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He wanders over, glancing between Veronica and me, his eyebrows raised as if he can feel the tension coming off her.

“Do me a favor and pull up the shots from this morning,” I say. “The warmups. All of them.”

Declan frowns, but he flips his camera around and clicks through to the gallery, then holds the little screen up so she can see. “Uh, sure. Here.”

He goes through them one by one, and I’m in shot after shot, stretching out with the team and messing around with Montoya near the goal. I lean in and point at the corner of the screen where the little white numbers show the date and the time.

“See that? The camera stamps the time on every photo it takes.” I tap the corner again. “All morning. I was out here, on camera, with the whole team. So whoever you saw in the hallway, it couldn’t have been me, because I never left the field. You can count the minutes between the shots if you want. There’s no gap in there big enough for me to have done anything.”

She takes the camera out of Declan’s hands and checks the shots herself, and I watch her face harden. There’s nothing she can do with any of it, and she probably knows that already, because her fingers tighten around the camera and her jaw sets as if she wants to hurl it into the grass.

Maybe she will. She’s stubborn like that. Most girls would be in tears by now or already gone. But even with the proof right there in her hands telling her she’s got no case, it doesn’t look like she’s willing to give up, and some part of me almost respects it, which is a problem. She’s supposed to be a job and nothing more, and the sooner I remember that, the better.

She shoves the camera back at Declan hard enough that he fumbles to catch it, then she narrows her gaze back at me. “I don’t care what your little photos say. I know what I saw. This isn’t over. Not even close.”

Then she spins around and storms off. A grin tugs at my mouth as I watch her leave. She’s furious, shaken, and she’s got no way to prove a thing, which means the first step worked exactly like it should. Tear the target down in front of everyone and get people whispering, and I’ve done both in one morning.

The best part is that she came straight to me instead of the professor or campus security, which probably means she knows what she’s up against. And that’s only going to make the rest easier once I switch from the guy she suspects to the only guy who bothers to believe her.

Declan loops the strap back over his head and lets out a low whistle. “Man, who was that? She looked ready to kill you.”

“No one,” I say, grabbing my water bottle and taking a long swig. “Just some freshman.”

He raises his eyebrows as if he’s waiting for more, but I don’t give him anything, so he heads back to his spot on the sideline to get the rest of practice on camera. Good. The less anyone knows about Veronica and me, the better, because no one can find out she’s connected to anything I’m doing for the society.

I take another sip. It’s such a shame she saw me, though, and that she’s so sure it was me. That shouldn’t have happened, but it doesn’t actually change anything, because I already handled it. Even if she doesn’t believe me, everyone else will, and that’s what matters.

And she’ll never work out how I even pulled it off. She’s got no idea the society has tunnels under the campus that no one aside from its members knows about. It was easy because one of the tunnels connects directly to the history department. I did what I had to and returned fast enough that everyone thought I was just using the restroom.

Veronica can be furious all she wants, and it might even be better if she talks. Whoever she tells about her suspicions will realize she’s got nothing, while I’ve got the whole team and coach as my witnesses and a stack of timestamped photos backing my alibi. It’ll make her look unhinged and exactly like someone who would stalk students.

Next thing is the isolation part, which is the easiest bit of the whole thing, because the college will do half the work for me. A rumor here, a cold look there, a couple of popular girls deciding she’s not worth their time, and it’ll all snowball on its own until it becomes unbearable for her. I know the right people for silly gossip, and once it spreads, she won’t even know who’s really behind it. She’ll just feel like the whole place is turning on her, with no clue that I’m the one pulling every string, and she’ll be all alone and ready for the taking.

And when my mission is complete, I’ll get into the inner circle and finally find out what really happened to Elsie. Maybe I should feel bad. Veronica is innocent in this, and I’m making her life hell, which could potentially have horrible consequences, but I can’t let myself think about it too hard because then I’ll hesitate, and I can’t afford that.

Only getting to the truth matters, and this is the only way.

Chapter 8

VERONICA

AS I WAIT IN THE HALLWAY outside the Office of Student Conduct, I read every notice on the board on the wall, going over what I’m going to say. Every time footsteps sound somewhere, my head snaps up, since I’m almost convinced it’s someone coming to tell me I’m done here, expelled, and should be packing my bags. It feels like my whole life and my future depend on this, and I’ve got no idea which way it’s about to go.

When the door finally opens and the conduct officer waves me in, I go in and take the chair she points me to. The office is small, and folders are stacked all over the desk. I fold my hands in my lap while the officer clicks through something on her computer, her brow furrowed.

“I had the tech office take a look at the classroom computer,” she says, and turns the screen a little so I can see it. There’s some kind of log, and I can’t read most of it from here, but she points at one line with the end of her pen. “This is your file, which you opened right before class. And this,” she moves her pen down a few rows, “is a second drive going in after yours. Whoever plugged it in copied a new file onto the drive and edited it, probably copying the beginning of your presentation, then deleted your file.”

My breath gets stuck in my chest. This is good, isn’t it? At least there’s some kind of proof.

“Then you can prove it wasn’t me,” I say, “and that someone messed with it.”

She nods, but her mouth pulls down at the corners. “We can prove the file was changed. What we can’t prove is who changed it. There’s no camera in the hallway, and a flash drive could be anyone’s, so unless someone comes forward, we’ve got no way of knowing who did it. Technically, you could’ve used two flash drives to make it look like it was someone else.”

I inwardly groan. “So whoever did it just gets away with it.”

“Without proof, our hands are tied. If anyone comes to us with something solid, we’ll act on it, but right now, there’s not much more we can do.”

Fucking fantastic. The person who nearly got me expelled and ruined my reputation gets to live as if nothing happened, and I’m the one left paying the price.