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“You saw the video—”

“I saw a video.” Indira stepped up beside Austen. She’d stood in that common room last night and watched it play, same as the rest of them. “Somebody made you a video and dropped it in your lap and knew—knew—exactly how you’d take it. Knew you’d trust a screen over the woman in your bed, because that’s the one thing everybody in this world knows about you, Glitch. You believe the machine.” She shook her head. “Whoever it was, they played you.”

“She’d die for you,” Bea said quietly. “Any of us can see it. And you couldn’t even wait an hour to verify.”

Lilac stood with her arms folded over her bump—the little girl Colt was so terrified was coming. “You’re the smartest man in this club,” she said. “And you’re the only one too stupid to see it.”

Then all four of them turned to go.

“Fuck you, Glitch,” Austen said on her way out. “You sit here and feel sorry for yourself. Leave it to the women to clean up what you broke—we’ll find our friend.”

I told myself they were wrong.

I told myself they didn’t know what I knew. They loved her, so they couldn’t see her clearly.

Chapter 3

❧

— Glitch —

“I’m not watching it again.”

“It’s not a request.” Dutch stood in the middle of the common room with the remote in his hand. He’d already cleared the space in front of the big screen, and I understood that whatever was about to happen had been decided. “Sit down.”

“Dutch—”

“You threw a woman out of this family in front of every one of us, on the strength of a video you never analyzed. So we’re going to analyze it. Together. Right now. And you’re going to sit in that chair and do the one thing you should have done thirty seconds after you opened that file.” He pointed at the chair. “Your job.”

The brothers were already there. Holden, Colt, Handful, half a dozen others, sitting in a loose horseshoe like this was church. And the women—Austen, Indira, Bea, Lilac—standing against the back wall with their arms crossed. I opened my mouth to say they shouldn’t be here, that Wren wouldn’t want them seeing this but Austen cut me down before I got a word out.

“Don’t you dare tell us what Wren would want,” she said. “She begged you to turn it off last night and you didn’t.”

I looked at Handful. He stared back, hard. I looked at Colt. He nodded down at the empty chair. So I sat.

“Sound’s off,” Dutch said. “Nobody needs to hear that. We’re looking, not listening. And we’re not looking at Wren.” It wasn’t kindness. It was an order. “Eyes on the room. The angles. The edges. Everything that isn’t Wren. That clear?”

Everyone nodded.

Dutch hit play.

I couldn’t do it. Dutch said eyes on the room, and every man in the room managed it, jaws tight, eyes on the corners of the frame like professionals working a scene.

But I couldn’t.

My eyes went to Wren and stayed there. Even now, in daylight, surrounded by everyone I’d humiliated her in front of, I looked at her body like it was the only thing in the world and I let the rest of the frame go soft and meaningless at the edges.

Same as I had every time.

“Pause it.” Austen’s voice. Sharp.

Dutch froze the frame.

“I’ve been trying not to look at her,” Austen said. “Because she’s my friend, and this is the worst day of her life, and she’s not here to say she’s okay with a room full of people seeing her like this. So I’ve been looking at everything else like Dutch said.” She stepped forward, off the wall, and lifted her hand toward the screen. “What is wrong with the wall behind them?”

For the first time since the file landed, I looked at the wall.

There was a smear.