Chapter 15 Chapter 15

Chapter 15 Chapter 15
EVELYN POV 

The security office was too bright.
Everything in it was made of cheap plastic and polished metal. Cold, white light buzzed from above, washing color from the chairs, the floor, and the faces of the people inside. It smelled like coffee, printer ink, and tension.
We were separated the moment we stepped through the door.
Daniel was taken to a small room near the end of the hallway. Two officers followed behind him. I tried to go with him, but they held up their hands.
“It’s just protocol,” one said.
Lila was escorted to the room across the hall. She didn’t protest. She looked serene, composed, like a guest arriving at a conference she had organized. She thanked the officer who opened the door for her.
The rest of us were left in the waiting area.
I sat alone, cold fingers tangled in my lap, watching the corridor.
My phone buzzed once.
Daniel: Don’t panic. Let them talk first.
I didn’t reply. I couldn’t. I was too focused on Lila’s door.
Five minutes passed.
Ten.
Fifteen.
Finally, the door opened.
The officer who stepped out didn’t look pleased. His brows were tight. He walked over to the front desk and spoke quietly to the woman typing behind the glass. She nodded and printed something.
Then she looked at me.
“Evelyn,” she said. “They’ll see you now.”
I stood slowly and followed the officer. My legs felt like they were made of hollow wood. As we passed Daniel’s door, I paused — just long enough to see him glance up through the small window.
He gave me a single nod.
I nodded back.
Then the officer opened the interrogation room door, and I stepped inside.
It was colder than I expected.
The walls were gray, the table scratched. A recording device blinked red on the desk. Two chairs. Two officers. No windows.
I sat down without being told.
The first officer — the one with the tight brows — leaned forward slightly. “You were at the lake tonight with Lila Montgomery and Daniel Reed. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” I said.
He nodded. “We have Lila’s statement. Now we’d like to hear yours.”
I looked him in the eye. “Daniel didn’t threaten anyone. I asked him to be there.”
The second officer, older, with a small notebook in front of him, tapped his pen. “Can you explain why?”
“She told me to meet her at the lake,” I said. “Alone. I didn’t trust her. She has been stalking me. Watching me. She stood outside my dorm window two nights ago.”
The older officer raised an eyebrow. “You’re sure it was her?”
“She wore the same coat tonight. And the security footage matches her size and build. She’s been following me and Daniel since we started looking into what happened to Alex.”
There was a pause.
The younger officer folded his arms. “Lila says you’ve been unstable since Alex’s death. That you’ve been manipulated by Daniel. That he’s convinced you to blame her for something he might have done.”
“He didn’t do anything,” I said.
“She says Daniel has a history of emotional outbursts.”
I stared at them. “She has a history of controlling people. Ask around. Ask the professors. Ask the other students. She inserts herself into everything.”
“She also said you’ve been skipping classes.”
“Because I’ve been afraid to walk around campus alone,” I snapped.
They looked at each other.
The younger one leaned back slightly. “Do you have any proof that Lila threatened or harmed Alex?”
“She didn’t leave physical evidence,” I said. “But we found a USB Alex hid before he died. It has a video. A recording. He says he was afraid of her. He says he was trying to leave.”
“Where is this USB?”
“With Daniel,” I said. “I had it earlier. I gave it to him when we went to the lake.”
The older officer nodded slowly. “We’ll collect that.”
“She manipulated him,” I said. “She was controlling his life. And when he tried to end it, she cornered him.”
“Why would she do that?” the younger officer asked.
“Because he was hers,” I said. “That’s how she sees people. Like property.”
They didn’t argue.
But they didn’t agree either.
The older one closed his notebook. “We’re going to pause this for now. Stay here. Someone will bring you water.”
He stood.
The younger officer followed him out.
When the door shut behind them, the silence wrapped around me like a second skin. Cold. Unforgiving.
I stared at the blinking red light on the recorder.
And I waited.
—
Lila sat across from the officers in her room with her legs crossed and her hands folded in her lap. Her white coat hung neatly on the back of the chair. She wore a faint smile, pleasant but not warm.
They were asking more questions now.
Her answers stayed polite.
“I understand why Evelyn is upset,” she said calmly. “She lost someone she cared about. That grief makes people vulnerable to manipulation.”
The officers didn’t interrupt.
