“We’re certain.” Stuart nods.
I look back at Griffin, whose lips are in a flattened line. He dips his head once, confirming it.
My eyes widen as heat spreads through my body.
If it isn’t me, then it’s someone else.
She did it to someone else. It must be the same woman. How many blonde women that age have been going around drugging men and then taking them to a hotel?
“Harley asked if Nina could look. And she did…” Stuart continues as blood pumps into my ears and his voice becomes muffled.
She did it to someone else.
“She knew the hotel straight away. Identified it by the wallpaper and furnishings. Something very distinctive about the wall-hung lights apparently…”
I tried to report it to the police back then. But it wasn’t enough. She did it to someone else. I should have tried harder.
“… New York City only has seven hundred plus hotels. I swear that woman must have one of those incredible memories you read about. The photogenic ones…”
I was so intent on leaving it behind me and moving on. I should have pushed harder so she was caught. She wouldn’t have been able to do it again.
“Eidetic,” Griffin cuts in.
This is my fault.
“That’s it!” Stuart snaps his fingers.
I did this. I’m responsible.
“Anyway, she worked out the hotel fast. But it took her a day and whole night of research and calls to different designers and suppliers she knows to pinpoint the rest…”
My fault.
I swallow down the bile that’s risen in my throat, running a hand around the back of my neck, which is on fire.
“Reed?” Cool, delicate hands cradle my face. “You couldn’t have done anything. Stop thinking like that.”
My eyes swim back into focus, diving into clear blue seas of calm and reassurance as Harley gazes at me.
“I know you. I know what you’re thinking right now,” she whispers, before kissing me gently and stroking my cheeks. “No one is to blame. Except for that woman in the video. This is all her doing. Not yours. Not that other man. Not anyone else.”
“The man in that video?”
“It was filmed before you were… Didn’t you hear Stuart just explain that? Nina identified the hotel. But when she dug further, she found out that the hotel went through a big refurbishment three months before the night you were”—she swallows—“assaulted. That decor in the video is old.” She searches my eyes. “It wasn’t you in the video, Reed.”
My tongue is suddenly too big, and my mouth turns drier than an old bone left in the desert sun.
It wasn’t me.
There was at least one other before me.
But were there more after? Could I have done any more? Done anything to stop it happening?
“You couldn’t,” Harley says, her eyes intense as she reads my mind again. “You couldn’t have stopped any of it. Griffin, Riley, your parents… they all helped you report it. You all did everything you could. You were let down by a system that didn’t support you. And that’s what you’re fighting to change for other people now.”
She runs her fingertips over my brow and down past my eye, a soft smile settling on her lips as she traces down the side of my face and along my jaw, finally dusting them over my lips.
“I am so proud of you.” Her eyes shine.