Chapter 32 #2
“But I had a niggling gut feeling about her. First, my QB gets involved with the Cole girl. Then my wide receiver with the girl that should have been off this campus the minute she printed her lies, but Dean Cole protected her. And then he brings me another girl, and this one gets dangled in front of my linebacker. Three of my stars, three girls all dancing to Cole’s tune. ”
I blinked. “You think the dean is orchestrating dating?” I asked him scornfully.
“No. Even for me, that’s far-fetched. But all my trouble started within the last few months.
And you know who’s new here, in the last few months?
A PT and social media girl. The PT is involved with Hembry, and he’s not shy about sharing details.
I don’t care about her. But you and the media girl .
. . You see where I’m going?” He didn’t wait for an answer.
“I had a friend look into Briar Holmes.” He pointed at me. “Tell me what I found.”
“That you need more hobbies? You’re clearly bored in the evenings.”
He laughed. “You’re funny. I never appreciated that about you.” He watched me carefully. “Her name is not Briar Holmes. In fact, Briar Holmes didn’t exist until five months ago.”
“I’d get your friend to check again.”
“Briar Sterling is twenty-four years old. Marketing major, mediocre at best. Hasn’t had a stable job since she left college. Originally from Chattanooga. And you know who else is from there? Her brother.”
“Siblings tend to be from the same place.”
He didn’t smile this time. “So, in my department, I have my QB talking to the dean through his daughter. I have my wide receiver talking to a reckless reporter, and I have my linebacker talking to a girl who’s here on a fake ID, and who lied about who she is with false documents.
” He tapped his chin. “Tell me, Matthews. Which string do I pull for you to start talking to me?”
“Fuck you.”
He grinned. “She’ll be charged with fraud. She’ll probably get arrested. She’ll be fired, of course. For screwing you and lying. And her brother, he’s not so stable. He’ll probably do something really stupid, that’s just how he is—”
“What do you want?” I asked him. My hands were numb, I’d been clenching them so hard. “Please make it quick. If I have to listen to one more word of this diatribe, I’m going to punch you.”
“Who’s the social media poster?”
“Me.”
He gave me a flat look.
“It’s me.” I didn’t flinch. “I’m not as dumb as I look.”
He scoffed but said nothing further about my social media skills.
“You knew who she was?”
“Not at first.” I gave him nothing else.
“What are you going to do to fix my problems?”
I swallowed hard. “I’ll stop the posts.”
He nodded. “Good, good. And?”
“That’s all I have.”
“Hmm. So you’re back to insulting me.”
“I—”
“I want the posts gone. I want her gone. And I want you to never say one word to your teammates about what I know and don’t know.”
“I can’t do that.” I saw his look. “I’ll tell you why,” I carried on as if he’d interrupted.
“Dante, actually, won’t be an issue. He’s pissed that his Draft value will suffer if there’s a scandal.
” His eyebrows rose. “Slater, he’s got a girl.
He’s never really been in a relationship, and I don’t think this will last. Trust me, he’s already looking.
” He looked delighted at that tidbit. I’d said it to give Sutherland something believable, something that cost him less than what he was protecting.
I’d deal with the fact that I’d just lied about my friend later.
I’d have to. I glanced at the picture on his desk. “She wants justice for her brother.”
“Justice?” Coach Sutherland looked insulted. “Mason was in a car crash. He broke his leg, his playing career was over.”
“He was falsely accused of what happened to Tiffany Preacher.”
He watched me closely. “Ah, that old chestnut.”
“I think the fact that a girl killed herself because of what happened to her here, in this building, is more than a chestnut?”
He blew out a breath. “Nothing happened to her. Nothing.” His stare didn’t waver.
“I run my ship the way I like it. I don’t like people who spy on me.
But I have my own spies. I like insurance.
” He tapped his desk where the photo of me was.
“I don’t let or allow shit to happen in my building without knowing about it.
I sure as fuck don’t let girls get attacked in here. ”
What? I watched him; he looked furious that I thought I would.
Sutherland leaned forward. “I have two daughters, did you know that?”
The room was spinning. I expected him to deny it; I never expected him to be furious at the accusation. “I don’t think I do.”
“If she were assaulted or hurt under my roof, there would be hell to pay. She was in the locker room; there are no cameras there. There are cameras everywhere else.” He held my look.
“I watched every tape, every angle, she went in, alone. It was empty. No one else came in or out; the last person to leave that locker room left it three hours before she was even in this building. The building was closed. She came out dressed exactly the same, no signs of struggle. No signs of a fight. Tiffany Preacher was alone in there.”
“No.”
“Yes.” He looked away. “We searched every inch of that place. That one of my team could hurt her, like she said she was hurt? Not on my watch. Not in my house. No fucking way. We searched it. The police searched it. We found only one piece of physical evidence of her in there, and one circumstantial.”
He waited, and I needed to know. “Do I have to guess?”
He gave me a flat, unimpressed glare. “There were secretions on the bench outside Sterling’s locker.”
Secretions? “What does that mean?”
“We don’t know, but it is likely,” he looked repulsed. “The police believed she’d . . . pleasured herself there.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that. “No. She was hysterical. Traumatized.”
“We also found her underwear in Sterling’s bag.”
“What?”
“The female officer who pulled them from his bag said they were fresh. They think she left them as a souvenir.”
I couldn’t think. This is not what I was expecting. “Are you saying she broke in, masturbated, and then slipped her underwear into his bag?”
“That was the conclusion the police came to, yes.”
“Why did no one say anything?” I demanded.
“Because she was gone that night! She tried to file three statements, but not one of them made sense. Sterling was insistent that he take her home, so I let them go.” He shook his head, looking out at the quiet office outside.
“I let them go.” He sighed. “Nothing happened to her. If something did, it didn’t happen here. It didn’t happen that night.”
“You paid her off.”
He laughed. He tipped his head back and laughed. “Who the fuck told you that? That is utter bullshit.”
I’d guessed it. And right now, I couldn’t remember if Diana or Briar confirmed it.
“Why didn’t you tell Mason this?” I demanded.
“I never saw that boy again. He stayed away. Hell, he wouldn’t talk or take a call after that car crash. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have said he was guilty.” He glanced back at me. “After the car crash, he dropped out. Gone.”
This was too much information. “I can’t process all this.” I looked up at him. “There is no way in hell you’re the good guy here.”
Sutherland chuckled. “No. I’m not the good guy. But I don’t let sexual predators or rapists in my building.”
Either Sutherland was the best liar I’d ever met . . . or we’d got it all wrong.
And I hated it, but I believed him. Fuck, I really did.
Maybe Tiffany hadn’t been attacked in that locker room. Maybe Mason hadn’t been framed the way we thought. Maybe every piece of the story we’d built had been wrong.
But a girl had still died.
And everyone in this building had still found a way to survive it except her.
He tapped the desk. “The posts come down. Your roommates reel in their attitude. The Sterling girl goes quietly. Be the leader in the outside world that you are on the field.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I didn’t know what to do.
“I need to think.”
“Not an option. It all stops now. Or it just gets uglier.”
I looked up at him. In that case . . . I didn’t have a choice.