Page 59 of Final Drive

Kinsley: Positive. Gray’s little pet is hiding her designation. We can blow the whole thing up.

Quinton: Not yet.

Kinsley: Why not?

Quinton: Because she trusts me. Let me see how far that gets us first.

Kinsley: Just don’t actually fall for her lol

Quinton: I’m not Gray.

Kinsley: That’s not an answer.

Quinton: She’s useful. That’s all.

My hands aren’t steady when I finish. Tyler watches me the way you’d watch weather.

“There’s more,” he says. “I went into Quinton’s history with Gray. The prep school years. The girl they both dated.”

“Sophia.”

“Yeah.” He pulls up another window. “She’s at UCLA now, studying psychology. I messaged her and told her I was at Sable Ridge and looking into Quinton because I had reason to believe he’d hurt somebody here. I asked if she’d be willing to tell me anything about what happened at prep school.”

“She answered?”

“Not at first. She wanted proof I was who I said I was. I sent her my student profile and told her she didn’t owe me anything. She wrote back about an hour later.”

He turns the screen again.

The first messages are careful, Sophia working out whether this is real or a trap with Quinton’s name on it. Once she decides Tyler isn’t connected to him, the rest comes out.

She didn’t leave because two Alphas were fighting over her. She left because Quinton wouldn’t accept an answer.

It started small. Turning up in places he had no way of knowing she’d be. Texting constantly and getting angry when the replies came slowly. Telling her Gray was dangerous. Telling her Gray had a bet running with the lacrosse team over who could get her first. Telling her Gray only wanted her to take something from Quinton.

She believed him, because he was charming and attentive and seemed so worried about her.

Then one night at a party he got her into a bedroom.

He didn’t rape me, she wrote. But only because somebody walked in. He had me against the wall with his hand over my mouth. I still have nightmares about his eyes.

She reported it. Quinton’s father made it go away. A week later she was on a plane to California.

I never told Gray the truth. I was too ashamed, and Quinton had convinced me they’d planned it together. It took years of therapy before I understood that Gray never did anything wrong, and by then it felt too late to reach out.

I read it three times. The words start coming apart and mixing into what Eli told me last night, the arm, the mouth, the hand coming up toward her face.

Same beginning. Same direction.

“He’s done this before,” I say. My own voice sounds like it’s coming from the next room. “This is what he does.”

“Looks like it.” Tyler closes that window but leaves the messages with Kinsley on the screen. “So what do we do with it?”

The answer’s obvious to me. Find him. Make him understand what happens.

Eli’s in my head instead, level and reasonable. Give me twenty-four hours.

“Gray needs to see this,” I say.