I think of Colin rummaging around Jay’s room, the stolen car keys, and the whispered word to Katie revealing fraternity secrets. Colin was fighting back. In his own way. And it was working. The brothers thought Jay was a traitor. He was losing his position in the fraternity. The dream girl was threatening to quit, to expose them. Soon, it would have been over. But Colin didn’t know that, and then he saw Jay at that intersection. This time, there was no basement, no intimidation, and no one telling him what to do. Just the firm grip of his hand on the steering wheel and the feel of the pedal under his foot.

I drop Tripp off at a university bus stop.

He hesitates before he opens the door.

“I used to jog out there,” he says, nodding in the direction of the fields we just left, “out past the lake.”

I nod. I know the spot; there’s a long boardwalk over the water, and if you run fast enough it feels like you’re flying.

“One day, I got lost. It was winter, and the sun dropped quicker than I expected. I had to sprint to get back to the entrance but knew if I picked the wrong path, I’d just run deeper into the woods.” He looks past the brick buildings, the thick trees for miles behind them. “That’s what the past few weeks have felt like. Running in the dark, not sure of the way out.”

“You did the right thing,” I tell him.

“Could you…” He ducks his head as he climbs out of the car. “Could you not mention my name? I mean”—a glance around the empty street— “you could just say an unnamed source or something? Otherwise—”

Otherwise he’ll be considered just as much of a traitor as Jay.

“I won’t say anything,” I tell him.

And it’s true. No one would listen to me anyway.

Instead, I slip the flash drive in the mail for Teddy.

I still don’t trust Oliver. Regardless of what he said at Walker’s, I think someone was pressuring him to wrap up the case, to point in any direction but at the fraternity itself. It would explain his urgency to dismiss the hit-and-run as an accident, the sense that he was under stress, the way he imagined Jay looking for an excuse to quit, and my feeling that he was talking about himself. Truman wouldn’t have needed outside pressure. He was already willing to look the other way because that’s how it works: boys with fathers like Michael’s, like Jay’s, don’t go to prison. They get second chances. Until, of course, like Colin and Ryan, they don’t.