Chapter 32 Jamie's Documents

Chapter 32 Jamie's Documents
POV: Wren

The board session was scheduled for Thursday.
Today was Tuesday. Forty-eight hours before whatever was in those records became public record, before whoever had forced the session had control of the narrative around what got revealed and how it got framed and which parts got emphasized and which parts got buried in procedural language.
Forty-eight hours.
I closed the news alert and opened my contacts and called Jamie's current number, the third prepaid, the one Carol had passed through a mutual contact four days ago after the second one went dark.
It rang six times.
I was composing what to leave on voicemail when he picked up.
"I saw the news," he said. No greeting, just that.
"When did you see it."
"Twenty minutes ago. Someone tipped me." His voice had the quality it had in the coffee shop, worn past nervous into something that was just tired and moving anyway. "I don't know who called the session."
"I do," I said. "Or I know the shape of who. Someone inside the operation who has been feeding me pieces. They've accelerated the timeline." I picked up my pen. "Jamie. You said in the coffee shop you had the emails. What else do you have."
A pause. Longer than the coffee shop pauses, the kind that came before saying something you had been deciding whether to say for a long time.
"Board minutes," he said.
I stopped writing.
"The original ones," he said. "From the month the story was pulled. Before the amendments."
"You have the pre-amendment version."
"And the post-amendment version. Both." His voice was steady saying it, the steadiness of someone who had been holding something heavy for so long that the weight had become familiar. "I kept them because throwing them away felt like I was finishing the job for the people who started it."
I had thought the same thing about my Crestfield notebook. The same exact thought, word for word. The parallel of it landed somewhere below my ribs and stayed there.
"What do the amendments change," I said.
"Small things. Specific language around who initiated the review of your story. One sentence in the original that attributes the concern to an external stakeholder communication. In the amended version that sentence is gone and replaced with language about internal editorial standards review." He paused. "It's the difference between the record showing outside pressure and the record showing the school acting independently."
Outside pressure from an external stakeholder. Thrace's firm, communicating with the administrative coordinator. If the original minutes showed the decision tracking back to external communication, that connected the board action directly to Marcus's legal team.
That was not circumstantial. That was institutional documentation of the sequence.
"Why didn't you give me these at the coffee shop," I said. Not an accusation. A real question.
"Because I needed to know you were still the same," he said. "That two years of this hadn't made you into someone who would use them the wrong way."
"What's the wrong way."
"Fast. Loud. Without protecting the people who are still exposed." A beat. "I've watched you for two years from a distance. Your bylines, your corrections pieces, the way you sourced things. I needed to see you in person to know if the person doing that work was someone I could trust with the original minutes."
I sat with that.
"And?" I said.
"You protected me at seventeen when protecting me cost you everything you had built," he said. "I think I know the answer."
"I need them before Thursday," I said. "Before the board session reframes the public record. If the amended version is what gets discussed in an open session, the original disappears under the weight of what's presented."
"I know."
"Can you get them to me securely by tomorrow morning."
"Yes." A pause. "But Wren. I need you to understand something first." His voice shifted, not lower exactly, more like he was choosing the next words from a smaller set than usual. "I've been sitting on these because every time I got close to passing them to someone, something happened. My landlord. My job. The car fine. And once, eight months ago, I got within two hours of meeting a journalist and the journalist pulled out. Said they had received information suggesting my documents were fabricated."
"Someone got to them," I said.
"Before I even arrived." He stopped. "Which means whoever has been managing this from the inside knew every approach I made before I made it. Every contact I tried, every journalist I researched, every time I got close." He paused again. "Except you. You're the first person I've been able to reach without something stopping it first."
"Because I wasn't looking," I said. "I was invisible. They weren't watching for you to approach me because approaching me wasn't supposed to be possible."
"Yes."
The news alert was still open on Callum's phone on the desk. Thursday. Board session. Forty-seven hours.
"There is one more thing," Jamie said.
Something in his tone changed when he said it. Not the tired-moving-anyway tone. Something else, something that had been sitting separately from everything else he'd said, held back until the rest was established.
"The original person," he said slowly. "The one who found your story and flagged it. Before it was even finished. Before it published." He stopped. "It wasn't Thrace. Thrace came in after. The flag came from someone closer."
"Closer to what," I said.
"Closer to you." Another pause, the longest one. "The person who first flagged your story to Marcus's network was someone inside Harlow University. Someone who has been here since before you arrived."
The desk. The draft on the laptop. Callum across from me going completely still.
"They're still here," Jamie said. "They have been the whole time. And they are not Chen."
My pen was in my hand and I had not written a word in four minutes.
"Who," I said.
He said a name.
I knew it immediately. Not from the investigation. Not from any document or email chain or directory search.
From my own department. From a classroom I sat in every Thursday morning.
My academic advisor.