Page 108 of Raise Hell

Cole gives me an apologetic shrug before following him out.

“I guess I missed the setup.” Vaughn catches my arm as I pass him on the way back to my room. “I need to show you something.”

I hadn’t noticed before just how haggard Vaughn has been lately. His dark hair is slicked back against his head like he hasn’t showered in a couple of days. There is at least a few days of stubble growth on his cheeks.

“What’s up?”

“I’m going to show you this, but you can’t ask me where I got it. I’m not going to be able to tell you, and it will cause both of us major problems if you try to find out.”

“Okay, now I’m a little concerned,” I say, keeping my voice very carefully neutral. “What is it?”

“Come with me.”

He gestures for me to follow him down the hallway upstairs. Once we’re in his room, he closes the door and locks it. Then he moves to the window, closes and locks it, too.

“You worried about spy satellites?” I ask mildly.

Vaughn doesn’t laugh as he pulls the curtains closed. He crosses to the bed and lowers himself to his hands and knees.

I watch in fascination as he lifts up a corner of the floorboard under the bed and removes a plastic bag lined with aluminum foil. He opens it and pulls out a battered cell phone.

My eyebrows shoot up my forehead. “You can’t be serious.”

“I took out the sim card and the wireless antenna, but you can never be too careful.” He upends the bag, and a little rectangular battery falls onto the floor. “You only have five minutes after I turn it back on.”

Vaughn powers on the phone while I patiently wait for him to explain what the hell he’s been smoking.

Then he plays the video.

“Where did you—” I cut myself off, remembering his edict against asking the very question I’m about to ask. “I don’t understand.”

I recognize Olivia immediately from the long fall of blonde hair. It’s just confirmation when the camera zooms in on her face.

Then it pans out to the rest of the scene.

I toss the phone away. “Why the fuck would you show me that?”

“Because you needed to see it.”

“How—” I bite off the question. “If you can’t tell me anything about where it came from, then why show it to me?”

Vaughn hesitates before finally answering. “I think this is why the alumni are so interested in keeping her quiet. Even if no one here had anything to do with her getting attacked, what happened inside Havoc House implicates all of us in whatever came after.”

The girl in the video didn’t look like she was being forced. “You think someone else attacked her?”

“If Havoc House were beating women practically to death, wouldn’t someone have heard of it by now?” he asks reasonably. “What if someone is just setting us up?”

It makes a twisted sort of sense. Olivia is just inconvenient collateral damage.

The video is frozen on an image of Olivia’s groaning face. I pick up the phone and hold it up. “Is this an Initiation?”

Vaughn grimaces. “You know I can’t tell you that.”

“Why are you showing me this?”

“So you understand what kind of girl she is and why she is so dangerous.” He takes the phone back and removes the battery. “I don’t see her fighting all that hard, but a good enough lawyer could spin this however they wanted, especially considering what happened later.”

“She’s wearing the same dress in the video that she was when we found her that night.”

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