“I’m keeping these as evidence against you, should we ever need to use it.” Carmen looks up at her. “Do you back up your phone, Skylar?”

“I . . .”

“What’s the password to your cloud account?”

“No!” Skylar says. Carmen is still holding her phone.

“Tell me or I use this phone to call the Dean of Arts and Sciences and then Professor Williams. And your parents.”

Skylar responds—“And I’ll tell them how you bullied me and restrained me and stole my phone!”

Carmen just laughs at her. “And who are they going to believe, two adult scientists or a kid who illegally took pictures of the research animals, which I now have evidence of?”

Silence. Skylar tells her the password. Carmen logs in and wipes the cloud, then reboots and resets the phone, handing the whirring thing back to Skylar.

“And taking those photos is all SAAR was doing that weekend?”

“Yeah.” Skylar looks genuinely confused but also emotionally exhausted.

“What about the night before? Friday night. The night of the storm.”

“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t really remember what I was doing.”

“And the rest of SAAR?”

She makes a face like—what? “They weren’t doing anything. That I know of. I mean, SAAR doesn’t do like, things all the time. They plan stuff for a while.”

“Did SAAR murder Atif Tomalin?”

She looks up at Carmen with what seems like genuine shock. “What?! Murder? Wait . . . Who’s Atif?”

“One of the Crick Scholars. He got hit by the subway. He did primate research.”

Nodding in recognition, but also gripping her sweatshirt in a plea—“That guy! You think SAAR murdered him? No! Listen, as far as I know SAAR didn’t even know about him. And Students Against Animal Research isn’t . . . It’s not violent against people.”

“What about the time a SAAR member dressed up as a monster and chased a researcher?” Kierk says accusingly.

“No! We don’t do anything like that!”

“What about the fucking box of bomb materials outside Melissa Gold-man’s house?”

Skylar looks guilty, struggling with something internal.

“Tell us, Skylar,” Carmen says softly to her. “We already know it was SAAR.”

“We didn’t . . . They didn’t think it was going to be a big deal, like it was. It was supposed to be a joke. The idea was like, to just, you know, show that we could be way worse. It was Allen who made up the box of stuff. But then he was totally freaked out because the response was like, really big. But I didn’t . . . I didn’t have anything to do with that box.”

“Oh really?” Carmen says. “So who got Melissa Goldman’s home address, Skylar? It’s not public but it’s sure as hell on file here.”