Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Tyler
Breakfast is tense.
Everyone’s at the table except Reese, who’s still asleep upstairs. Gray wanted to wake her. Eli argued she needed the rest, and for once Gray let it go. So we’re sitting here with plates of eggs nobody is eating, waiting for me to explain why I called a meeting at seven in the morning.
I’ve presented to professors and recruiters and one actual board of directors. None of it feels like this, because none of it was going to break something in the room.
“Just tell us,” Gray says. His patience ran out about thirty seconds after he sat down.
I open the laptop and turn it so they can all see. “Kinsley and Quinton have been coordinating since Reese joined the crew. I found their alt accounts. They’ve been trading her schedule, her habits, where she is on campus and when.”
“We knew they were connected,” Beckett says. “Jackson saw them last night.”
“This isn’t two people hooking up.” I scroll.
“Read the progression. First they’re trading information about her.
Then he starts reporting back on whether she trusts him, whether she’s answering, whether she’s pulling away from us.
” I stop on the line I haven’t been able to get out of my head.
“Kinsley asks if he’s going to fall for her. He says she’s useful. That’s all.”
Bo leans in to read over my shoulder. The longer he reads, the harder his fingers curl around the edge of the table.
“He’s been tracking her like she’s game.”
“Yes.”
“Son of a bitch.” Zane shoves his chair back hard enough to bark against the floor. He doesn’t stand, but he wants to. “The whole time he’s been playing the nice guy and we just let her—”
“We didn’t let her do anything,” Eli says. “She’s an adult and she chose who to spend time with.”
“Based on lies.”
“Which is why we’re doing this now.”
Gray hasn’t looked away from the screen. “Keep going.”
I scroll to the next set. “Three weeks ago Kinsley confirmed her designation. She saw Reese taking suppressants.” I leave the messages up long enough for everyone to read them.
“They were already using Reese to get at Gray and the crew. Once they knew she was Omega, they realized they had something bigger.”
“And Gray,” Jackson says from the window. He’s been standing there since we started, arms crossed, watching everybody’s faces instead of the screen. “Quinton’s messages are clear. He wants to hurt Gray through her.”
Cameron speaks for the first time. “Why? What did Gray do to him?”
“That’s the part you need to hear.” I pull up Sophia’s emails and take a breath. “I found Sophia. The girl they both dated at Exeter.”
Gray goes rigid. “Tyler.”
“You need to hear it. All of you do.”
I summarize it as carefully as I know how, and for once careful doesn’t feel like enough. The places Quinton kept turning up. The lies about Gray. The party. The bedroom. The hand over her mouth. The person who opened the door before it went any further.
Nobody says anything when I finish.
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.”
That lands harder than I expect it to.
I’ve spent most of the night building the cleanest path through this. Evidence, witnesses, university procedure, escalation if the first route fails. It’s what I’m good at. Give me enough information and enough time and I can usually find the next move.
None of that makes the next move mine.
Gray turns from the window. He’s still pale, but the shock is gone. What’s left looks a lot more dangerous.
“What do you need?”
“If Reese wants to file, we help her put it together. Jackson writes down exactly what he saw last night while it’s fresh. Somebody needs to ask Sophia whether she’s willing to give an official statement.”
“I’ll ask her,” Gray says. “I owe her that.”
“Are you sure? Given the history—”
“She should hear from me that I didn’t know. That I’d never have.” He stops and swallows. “She’s owed an apology for what he did to her using my name.”
It’s the right call, and it’s going to cost him.
“What about Kinsley?” Zane asks.
“Same complaint if Reese wants it that way, or separate reports with connected facts. The footage, the harassment, the information she fed Quinton. We document all of it and let the university decide how they want it filed.”
“And if they won’t do anything?” Bo asks.
“Then we make noise.” Jackson comes off the wall. “This ends. He doesn’t get to keep doing it to people.”
Nobody answers immediately. I watch them turn it over, looking for holes, finding some and accepting the rest.
“If this goes forward,” I say, “Reese has to be the one to file.”
“Then Reese gets to decide whether she files.”
Her voice comes from the doorway.
Every head turns. She’s standing there in sleep clothes with her hair still flat on one side, and from the way she’s looking at us, she’s been listening long enough to understand more than I wanted her to hear without context.
“Somebody want to tell me about Sophia?”
Gray crosses to her and stops short of touching her. “Reese. I didn’t know. I swear to you I didn’t know what he did.”
“I believe you.” She looks past him at me. “You found all this last night?”
“Tyler did most of it,” Jackson says. “I got lucky with the timing.”
She nods, looking the way she does on the water when she’s running the numbers on a race she hasn’t decided how to win yet.
“Title IX,” she says. “You think it works?”
“I think it’s the best chance at stopping him without one of us catching an assault charge.”
Her mouth twitches. “You’re worried about assault charges?”
“Gray and Jackson both have the look.”
“I’m right here,” Gray mutters.
“And I’m not wrong.”
Reese takes a breath, then another, and comes to the table. The empty chair is between Bo and Eli. Both shift to give her room instead of closing it, and she sits.
“I want to see all of it,” she says. “The screenshots, the emails, everything. Then I want to know exactly what filing means. Who I talk to, what I have to say, whether my designation comes out.”
“It might,” I tell her. “I can’t promise you it won’t.”
“Then I need to think about that.” She looks around the table, taking her time with every one of us. “I know you want to fix it. I know you want to protect me. This is my name and my life, so I need you to let me be the one who decides.”
Bo reaches over and takes her hand. She lets him.
“Whatever you decide,” he says, “we’re with you.”
“All of us,” Zane says. “Even if you decide not to file. Even if you want to handle it some other way. Nobody’s going anywhere.”
Reese squeezes Bo’s hand, then looks at me.
“Okay. Show me everything.”
I turn the laptop toward her and start again from the first message. This time, I don’t build the argument for her.
I just give her the facts.