QED

Chapter 8 - Lucinda

Hey! Do you have anything important to do today?

Just studying for exams. Why do you ask?

Well, some friends and me wanted to make a nice evening. Just wanted to ask if you'd like to join :)

Oh, I didn't expect you to answer immediately... I'd love to join, but I really have to do some stuff for college.

Come on, you don't have classes today. You can just leave whenever you're feeling like we are wasting your time.

You don't really let me a choice, do you?

Definitely not. You'll see, it will be fun. The others crave to meet you.

If that's the case, I probably cannot say no, can I?

Perfect. I'll send you time and place later.

Lucinda scrolled through the messages Mark and her had exchanged. So far, her plan seemed to succeed. Now, she had to enter the next phase. She let the keyboard appear and typed in a new message.

Sorry for being so late about this, but it turned out Jason accidentally sent me the wrong time. The meeting is at 8pm now, not 5pm. If you want, we can still meet up earlier, though. Isn't like I planned anything else.

She pressed the sending button. Hopefully, Mark would take her offer. No, he needed to. She had exactly planned out everything. Faking the meeting time, pretending to be interested in him, finally taking advantage of his connections. There was no space left for him ruining her plan.

Her gaze went up just to see the person before her in the queue walking away. Finally. This had taken far too much of her precious time. She stepped forward.

"What would you like to order?" the fake-barista asked grumpily.

Lucinda lavishly glanced to the menu hanging on the wall. "One Iced Americano, please."

"What's your name?"

"Lucinda."

He typed it into the computer. "Anything else?"

"That'd be all, thank you."

Outside, she instantly nipped at her coffee. Not as good as one straight out of a portafilter machine, but it had to be enough for the moment. At least they hadn't gotten her name wrong this time.

She took a few steps, checked her phone again. Mark hadn't answered yet. That left her and the crowded streets of the city. If he wouldn't show up, she had some other things to do here. One of them included using a credit card that wasn't hers.

Out of the sudden, she heard a familiar voice behind her. "Lucinda!"

She turned around. And looked directly in Mark Harris's eyes. A smile crept onto her face. Well, at least she had something to do now.

"How did you know I'd be here?" she asked, hurrying up to match his pace.

He smiled mysteriously. "I'm good at finding people, you know?"

Finding people... exactly what she needed to do. Even if she suspected him not to be able to find this specific person. But who knew, maybe he would prove her wrong and turn out much more useful than she initially thought.

"Sure." She chuckled. "But seriously, what are you doing here?"

"Just walking around, I guess. I was on my way to a specific bookstore, but I accidentally took the wrong train."

"A specific bookstore... So I should just believe that?"

"No, of course not. I stalked you the whole day, just to overcome my insecurities and to talk to you now."