“Only a few weeks. They fucked up their last security patch, and I found a way in before they fixed it.”
“Huh,” I say thoughtfully. That explains how Jordan had that video of Damon and Eden going into Romeo House.
The school security cams cover almost the entire campus, and the only exceptions are inside the dorms, The Crypt, and the frats.
The school’s camera coverage ends at the gates of the four frats, and everything within the perimeter is the frat’s responsibility to monitor. The only way Jordan would have access to a video of them walking into the house together is if he had access to the Keepers’ system. At least this answers that question.
Jace slows the cameras down to normal speed as Damon steps out of a break in the trees. Absently, Jace picks up his butterfly knife and resumes spinning it around his fingers as we focus on the screen in front of us.
There are no lights behind the building, but the camera is shooting in night vision, so it’s easy to see that it’s Damon by his curly hair and the long jacket and all-black clothes he’s known for wearing.
We watch as he crosses behind the building, and the black-clad figure appears at the bottom of the frame of one of the cameras just as he reaches the edge of the building.
Jace stops the video and brings up a new camera feed, replacing one of the ones already on the screen. On it, we can see the guy walking along the edge of the woods toward where he attacked Damon, and Jace starts the paused videos again as the feeds sync up.
We watch as Damon’s attacker suddenly takes off at a run, and there’s no hesitation in his movements as he rushes at Damon, who doesn’t seem to realize he isn’t alone until his attacker is less than a dozen feet from him.
Damon tries to run, but his attacker is too fast, and he grabs Damon around the waist. It looks like he actually carries Damon for a few feet before slamming him into the side of the building. The impact is hard, and I wince as I watch Damon bounce off the bricks before his attacker pins him with an arm across Damon’s throat and his bigger body pressing Damon into the wall.
He puts up a good struggle, but it isn’t until his attacker reaches for where he’s stashed his gun at the small of his back that Damon gets an opening. He brings his knee up and smashes it into the guy’s thigh, only inches from his crotch. His attacker seems surprised by the move, but he quickly recovers and throws Damon to the ground before he can get away.
A knot of anger settles in my stomach as the guy kicks Damon in the side, but it eases when Damon rolls away from his next kick, which was aimed at his head, and his attacker falls to the ground when his foot keeps going and he lands in an almost split.
Damon manages to get to his feet and run toward the front of the building, but his attacker recovers from his tumble and chases him down the dark alley. Damon is favoring his side, and it’s obvious he’s dazed from being attacked out of the blue, sohe’s not moving as fast as he probably could. His attacker easily catches up to him and shoves him to the ground.
We watch as Damon lands on the ground, then kicks behind him, his foot connecting with his attacker’s thigh instead of his knee when he twists away from the impact at the last second. Damon tries to kick him again, but the guy catches his leg with ease and wrenches it to the side, almost forcing Damon to fall over as he struggles to stay upright. That explains what we saw from the other angle.
The rest of the video plays out exactly like the first video we watched, and Jace keeps the camera trained on whoever the fuck attacked Damon as he runs away after Eden interrupts him, switching between cameras as he goes.
The asshole runs to the edge of the woods and takes off back in the direction he came from, but we lose him when he stops in a blind spot between two cameras a few hundred yards away from where he attacked Damon and disappears, presumably into the woods since there’s nowhere else for him to go.
“I’ll try to track where he came from and where he ended up, but it could take a while,” Jace says as he starts spinning his knife again. “The Serpents were doing some sort of event that night, and there were a shit ton of people going in and out of the woods around the same time all this went down.”
“Thanks,” I say distractedly as I let what I just saw percolate in my mind for a few beats.
“What are you thinking?” Jace asks, his knife glinting in the light from his desk lamp.
“That didn’t look random.”
“No, it didn’t,” he agrees and types something with his free hand.
The video of Eden and Damon starts again, and we watch it as Eden helps Damon to his feet and they slowly start walking toward Keeper House.
“And you’re right.” He stops the video and switches the blade to his nondominant hand. “I don’t care what Jordan thinks he saw. There’s no way your boy was doing anything with Eden that night. Not unless he’s into pain play and getting off when he’s clearly injured.”
A little tendril of heat snakes through my belly, but it’s chased away by a tendril of jealousy.
What the fuck?
Shaking off whatever the fuck that was, I drum my fingers against the arm of my chair. “Yeah,” I agree. “This is a giant nothing burger.”
“Hmmm,” Jace hums.
I glance at him, and the mask of concentration on his face and the calculating look in his eyes tell me he’s connecting some dots and figuring shit out.
I keep quiet and let him do his thing.
“Did Jordan say anything about Damon that didn’t have to do with Eden?” he asks slowly.
