He stares at me expectantly.

“Anytime?”

He nods.

“And no one ever turns it off?”

“No one knows about it. Except me and Michael. And before … Jay.”

I take a deep breath, mind racing with hazy images—me dropping to the concrete floor, Oliver dragging the footstool, boys with whips in their hands, bruises on their shoulders. I’ve been looking at this all wrong. The point isn’t that Oliver and I are on the video. The point is that there’s video of the basement. And everything that happens down there.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did someone put a camera in the basement?”

Tripp chews his bottom lip.

“Look,” I say impatiently, “you hand-delivered this flash drive. You got in my car. You’re here now.” You made your decision already, I want to tell him, this morning, yesterday, maybe the day we showed up on Kap-O’s doorstep. Some people are like that. They can’t live with the guilt. And whatever Tripp’s hiding, he’s dying to come clean. “It’s too late for reticence now.”

He stares out the window.

I will count to ten, I think.

“It started with probation,” he says softly.

“You’re on probation?” I repeat, twisting so I can see him fully.

A fraternity on probation means no social events—no recruitment, no tailgating or intramural sports. No parties at the house and no alcohol. Certainly no beach-themed ragers the week after Thanksgiving. It means a fraternity at risk of a revocation of their registration, one that would either be on their best behavior, dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s, or one that would go to great lengths to hide any infraction. This should have come up in our interviews, in Truman’s meeting with the university president. It should have been starred and highlighted, at the top of all our notes.

“We were.” Tripp emphasizes the past tense. “Social probation. Two years ago. The usual stuff,” he says when I open my mouth, “distribution of alcohol to minors, alcohol-related misconduct, violation of university policy. But Michael had a word with his father. He assured him that he’d keep us under control.” He shrugs. “Anyway, he managed to persuade him to lift all the social restrictions. It was a bad look anyway, you know, the president’s son at a fraternity in trouble with the university.” He takes a breath. “So that fall—our sophomore year, right before rush—Michael called a meeting. He wasn’t treasurer yet or in any leadership position, but since he got us out of probation—we all deferred to him.”

I snort. “So Michael gets probation lifted and holds a meeting to tell you how much you owe him,” I say.