Scout turned away from the board.
Keller had history. But Sinclair was the splinter he couldn’t shake.
He needed Sara’s interview again. Not the whole thing—just the parts he’d skimmed past as trauma fog. Details that didn’t feel like evidence until they were.
The media room was dark and cold. Scout dropped into the chair, logged in, and pulled up Video Three — Dr. Calder / Sara Parker.
Sara appeared on the screen, pale, wrapped in a gray blanket. Calder sat across from her.
Scout leaned forward.
Calder’s voice came through the speakers. “Tell me what you remember.”
“There were journals,” Sara said.
Scout already knew that part. Lauren’s journals had been the center of the room.
Calder waited.
Sara swallowed. “But what she wrote about Keller… that’s the part that matters.”
Calder’s voice stayed gentle. “Did you read them?”
Sara hesitated, then nodded again. “Yes.”
Scout didn’t blink.
Sara’s voice was quieter now. “Lauren wrote about Keller.”
“She said he told her he’d had a vasectomy,” Sara said. Her face tightened like the words tasted bitter. “That she didn’t need to worry. Didn’t need protection.”
Calder didn’t interrupt.
Sara kept going, the anger in her voice small but real. “She believed him. Because she was already… messed up. After Benton. She was embarrassed. She was alone. And Keller knew it.”
Sara’s eyes glistened, but she didn’t cry. She looked sick with the memory of it.
“She wrote that he told her, no condom, no problem,” Sara said. “Like it was nothing. Like her body was just… something he could talk his way into.”
Calder’s voice stayed low. “And what happened?”
Sara looked away. “Later… she wrote she was late. And she was scared.”
Scout’s pulse was steady, but something in him went colder.
So it wasn’t Sara.
It had never been Sara.
It was Lauren.
Lauren had been the one cornered into fear. Tricked into it. Lied too.
Scout watched Sara’s face on the screen and felt the rage return.
Keller was capable of that kind of cruelty.
That kind of selfish, calculated damage.
