Page 77 of Final Drive

Gray: Same. He’s letting her burn.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Reese

Dr. Okafor asks me to describe the dead animal one more time.

I’ve described it twice already. Once on the intake form, once in the first meeting. Now I’m in a conference room on the third floor of Whitaker Hall in front of an administrative panel of four, and she wants it again while Kinsley Adams sits six feet away with her parents’ lawyer.

“It was a squirrel,” I say. “Left outside my dorm room in a cardboard box with a note that said You’re mine and I won’t let anyone else touch you. Its neck was broken. It was fresh.”

The panel chair is a man from the Dean of Students office named Dr. Warren, and he writes something on a legal pad. Beside him Okafor’s face gives away nothing. The other two are a faculty representative I don’t know and Assistant Director Carmine from Athletics, who has been watching me with the same detachment she brought to every practice she observed this spring.

“And you attributed this to Ms. Adams?” Warren asks.

“The escalation was consistent. Kinsley went from verbal harassment to physical intimidation to surveillance to property damage. A dead animal is the next rung.”

“Allegedly,” the lawyer says. He’s silver-haired and expensive, the kind who bills in quarter-hours and doesn’t lose. “My client categorically denies involvement in the incident Ms. Callahan has described.”

I don’t look at Kinsley. I haven’t looked at her since I came in. I can feel her staring at me from across the room anyway.

“We’re not relitigating individual incidents,” Okafor says. “We’re reviewing the findings of the investigation and determining a response. For the record, given the ongoing retaliation, the athletics implications, and the proximity of national competition, this matter was moved to an expedited review.”

She opens a folder. It’s thick. Tyler’s evidence plus everything her office turned up on its own, and I know what’s in it because he walked me through every page last night the way he walks through split times. The second-account posts. Metadata putting the restaurant photos on Kinsley’s phone. The records access, traced to an administrative assistant in the registrar’s office who happens to be Kinsley’s mother’s sorority sister. Statements from three women on the rowing team who came forward on their own once the investigation opened.

And the video from the quad. Thirty angles of Kinsley publicly harassing me the morning after her post, which is the retaliation Tyler said she’d commit before she committed it.

“The evidence supports a pattern of targeted harassment beginning in late February and escalating through the present,” Okafor says, reading from her summary. “Including unauthorized surveillance, dissemination of private images, improper access to protected student records, physical intimidation, and destruction of property.”

She looks up.

“Additionally, Ms. Adams’s social media post the day after Ms. Callahan filed constituted retaliation against a complainant, which is a separate violation under university policy.”

“My client was exercising her right to free speech,” the lawyer says.

“Your client posted intimate images of another student without consent and disclosed protected designation information obtained through an improper records access.” Okafor’s voice doesn’t change. She could be reading a shopping list. “That is not protected speech under any reading of university policy.”

Kinsley whispers something to her lawyer. He puts a hand on her arm and she shakes it off.

“This is bullshit.”

“Ms. Adams,” Warren says.

“No. This is bullshit.” Her voice is climbing. “She lied about what she is. She manipulated an entire team of Alphas with her pheromones. She’s been sleeping with all of them and you’re sitting here like I’m the problem?”

“Ms. Adams, I’m going to ask you to let your counsel speak for you.”

“My counsel isn’t saying what needs saying.” She’s on her feet. Her lawyer takes her elbow and she pulls free. “You want to know what Reese Callahan actually is? She’s an Omega. She registered as a Beta. She’s been lying to this university since the day she transferred and nobody in this room seems to care.”

The room goes quiet. Okafor’s pen has stopped. Carmine leans forward a fraction.

I’ve been braced for the accusation. What I wasn’t braced for is what the word Omega does to the four faces at that table. Warren’s eyes narrow. The faculty rep glances at Carmine. Nobody at that table is looking at me like a complainant anymore.

They’re looking at me like a problem that has arrived on their desk.

“Ms. Callahan’s designation is not the subject of this hearing,” Okafor says, and I hear how carefully that sentence is built. Not a denial. Not a defense. A procedural redirect.

“It should be,” Kinsley snaps. “She’s a fraud.”