Maybe it was shame.
Maybe fear had simply eaten through his silence.
He looked up at me, rain shining on his skin.
“She tried to stop them,” he said.
Varrick’s jaw tightened.
Briggs kept going.
“There was another student. A boy. They were beating him behind the science building. Four of them. Preston and his friends. Your daughter came from the library. She started recording. She yelled that she was calling the police.”
My hands curled.
“Then?”
“Preston took her phone. She slapped him. He hit her.”
Briggs swallowed.
“He didn’t stop.”
The rain hammered the pavement.
“One punch?” I asked.
Briggs shook his head.
“Two?”
He looked away.
I understood.
Six breaks.
Extreme force.
More than fists, maybe.
“Why didn’t you stop him?”
Briggs squeezed his eyes shut. “By the time I got there, she was down.”
“Then why lie?”
He looked at Varrick.
“Because Chief Ralston told us the university would handle it internally.”
“Where is the other student?”
Briggs said nothing.
I turned slowly toward him.
“The boy they were beating. Where is he?”
Varrick answered first.
“There was no boy.”
Briggs whispered, “Yes, there was.”
The two guards moved at once.
I had expected them to.
The first came from my left, reaching inside his coat. I stepped in before he cleared whatever he was reaching for, caught his wrist, turned it outward, and drove my elbow into his throat. He dropped with a wet gasp.
The second guard was better.
He swung hard, disciplined, aiming for my ribs. I took part of it, felt pain flash through my side, then hooked his arm and slammed him face-first into the ambulance bay pillar.
The driver’s door opened.
I reached beneath the first guard’s coat and pulled out a compact pistol.
Then everyone stopped.
Even Varrick.
I kept the weapon pointed downward.
Not at them.
Not yet.
“Call your men off,” I said.
Varrick looked at the two guards on the ground. One coughed. The other groaned.
“You are making a mistake,” he said.
“No,” I replied. “I made my mistake when I believed institutions protected people.”
Sirens wailed in the distance.
Real police this time, maybe called by hospital staff.