. “Bring inwhoever you need,” he said. “You’ll have our full cooperation.”
    Jack nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Webster. I’ll call the department and see when they can get here.”
    He stepped to the side of the room and pulled out his cell phone. Turning his back on them, he punched in a number and raised the phone to his ear. Danielle stared at his broad shoulders for a moment before she turned her attention back to Nathan.
    “If you don’t need me anymore, I’d better get back to my office.”
    Nathan grasped her hand and directed an anguished look toward her. “It appears I’m going to need you to do an even better job with the fundraiser, Danielle. This news could devastate our income.”
    She swallowed and squeezed his hand. “You can depend on me.”
    “Good.”
    He released her, and she glanced across the room. Jack had turned back around and was