Chapter 30 The Recording

Chapter 30 The Recording
POV: Wren

I asked the question before I stood up.
"The submission," I said. "Anonymous, you said. You're not in a position to know who filed it?"
Marcus held my eyes with the same warm steadiness he had held them with for the past twenty minutes. "The conduct office maintains the anonymity of submissions. That's standard policy."
"Right." I picked up the document and squared the pages against the table edge. "And you're aware that the same policy includes provisions regarding malicious or fabricated complaints. Section four, I believe. Submissions determined to be deliberately misleading carry consequences for the submitting party."
Something moved across his face. Not alarm. More like a chess player clocking a move they hadn't expected from the board position they thought they understood.
"I'm aware of all relevant policies," he said.
"Good." I stood up. Put the document under my arm. "I appreciate you bringing this to me directly. The transparency is helpful. I'll be reviewing it with the dean's office this afternoon."
He started to say something and I was already at the door and through it before it formed into words, not rushing, just moving at the pace of someone who had finished a meeting and was going to the next thing.
The hallway was empty except for a student with a backpack moving toward the stairs at the far end.
I walked to the women's bathroom three doors down, went to the last sink, ran the cold tap, and stood there with both hands under the water and looked at my own face in the mirror while the water ran over my knuckles.
The meeting had been twenty-three minutes. I had said as little as possible and what I had said was clean. He had said considerably more than he probably intended to say and I needed to confirm exactly what that was before I talked to anyone.
I turned the tap off. Dried my hands. Took my phone out and opened the voice memo app and put one earbud in and pressed play.
His voice came through first, the meeting-room version, warm and calibrated. Then mine, flat and direct. I listened without fast-forwarding because fast-forwarding meant missing the texture of things, the pauses, the places where the cadence shifted.
At three minutes he had described the conduct concern as a situation that had developed, which was the language of someone managing a process they were part of, not observing from outside it.
At four and a half minutes he had said the foundation's relationship with the university oversight committee in a way that made it sound routine. But the oversight committee handled scholarship renewals. He had just told me, in a recorded conversation, that his foundation had a relationship with the body reviewing my scholarship. That was not a small thing to have on tape.
At five minutes I had asked about the scholarship review timeline and he had answered with the specific word resolve, which implied knowledge of the concern's content and its potential effect, which sat uncomfortably close to admission of prior knowledge for a man who had presented himself as a concerned neutral party.
I rewound to the beginning of minute six.
Played it.
Listened.
Played it again.
There. Fourteen seconds into the sixth minute, between his sentence about the conduct office's standard process and his pivot toward wrapping up the meeting, he had said it. Not as emphasis, not as a main point. As a passing reference, the kind of thing that came out when someone was managing multiple threads at once and let one slip through the gap between them.
Your scholarship has been a point of interest since your first semester.
First semester.
I had enrolled two years ago. The conduct concern had been submitted this week. A man who had genuinely just become aware of a developing situation would have said your scholarship may be affected or the review process could be complicated. He would not have said since your first semester because since your first semester required knowledge that predated this week by two years.
That sentence was not something a man who had just learned about her would say.
That sentence was something a man said when he had been watching a file for two years and forgot, for fourteen seconds, to speak only from the position he had constructed for this meeting.
I stood in the bathroom with the earbud in and listened to the rest of the recording. Clean on my end. One small slip on his, fourteen seconds in minute six, enough to confirm what we already knew and put it in his own voice on a timestamped audio file.
I forwarded the file to the offsite account. Then to the lawyer's secure email. Then I typed a message to the press freedom organization that had been maintaining the protective record and attached the file with a note explaining the context and the relevant timestamp.
Then I texted Callum.
Got something. Not on the phone. Where are you.
Three dots. Library east entrance.
I put the phone in my pocket and picked up the conduct document from the edge of the sink where I had set it and walked out of the bathroom and down the stairs and out into the afternoon.
Callum was at the library entrance with his hands in his jacket pockets, not performing casual, just standing there the way he stood when he was waiting for something and had decided that patience was the move.
I held out one earbud.
He took it. I pressed play, starting at five minutes forty-six seconds, and watched his face while Marcus's voice came through.
Your scholarship has been a point of interest since your first semester.
Callum's jaw tightened. Just slightly. Just once.
I stopped the recording.
"He slipped," I said.
"Fourteen seconds," Callum said.
"Fourteen seconds in his own voice on a timestamped file that is currently sitting in three separate secure locations." I took the earbud back. "He came into that meeting to pressure me and he handed me confirmation that he has been running surveillance on my scholarship for two years."
Callum looked at the administration building across the path.
"He doesn't know he said it," he said.
"No," I said. "He doesn't."
His phone buzzed. He looked at the screen and something changed in his face, a quick tightening that resolved into something flat and decided.
He turned the phone toward me.
A text from an unknown number, four words.
He knows about Jamie.