Chapter 28 The Connection Gets Closer

Chapter 28 The Connection Gets Closer
POV: Wren

Aaron was already gone.
I read the text twice, put the phone face up on the desk so Callum could see it, and went to my bag for the notebook I had carried since the beginning of all this, the one with the original Crestfield notes from three years ago, the ones I had transferred to Harlow in the bottom of a box because throwing them away had felt like finishing the job for the people who started it.
I found the notebook under the offsite drive documentation and opened it to the Crestfield section and started going through it page by page.
Callum read the text. Showed it to Dex. Neither of them said anything. They waited, which was the right call, because I needed to move through the notebook at my own speed and interruptions would cost time we didn't have if Aaron was already clearing out.
Page eleven.
There he was.
Not named prominently. A peripheral detail in the section about the athletic department's internal records, the part of the story that had touched on how information about complaints and conduct issues was accessed and by whom. A student assistant with a faculty supervisor key, listed in the department's volunteer roster, present at two of the relevant meetings I had documented. I had noted him as minor access, not a decision maker, and moved on because at seventeen I was still learning which details to pull and which to leave in the background.
Someone else had known he was worth keeping.
I put the notebook flat on the desk and pointed at the entry. Callum leaned in and read it. Dex came around the other side and read over Callum's shoulder.
"He had access to the internal records," Callum said.
"Department volunteer. Faculty key access. He could get into filing systems that regular students couldn't." I tapped the page. "He wasn't doing anything wrong at the time. He was just a student with access who was in the right rooms. Someone noticed that and decided to keep him available."
"For three years," Dex said.
"For three years," I said. "Undergrad somewhere else, then Harlow eighteen months ago, deposits starting at the beginning of this semester. They didn't need him constantly. They needed him on standby and then they needed him activated when something started moving."
"When you and Callum went public," Dex said.
"Before that," I said. "He enrolled eighteen months ago. The activation was always going to happen eventually. Going public just set the date."
Callum straightened up. Looked at the text on my phone again. "He knew we found his name fast. Within an hour of Dex identifying him."
"Someone told him," I said.
"Someone watching us right now," Dex said, and the three of us did the thing where we all looked at slightly different parts of the room without meaning to, the instinctive check of people who had just been reminded that the space they were in might not be as private as they had been treating it.
I picked up the notebook and closed it. "The deposits. The shell company account. I need the full financial trail, not just the screenshots."
Dex was already on his phone. He had his facilities contact on one thread and somebody else on another, typing fast, thumbs moving with the efficiency of someone who had spent years managing information through informal networks. Whatever Dex's flaws were, he had built a contact system that worked.
Three minutes. Then his phone buzzed back.
He read the response. Read it again. Looked up at me with something on his face that was not his usual performed expression. This was the real one, the one underneath, and it was somewhere between recognition and something close to disbelief.
"The shell company," he said. He held the phone out toward me. "The one the deposits are coming from."
I took the phone and read the message from his contact. The account number traced to a registered company name, a holding entity incorporated in a state with minimal disclosure requirements, the kind of structure that existed specifically to make tracing the actual source of funds require more resources than most people had. The registered agent listed for the company was a legal firm.
I read the firm's name.
Read it again.
Thrace, Millner and Associates.
The same firm. The same name that had appeared in the email chain Jamie brought to the coffee shop, the sender address on the correspondence with Crestfield's administrative coordinator. The same firm Callum had identified as handling Marcus's foundation compliance documentation. The same name I had seen in the directory records connected to the campus visits eighteen months ago.
And the same firm whose name had been circled in red ink on the printout left in my locker.
Not circled by the person warning me. Circled because it was the thread. The person who left that printout had known this was the connection and had pointed me at it before I had the tools to find it myself.
I handed the phone to Callum.
He read it and went very still and then set the phone on the desk with the careful precision of someone who needed their hands to be doing something controlled.
"Thrace is funding Aaron directly," he said. Flat and certain. "Through a shell company registered to his own firm."
"Which means it is not just a professional relationship," I said. "Thrace is not just processing paperwork for your father. He is running his own operation on the side of it. Aaron is his asset, not Marcus's."
Callum looked at me.
"Your father may not know Aaron exists," I said.
The room absorbed that. Dex sat down on the edge of my desk and rubbed both hands over his face and made a sound that wasn't quite a word.
Callum picked up his phone. Stared at it. Put it down without dialing.
"If Thrace is running something independent of my father," he said slowly, "then my father is not the ceiling of this. He is a layer of it."
Outside my window the narrow gap between buildings was dark and empty. Aaron was gone. His deposits were documented. His connection to Crestfield was documented. His eighteen months of presence on this campus was documented.
And somewhere above all of it, Gerald Thrace was running a parallel operation that Marcus Voss might not fully control.
My laptop pinged. An email. No sender name, just a string of numbers for an address, no subject line.
One attachment.
I opened it.
It was Aaron's employment contract with the facilities department. Standard university document, countersigned by a faculty supervisor.
The supervisor's name on the signature line was Chen.