“She came to me weeks ago, worried about Alex’s distance,” Lila continued. “I tried to support her. I told her to talk to Daniel, but she didn’t trust him. Then she did. And now, suddenly, I’m the villain.”
“You said Daniel was threatening,” the officer said.
Lila nodded. “He’s obsessive. Possessive. He likes control. He doesn’t like people questioning his version of events.”
“Do you have any proof?”
She smiled faintly. “I submitted a letter from Professor Grant. He said Daniel had been aggressive toward him in a recent class. You can check that.”
The officer wrote something down.
“And Evelyn?” he asked.
“I believe she’s scared,” Lila said. “But I believe she’s scared of something she doesn’t understand. Daniel feeds that fear.”
The older officer looked up. “Why were you standing outside her window?”
Lila blinked, once. “I wasn’t.”
“There’s footage,” he said. “A white coat.”
She smiled gently. “There are hundreds of white coats on this campus. It was a windy night. Shadows play tricks. It could have been anyone.”
“Were you near the girls’ dorms that night?”
“I went out to walk,” she said. “I was clearing my head. I didn’t stop near any windows.”
It was clean.
Practiced.
But her smile wavered just slightly when the officer said:
“There’s audio footage too. You said something while walking. We’ve got tech enhancing it now.”
Her fingers curled just slightly.
That was the first crack.
Just a small one.
But the officers noticed.
They didn’t press.
Not yet.
—
Back in the hallway, the officers compared notes.
“She’s lying,” one said.
“She’s good at it,” the other replied.
They returned to Daniel’s room.
He stood when they entered. His phone was on the table.
“I assume you want the USB,” he said.
They nodded.
He handed it over.
“We’re going to review this,” the officer said.
“There’s more,” Daniel said. “Check Alex’s dorm Wi-Fi logs. Lila used to visit him late at night. Sometimes when he wasn’t even logged in. There are camera logs of her entering his building. Sometimes twice a night.”
“We’ll request those,” one officer said.
“And the night he died,” Daniel continued, “she was the last one to see him. She lied about where she was. But campus cameras didn’t show her at her dorm until two in the morning.”
The older officer wrote that down slowly.
“Do you have any witnesses?” he asked.
Daniel hesitated. “One. But they’re afraid to speak.”
“Why?”
“Because Lila has ties to the Dean’s office. Her father is a donor. People are afraid of crossing her.”
The officer nodded. “That explains a few things.”
Daniel’s eyes narrowed. “She’s losing control. She’s making mistakes.”
“You think she’s dangerous?”
“I know she is,” Daniel said. “I’ve seen it.”
The officers exchanged a glance.
Then they left.
—
When I was called back into the hallway, I saw Lila sitting alone again. She didn’t look at me. Her expression was blank. Her hands rested calmly on the table. But her eyes weren’t calm anymore.
They were calculating.
Watching.
Waiting.
The officers returned a few minutes later.
They didn’t speak at first.
Then one said, “We’ve reviewed the USB contents.”
I felt my heart tighten.
The officer looked at Lila. “There’s a clear video of Alex naming you. There’s audio of him saying he felt trapped by you. That’s very serious.”
Lila didn’t blink. “He was under stress. I told you that.”
“You told us you hadn’t seen him the night before he died.”
She paused. “I didn’t.”
“You weren’t at the lake?”
“No.”
The officer nodded.
Then he played a short clip from Alex’s video.
His voice echoed in the room.
“She’s here. She’s at the door.”
Lila’s eyes shifted.
Another crack.
“Could be anyone,” she said softly.
The officer turned off the clip.
“Then why did you say you didn’t see him that night? Why didn’t you say you went to his dorm?”
Lila stayed silent for three long seconds.
Then she folded her hands again.
“Because I was afraid of being blamed.”
She looked at me.
Not with hatred.
But with cold precision.
“Because I knew she would find a way to spin it.”
“Or,” I said, “because you knew what you were doing.”
She shook her head sadly. “You don’t know anything about what happened that night.”
“I know he wanted to leave,” I said. “And you wouldn’t let him.”
Lila stood.
“I am done answering questions,” she said. “If you want more, you can speak to my attorney.”
The officers didn’t stop her.
But they wrote everything down.
She looked at me one last time.
And smiled.
But the smile didn’t reach her eyes.
This time, there was no confidence behind it.