Chapter 2 - Guilty Before Morning
By eight the next morning, Avery's name was trending across campus.
By nine, someone had spray-painted LIAR across her apartment door.
By ten, her scholarship review had been scheduled.
Her phone never stopped vibrating.
Some messages came from strangers.
Some came from people she had known for years.
Most said the same thing.
Monster.
Jealous.
Psychopath.
Avery turned the phone face down.
Her roommate Hannah Price stood in the kitchen watching her.
Unlike everyone else, Hannah had not left.
“You need to stop reading those.”
“They're talking about expelling me.”
“They haven't proven anything.”
“They don't need proof anymore.”
Avery pushed away from the table.
Three eyewitness statements had already been leaked.
Brooke Jensen claimed Avery had argued with Lila before rehearsal.
Tasha Reeves said Avery had been seen handling the harness.
Assistant coach Mason Vale claimed Avery had asked whether a damaged clip could cause a serious fall.
Each statement made her sound more guilty.
Each one was just close enough to the truth to be dangerous.
Avery had argued with Lila.
But the argument had been about missing team funds.
She had touched the harness.
But only after Vale ordered her to move equipment.
And she had asked about the clip.
Because she had found one cracked in the storage room two weeks earlier.
The lies were built around real moments.
Someone had planned this carefully.
Hannah opened her laptop.
“I downloaded the rehearsal schedule before they locked the team drive.”
Avery looked up.
“You did what?”
“I assumed someone would start deleting things.”
For the first time since the stadium, Avery felt something other than fear.
They opened the schedule.
Lila's stunt had been listed for 7:40 p.m.
The accident happened at 7:51.
Avery remembered exactly where she had been.
At 7:46, Coach Mercer had sent her to retrieve athletic tape from the medical room.
That meant Avery had left the gym before the fall.
“There should be hallway cameras.”
Hannah nodded.
“There should be.”
Avery logged into the campus security portal.
Access denied.
She tried again.
The camera covering the medical hallway had been marked unavailable.
Maintenance outage.
Time of outage: 7:43 p.m. to 8:02 p.m.
Avery stared at the screen.
“That camera has never gone down.”
Hannah leaned closer.
“Maybe it didn't.”
Avery remembered the voices in the stadium tunnel.
She doesn't know about the camera.
Avery's pulse quickened.
“Not that camera.”
Hannah frowned.
“What?”
Avery stood.
“There was another camera.”
She remembered seeing it months earlier.
A tiny black security lens above the equipment tunnel.
It wasn't operated by campus security.
May you like
It belonged to the stadium's private broadcast company.
And if Vale was afraid of it, there had to be a reason.
