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“Try harder.”
Something in my jaw goes tight. I have been in this chair too long. I have heard Ivy die and I have said I do not know until the words feel useless.
“Fine,” I say. “They told me they wanted to fuck me. My cock in their hand. My mouth. Me on nineteen with my pants down like I was nothing but a body they could use. That is the kind of language you do not put in a statement unless you want a jury to decide I was enjoying it. I was not. I stayed on the line because hanging up felt like losing the only person who knew where the body was. That is all I am giving you in this room. If you want the rest word for word, you can wait for the next call and hear it yourself. I am not performing it for the record.”
Ortiz has stopped writing. Pell has not.
“You will say it word for word if I ask you to,” Pell says.
“Then I want my own counsel in the room. Not someone from my floors. I am done repeating the filthy parts with no one sitting on my side of the table.”
I hear how that sounds. I do not take it back.
Ortiz looks up. Pell does not give him the room.
“You will tell us now,” she says. “All of it. What the caller said on Tuesday. What you heard tonight. What Ivy said. What you did after Noah Brennan was found. Start with Tuesday and do not skip.”
I start.
I tell them I was leaving. The unknown number, and that I hung up once. I tell them the caller rang back. I do not give them every filthy line. I give them enough that it sounds like a person who wanted me on my knees in my own building. Pell does not blink. Ortiz underlines.
I tell them I walked the floors. Lo in the wine dress. Kit with the milk. Marcus with a folder. Dev at his screens. Aria at the lift. Willa already gone. Ivy’s copier cold. Shane not at the car bay. The gym dark.
I tell them about nineteen. The door was not latched. Noah on the floor. Naked. Blood, and no one else in the room when I went in.
“You put your jacket on him?” Pell says.
“Yes.”
“That is evidence.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
“Because I was not leaving him like that.”
“You found him. You were on the phone with an unknown caller while you found him. Then Rafe Ortega walked in?”
“Yes.”
“How soon?”
“Soon enough for me to think.”
“You thought he did it?”
“I thought the timing was bad. I still think the timing is bad. That is not the same as proof.”
“Ortega was sleeping with Brennan?”
“Yes.”
“In this building?”
“Yes.”
“You knew?”
