Not clear enough to hold up entirely on its own. But the build, the walk, the particular way this person moved through the doorway, all of it was distinct enough now that someone who knew the football team well might recognize it. "It's not a smoking gun," Nora admitted. "But it's something. Combined with everything else, it might be enough."
Joe studied the screen for a long moment. It's him, she said quietly. Cole, not Grant. Grant wouldn't do it himself. He'd have somebody else do it for him.
I think you're right, Nora said. I can't prove it's him specifically. Not with certainty. But I can prove somebody who isn't on the volleyball or cheer roster was in that locker room during the exact window your bag was tampered with. That's not nothing, Joe.
That's reasonable doubt at minimum. Joe nodded slowly, filing the thought away the way she filed everything now. Careful, unhurried, she dressed for classes that morning the same as any other day, though every motion felt slightly heavier, weighted by the 6:00 hour, waiting somewhere ahead of her like a stone sitting at the bottom of a still pond. She went to her classes. She sat through a history lecture without absorbing a single word of it.
She ate lunch across from Paige, who reached over at one point and squeezed her hand without saying anything because sometimes there is nothing useful to say. and the squeeze says it better anyway. It was there in the dining hall over lunch that Grant found her. He crossed the room with Wade and Cole a step behind him, the old formation, and stopped at the end of her table, loud enough that half the room turned to look the way half the room always turned to look when Grant Sterling wanted an audience. Big night for you, he said. A hard, brittle edge under the usual charm.
No witnesses, no proof, just you standing up there telling everyone I planted something I never planted. He shook his head, almost theatrical about it. You really thought this through, huh? Ohio. Joe did not answer right away.
She simply watched him. The way she had learned to watch things that wanted a reaction and did not deserve one. That silence, more than anything she could have said, seemed to be exactly what pushed him past whatever thin control he still had left. He reached across the table fast before Paige could pull back and hooked two fingers under the chain at Joe's collar for the second time that semester. This time the clasp had already been repaired once, and it held a moment longer than it had the first time, long enough for Joe to catch his wrist briefly, without force, just enough resistance to make him work for it.