The Keys He Dropped on the Floor

Blake Whitmore threw his sports car keys at the feet of a man with an old bicycle. “Pick them up.” Evan Mercer refused. Minutes later, Bellwether University’s president welcomed him as the new chair of its board. Blake’s public humiliation should have ended there. Instead, Evan realized Blake knew about a confidential plan to redevelop East Hall—a residence filled with scholarship students and a community teaching center. The figures presented to the board were out of date, a crucial appendix had disappeared, and the developer seeking the property was Blake’s father. As an edited video turns the campus against him, Evan has to find out who shaped the deal and stop students from losing their rooms. But Bellwether is running out of money. Exposing the proposal may save East Hall while leaving the university without the funds it needs to keep its promises. Evan came to campus expecting a board meeting. Now he must decide what his family’s influence is worth if he cannot use it to protect the people everyone else left out of the plan.