Again he goes quiet, jaw working.
“She didn’t remember anything about the night. I’m thankful for that, but unless there is video footage, we may never know exactly what happened. Do I even wish for that?” He passes a shaking hand down his face. “She had an exam, of course,” he says. He pauses for a pained beat, and then nods.
This feels like another punch to my solar plexus. “Alec, oh my God.”
I understand why he wanted to do this out here, where he can say it out loud and let it be swallowed by the ocean.
“She was really sick the whole next day,” he says. “They found a cocktail of things in her system—certainly nothing she could have ordered at the bar. Josef called in the morning.” Alec looks at me, and the hollow pain in his eyes is gutting. “He was so worried. Said he didn’t know where Sunny had disappeared to. Naively, I told him what I’d seen in that room, and he was shocked. He was really quite convincing.”
I feel sick.
“To be honest, I wasn’t able to process anything or anyone else once I saw Sunny on that couch. It never occurred to me that he’d seen her in that state. Because if he had, of course he would have helped her, right? His ex? My sister?”
“Alec…”
Alec shakes his head and blinks past me. “Later that day Lukas called me to check in. Needed to talk it out—he was traumatized by it all, too. When I told him about my conversation with Josef, he was furious. He said, ‘Alec, mate, Josef was right there. He bolted the second you walked in.’ He’d been there, Gigi.”
I knew it was coming. I knew it. But it doesn’t make it any easier to hear. “So, when Josef called you, he was trying to find out what you’d seen? What Sunny knew?”
“That’s my assumption, yes.”
We let this horrible truth dissolve between us. “Does Sunny want them to bring charges?”
Alec shakes his head. “It’s been two months. But because she doesn’t remember, because she doesn’t want to be dragged through the tabloids, because she’s justifiably worried about how this would affect her public reputation, and because she went there willingly—she’s very hesitant.”
“I bet you want to kick his ass.”
He laughs once, a sharp sound. “You have no idea.” There is violence in those words; the sounds scrape out from between his teeth. He turns his face away and pulls in a deep, steadying breath. “What kind of a monster can do this—at the minimum witness what happened to Sunny and very likely be the one behind it—and call me the next day playing innocent like that? I felt so incredibly stupid.”
“You gave your friend the benefit of the doubt. That’s not stupid. That’s what good people do.”
“I suppose.”
“No one from the club has said anything to authorities about him?”
He shakes his head. “Gigi, there are probably a hundred people who’ve seen women come in and leave drugged every week who don’t say anything.”
It’s the one thing I haven’t been able to figure out—how this could be happening at the club on such a scale without someone getting caught.
“I’ve felt hopeless. Not wanting to push Sunny to come forward but worrying that this story will continually get buried if she doesn’t. I felt rather cynical about it all until I heard the fire in your voice at the hotel the other night.” Alec catches my gaze and holds it. “I assume you know where I’m going with this: the only thing I need you to do on the record is to keep pushing, keep looking into Josef Anders’s activity.”
My heart breaks for him. “I promise I will.”
He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, he tries to smile. “That’s all I know.”
“That’s a lot.” I reach forward, carefully sweeping his hair off his forehead. “You okay?”
Alec leans into my hand. “I won’t pretend that this hasn’t been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with.”
“Oh, I’m sure.”
“Worrying about her, knowing what happened to her that night—all I want is to support her the way she needs. Are there videos out there? Who else was in the room? I’m glad she doesn’t remember what happened, but I also wonder if eventually she will.”
I gnaw my lip while I decide whether or not to tell him this next bit. Not because it’s a secret—it’ll be out in my story tomorrow anyway—but because I know it will hit him hard.