Varrick heard them too.
His expression changed—not fear, but calculation.
He turned to Briggs. “You’ve ruined yourself.”
Briggs looked sick.
Varrick got back into the SUV.
Before the door closed, he looked at me one last time.
“You think this is about my grandson,” he said. “It isn’t.”
The door shut.
The SUV pulled away into the rain.
I stood there breathing hard, pistol still down at my side, while the sirens grew louder.
Officer Briggs sank onto the curb and put his face in his hands.
I looked at him and said, “Start from the beginning.”
He did.
Not all at once. Men like Briggs don’t confess cleanly. They circle the truth first, afraid it might bite.
He told me Preston Varrick and three others had hosted a closed party in an old faculty house near campus, a place used quietly by donors, trustees, and favored students. Alcohol. Drugs. Girls invited and pressured. Boys humiliated if they didn’t belong. The kind of rotten little kingdom that grows when money convinces children they are untouchable.
That night, a freshman named Ethan Cole had been dragged outside after accusing Preston of assaulting someone at the party.
“Assaulting who?” I asked.
Briggs shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not. I swear. By the time security was called, the girl was gone.”
“And Lily?”
“She wasn’t at the party. She was cutting across campus from the library. She saw them attacking Ethan. She recorded it. Preston saw her.”
He stopped there.
He didn’t have to say the rest.
My daughter, brave and stubborn and incapable of walking away from someone in trouble, had stepped into the path of a monster wearing a rich boy’s face.
“Where is Ethan Cole now?” I asked.
Briggs wiped rain from his mouth.
“That’s the part I don’t understand.”
“What part?”
“When I arrived, Ethan was still alive. Badly hurt, but alive. I called it in. Chief Ralston arrived before the ambulance. He ordered me to help move Lily closer to the walkway.”
My blood chilled.
“Move her?”
“To make it look like she was found alone.”
“And Ethan?”
Briggs stared at the ground.
“They put him in a campus maintenance vehicle.”
I heard the sirens reach the hospital entrance.
“Where did they take him?”
“I don’t know.”
I crouched in front of him.
“Think carefully.”
His eyes met mine.
“Old water treatment plant,” he whispered. “North edge of campus. It’s abandoned. Chief Ralston uses it for storage.”
The first police car turned into the ambulance bay.
Then another.
Uniformed officers jumped out, hands near their holsters, eyes moving from the unconscious guards to the pistol in my hand.
I set it carefully on the ground and lifted my hands.
“My daughter is upstairs,” I said. “She was assaulted. This officer has information about a missing student.”
Nobody moved.
Then a detective stepped from the second car.
Older woman. Gray streaks through dark hair. Sharp eyes. Badge on a chain.