Chapter 109: 109. That Rich Nerd Kid Really Have Some Nice House! I Could Use This!

Tyler’s directions took them through the campus boundary and into the northern section of District 4, which was not where Mike would have looked for student housing and which Tyler appeared to have thoughts about.

"The university housing is south," Mike said, at some point.

"I know," Tyler said.

"You’re going north."

"I know," Tyler said.

"You don’t live in university housing," Mike said.

"My mother prefers I don’t," Tyler said, and something in his phrasing was choosing words carefully.

They walked another five minutes.

When the house appeared, Mike stopped walking for exactly one second, which was the amount of time required to update his understanding of the situation.

The house was not a house in the way that Ellie’s and Stanley’s place was a house, which was a carefully maintained terrace in a good part of the district. This was a house in the sense that a different type of decision led to a different type of outcome.

It was set back from the street, behind a wall and a gate and a garden that had clearly been planted with professional care. The building itself was the kind of architecture that required no particular introduction—it was simply, visibly, a place that belonged to people for whom the options had been wide.

"Tyler," Mike said.

"Yes," Tyler said.

"You live here."

"My mother does," Tyler said. "I stay here because she doesn’t like the university dormitories."

"Right," Mike said.

"She worries," Tyler said. "About security and related matters."

He said it with the faint awareness of someone who understood the irony of this statement, given the events of the last hour.

’Holy fucking shit... I didn’t expect the house to be this fucking big.’ Mike thought. ’He’s rich-rich, and I need to use every chance to be friends with this pussy.’

’But... it’s fine anyway, as long as I can get that money.’

They reached the gate. Tyler pressed the intercom, which was a good one—solid and new.

A voice on the other end, not the intercom voice of a building system but of a person, asked who it was.

"It’s me," Tyler said. "And someone who helped me tonight."

A pause.

"Is it urgent?"

"Yes," Tyler said. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Another pause. Then the gate clicked.

The path to the front door was lit, and the door itself was substantial; when it opened, a woman in her forties, dressed in functional clothing typical of those who live in large houses and are still awake at two in the morning, appeared.

She had the confident demeanor of someone whose job involved managing various responsibilities.

In her right hand was a handgun, pointed at the floor.

She looked at Mike. Her expression did not change.

"Whoa there! Calm down!" Mike raised both his arms.

"Who are you?" she said. She spoke not with the shakiness of someone who had just been alarmed but with the flat directness of someone accustomed to handling unexpected visitors at two AM according to established procedures.

"Mike Hawk," Mike said. "Tyler’s friend."

She looked at Tyler. She looked at his face, at his posture, at the blood on his jacket.

She looked back at Mike and at the handkerchief pressed against his cheekbone.

"What happened?" she said.

"He was bullied," Mike said. "Near the campus."

"I happened to be walking past."

Her expression did not show what she was assessing because she was the kind of person who had learned not to show assessments while they were still in progress. She looked at Tyler again, and this look was different from her professional demeanor.

"Go inside," she said to Tyler, in a tone that was neither harsh nor gentle but was absolutely not a suggestion.

Tyler went inside.

She looked at Mike for another moment; the handgun remained down and present, similar to how tools are available when not in use but may be needed later.

"Wait here," she said.

She went inside.

The door didn’t close. It sat open at a twenty-degree angle, the kind of door position that was neither an invitation nor a dismissal.

Mike stood on the front step under the porch light, holding the handkerchief against his cheek, and looked at the door and then at the garden and then back at the door.

From somewhere inside the house, he could hear a second voice. A woman’s voice, higher than the first, moved quickly between words in a way that indicated someone who had been told something alarming and was in the process of coming to it.

Footsteps, rapid.

The door opened fully.

The woman who appeared in the doorway was tall, dressed in the clothes she had been wearing before falling asleep, and her hair was red-colored—reflecting someone who managed her appearance with the same attention she applied to everything else in her life.

She appeared to be around the age of forty-five, the point in life where a woman often possesses both the means and the discipline to look exactly as old as she is and no more. This age conveyed a sense of authority, and under the porch light at two in the morning, with visible concern etched on her face, she seemed very much in the moment.

She was past Mike immediately, moving to Tyler, who was behind him, and her hands went to his face with the specific motion of someone doing a rapid visual assessment of damage.

"Tyler...! Oh my god..." she said. "What happened? Who bullied you?!"

It was not quite a question.

Tyler, whose analytical processing had apparently not fully extended to being capable of managing his mother’s concern at this hour, said, "There were three of them, but don’t worry... Mike stopped it."

She turned.

She looked at Mike—at the cut on his cheek, at the handkerchief, and at the way he was standing, which she read the way certain kinds of people read things. He could see the reading happening.

"You’re Mike," she said. "My son talks about you..."

"Hawk," he added.

She looked at him for a moment.

"Thank you," she said.

She meant it in a straightforward manner, as someone who expresses a sentiment with genuine significance rather than in an automatic or insincere way.

Then she moved Tyler toward the door, one hand on his shoulder, because the logistics of the situation required him to be inside and examined, and whoever this young man standing on her porch was, the immediate priority was Tyler.

She got Tyler through the door, and Mike heard her voice from inside, lower now, the clipped efficiency of someone running through a checklist.

"Ribs," she said. "Show me."

And Tyler’s voice answered, patient in the way that people are patient with parents when they are in pain and do not want to explain the pain.

The staff woman—the one who had opened the door first, the one with the handgun— appeared in the doorway again. She looked at Mike with the same flat professional attention as before, and then she stepped aside and held the door at a wider angle.

"She’d like you to come in," she said.

It was not phrased as an invitation, but it was not phrased as a command either. It had the quality of a message being delivered accurately.

Mike looked at the door, at the woman, at the interior of the house behind her, which was the kind of interior that confirmed everything the exterior had already said.

"Alright," he said.

Mike saw another staff member who had closed the gate was built like someone who took his job seriously and ate accordingly. He stood to the left of the entrance with one hand still loosely positioned near the inside of his jacket, neither reaching for anything nor appearing completely relaxed.

He had looked at Mike the way security people always do when someone unexpected shows up at two in the morning holding a teenager with blood on his collar: like a problem that needed to be categorized before it was accepted.

’Where’s the other baddie tho...? Why is it him?’