Page 63 of Final Drive

Bo has both hands flat on the table now, pressing down like it’s the only thing keeping him in the chair. Zane’s gone pale. Beckett is staring at his plate. Cameron hasn’t moved at all, which from Cameron is louder than any of them.

“She thought I was part of it,” Gray says. There’s nothing in his voice. “All this time she thought I helped him do it.”

“He told her you had a bet running with the lacrosse team. That you only wanted her to take something from him.” I close the email. “She believed it because he’d spent months making her trust him and doubt everybody else.”

“That’s what he’s been doing to Reese,” Eli says.

“Move for move.”

“Did it work?” Bo asks. “With Reese. Did she start believing him?”

“You’d have to ask her.”

Gray pushes back from the table and goes to the window, stopping a few feet from Jackson with his back to the room.

“I’m going to kill him.”

“No, you’re not.” Jackson doesn’t raise his voice. “That’s what he wants. You lose control, he gets to be the victim, and you’re the one with a file.”

“He almost⁠—”

“I know. She got away, and now we have enough to bury him properly.”

“Which is what?” Bo’s accent has thickened, the way it does when he’s furious. “We can’t walk into the administration and say we went through his social media.”

“We didn’t go through anything. Those accounts are public if you know where to look.” I open the timeline I built at three this morning. “And we have more than screenshots. We have Sophia, if she’s willing to give a statement. We have Jackson putting Kinsley and Quinton together in person. We have Reese’s account of what happened at the restaurant.”

“That’s all circumstantial,” Zane says. He’s thinking now instead of reacting. “A decent lawyer takes it apart.”

“For a criminal case. We’re not going to court.” I look around the table. “We’re going to the university. Title IX.”

“Title IX?” Beckett frowns. “That’s sexual harassment.”

“And stalking and creating a hostile environment.” I’ve been reading policy since midnight. “It isn’t only the restaurant. He’s been tracking her, using Kinsley to get her schedule, putting himself where he knew she’d be, working to separate her from the crew. Kinsley supplied the footage and helped him do it. If Sophia is willing to give a statement, it shows this isn’t the first time.”

“Will they actually do anything?” Cameron asks.

“It’s enough to make them look. Once they start pulling on it, there’s a lot for them to find.” I bring up the last screenshot. “This is from his alt account. Last year, a girl at Ridgemont. Same approach, nearly the same language. He finds somebody vulnerable, makes himself useful, makes everybody else look dangerous, and waits until she trusts him.”

The room has gone quiet again.

“He’s been doing this for years,” I say. “He’s getting away with it because each woman thinks she’s the only one.”

“So we show them she isn’t,” Eli says. “We build something the university can’t put in a drawer.”

“Yes.”

Bo has been quiet a while. “What about his father? Sophia said he made her complaint disappear. What stops him doing it here?”

“Different school, different decade, different set of people.” I’ve run this enough times that the answer is already waiting. “Exeter buried one girl’s word against a legacy family. Multiple accounts with documentation and witnesses are harder to bury.”

“And if they try anyway?” Beckett asks.

“Then we decide whether to go outside the university. Press, conference administration, whatever makes the most sense once we know what we’re dealing with.”

“That would cost Reese her privacy,” Eli says.

“It could.” I look at him. “Which is why that’s not our decision to make.”