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“Easier that way.” Nicky types something. “I’ll pull the files and dump them onto the drive for you then.”

“Perfect,” I say.

Nicky just types away, which is fine by me, since the less he asks, the better. When I glance at Jayden, his gaze meets mine and the corners of his lips quirk up.

“There’s a lot on here,” Nicky says. “You want all of it or just some specific folder?”

“All of it,” Jayden and I answer at the same time.

Nicky snickers. “Sure. Give me a few minutes.”

I chew on the inside of my cheek and try to be patient, but it seems to take forever. One of the society’s people could be out there right now, making sure I really left and show up at any moment. And what if Nicky brags to someone about what he did for Jayden Burgess, who supposedly left college?

Finally, Nicky unplugs the drive and holds it out to me. “It’s all on there. Every file that was on the laptop.”

I take the drive from him and close my fingers around it. “Thanks.”

“Wait.” Jayden steps in before Nicky can get up. “One thing. Don’t tell anyone about this. You didn’t do this, and you were never here.”

Nicky looks between the two of us. “Okay, so you guys didn’t really leave?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Jayden says. “Just... keep it to yourself. Please. For now.”

Nicky snorts and gets to his feet. “I don’t give a damn about what you two are up to, man.”

Jayden pulls a folded wad of cash out of his pocket and presses it into Nicky’s hand. Nicky counts the bills and stuffs them into his hoodie pocket, then gives Jayden a quick clap on the shoulder and slips out the door.

Once Jayden locks the door behind Nicky, I raise an eyebrow at him. “He’s going to tell someone.”

“Nicky? No way.”

“Everyone talks eventually. You saw how everyone lost their minds over us just leaving. Now imagine what they’d do if word got out we’re still here and sneaking around, with some hacker guy copying files for us.”

“I get it, but Nicky really isn’t like that.” Jayden shakes his head. “He’s done stuff for a bunch of the guys on the team. If he were the type to run his mouth, he’d have been expelled a long time ago.”

I want to argue, because it seems way too easy to trust some guy I just met, but I don’t have a better plan, so all I can do is trust Jayden’s judgment on this.

“Fine.” I hold up the drive. “Let’s just see if any of this was worth it.”

Once Jayden and I take a seat, I plug the drive into my own laptop. The folder pops open, and there are hundreds of files. Oh shit.

“Okay, where do we even start?” I ask.

“Photos, maybe, or anything with a date around when Elsie died.”

I let Jayden take over, and it takes a while as he scrolls through everything, because Camden apparently has a ton of boring documents about lectures and similar stuff. But then Jayden clicks on a video file.

“This is the night,” he whispers.

The video is darkish and grainy, as if it was taken from some security camera looking down a stairwell, with a timestamp in the corner. At first, the stairwell is empty, but then two people come into the frame and climb the steps toward the top. A girl goes first, and a guy follows right behind her, his hand on the small of her back.

“It’s her,” Jayden chokes out, pressing his hand to his mouth. “The night she died.”

I look at him and then back at the screen. Camden and Elsie disappear through the door, and the clip ends just as Camden runs down the stairs. Alone.

I gape at the screen. Shit! They went up there together the night she died, and everyone said she was alone.

“He was with her.” Jayden’s hand curls into a fist. “The whole time everyone thought she went up to the roof by herself, but he was with her.”