Chapter 43 The Second Trap

Chapter 43 The Second Trap

"Give me the phone, Foley," Knox said.
His voice didn't shake, but it had a heavy, dangerous drop to it that made Coach Foley immediately hand over the receiver.
The locker room corridor was chaotic. The sound of our teammates shouting and slamming their sticks against the walls to celebrate the win echoed off the concrete. But inside the narrow coaching alcove, the air felt like it had turned to ice. Knox stood with his skates still locked onto the rubber mat, his helmet held tightly under his arm as he pressed the phone to his ear.
I looked up at the television monitor mounted on the brick wall. The live feed from the national sports network was still playing, showing a blurred image of a secondary document directory.
"Mom isn't in New York," I whispered, my hands going entirely numb inside the pockets of Knox's jacket. "She was just in the stands. I saw her sweater behind the bench before the first period started."
"She left after the second intermission, Lila," Mason said. He stepped into the alcove, his white jersey stained with black marks from the goalpost. He didn't look at Coach Foley. He looked straight at me, his face pale. "I checked the family group locator when my dad's assistant stopped answering my texts. Her car crossed the state line forty minutes ago."
Knox lowered the phone from his ear. He didn't hang it up. He just let his arm drop to his side, his blue eyes fixed on the television screen where the league representative was clearing the microphone.
"The line went dead," Knox said. He looked at Foley. "Who was on the central registry desk?"
"The vice chancellor’s personal legal representative," Foley said. He rubbed a hand over his face, looking older than he had when the game started. "They didn't just submit a timeline waiver, Ryder. They submitted an original copyright filing from three years ago. A filing registered under your mother’s maiden name, Lila."
My stomach gave a sick, violent twist.
Three years ago, I was eighteen. I was sitting in the back of my mother's old sedan, moving our clothes and my dad's old boxes into the Shaw family home after the wedding. I didn't have a bank account then. I didn't have a secure digital drive. Everything I wrote was stored on a shared family tablet that my mom managed from her laptop.
"She didn't write it," I said, my voice cracking in the cold air. "She doesn't even know how to open the posting portal. Richard made her do it."
"It doesn't matter who typed the words if her name is on the legal title," Foley told us, his tone flat and business-like. "The league compliance office treats any property dispute as an automatic hold. The draft contract I just put on the table is frozen until a civil court verifies the primary author."
"We don't have time for a civil court," Knox said. He took a slow step toward me, his heavy pads clicking sharply in the silence. He set his hockey stick against the equipment cage and reached out, his large, calloused hand gripping my shoulder. "Lila, think. Where is the backup drive you used before you moved into the house?"
"In the basement," I said, my mind racing through the old cardboard boxes stacked near the water heater. "In my dad's old desk. There’s an old external drive with the high school timestamps. The ones from before she ever met Richard."
"We're going to the house," Knox said.
"The press is already at the front gates, Knox," Mason warned, stepping into the doorway to block the exit path. "The local news vans followed my dad's car from the arena when the audit broke. If you pull your truck out of the rear slot, they'll trail you straight to the driveway."
"Then we don't use the truck," Knox said.
He didn't wait for Mason to reply. He reached down, unlatched the heavy plastic buckles of his chest protector, and let the padded armor drop heavily onto the concrete floor. He pulled his black home jersey over his head, leaving him in just his thin thermal shirt. His skin was slick with sweat, his chest rising and falling in sharp, shallow movements.
"Give me your keys, Mason," Knox commanded, holding out his hand.
Mason didn't hesitate. He reached into his gear bag, pulled out the silver ring for his old sedan, and tossed it across the space. Knox caught it in his palm, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the metal.
"Stay with Foley," Knox told Mason. "If the league compliance officer comes down to the locker room to verify the roster signatures, tell him I’m in the medical room getting my ribs taped."
"They'll check the room within ten minutes, Ryder," Foley said, crossing his arms over his chest. "I can't falsify a medical report for the registry logs."
"Then give me nine minutes," Knox shot back.
He grabbed my wrist, his fingers locking tightly around my skin, and pulled me toward the dark utility exit behind the skate-sharpening station. The door opened into a narrow, unpaved alleyway that smelled like river wetness and old gasoline. The wind hit us instantly, ripping my hair across my face as we hurried down the gravel path toward the secondary parking lot where the player vehicles were hidden.
The night was completely black, the overcast sky blocking out the moon. Mason's old sedan was parked crookedly under a broken streetlight near the fence line.
Knox unlocked the doors, shoved me into the passenger seat, and climbed into the driver's side before the local news crews near the main gate could spot the movement. He didn't turn on the headlights. He backed the car out of the slot using only the faint red glow of the brake lights against the concrete wall, then hit the gas, the tires throwing loose gravel against the chassis as we burst onto the empty side street.
"If the file on the external drive has the high school timestamp, it proves she wasn't part of the writing process," I said, my hands shaking as I unlocked my phone to check the registry updates.
The screen didn't show the publisher's dashboard anymore. It was covered in automatic Google alerts from the university news page. The board had officially suspended the athletic department's contract authority pending the copyright investigation.
"Richard knew Mason would leak the library logs," Knox said, his eyes fixed on the dark road ahead as he drove across the Cherry Street bridge. He wasn't speeding, but every shift of his foot on the pedal was hard. "He let Mason think he was winning so we'd stop looking at the timeline. The publicist angle was a distraction to get the media here before he used your mother to claim the manuscript."
"Why would he want the story?" I asked, looking at his profile in the dark cab. "He hated it. He called it trashy in front of the director."
"He doesn't want the story, Lila," Knox said, turning the steering wheel sharply as we entered the quiet, tree-lined neighborhood of the suburbs. "He wants the copyright hold. If the contract stays frozen past midnight, my entry-level eligibility expires for the current season. I go back into the unmanaged pool, and Foley has to draft Mason as the primary unit leader."
The car pulled up to the curb three houses down from my family home.
The house was completely dark. The front porch light was off, and the long driveway where Knox's truck usually sat was empty. The neighborhood was dead quiet, the neat suburban lawns covered in a thin crust of gray winter slush.
We got out of the car, keeping our steps light as we walked across the grass toward the side cellar door. The old wooden storm doors were padlocked, but Knox didn't look for a key. He grabbed a heavy iron tire iron from Mason’s trunk, jammed it into the rusty hasp, and threw his weight down until the old screws ripped out of the rotted wood with a loud crack.
The cellar stairs were pitch-black, smelling of damp earth and old paint cans. I pulled out my phone, using the flashlight beam to guide us down into the concrete basement.
"Where is the desk?" Knox whispered, his boots silent against the floor.
"In the corner behind the old furnace," I said, moving the light across the stacked cardboard boxes.
The beam hit the old oak desk my dad had used before he died. The drawers were pulled open, papers scattered across the concrete floor like dry leaves. Someone had already been through the files.
I rushed forward, dropping to my knees as I searched through the mess. The small plastic case where I kept the old high school flash drives was gone. The velvet lining was empty, sitting on top of a shredded copy of my freshman enrollment forms.
A floorboard creaked directly above our heads.
The sound was heavy, deliberate, and perfectly clear through the thin basement ceiling. Knox instantly dropped his hand onto my shoulder, forcing me down into the shadow of the brick furnace wall as the yellow beam of a flashlight cut through the floor slats from the kitchen door above.
"Lila," a voice called down into the darkness of the cellar stairs.
It wasn't my mother. It was Richard Shaw.
His voice was perfectly calm, dripping with the effortless authority of a man who knew he had the house locked from the outside.
"I know you're down there," Richard said, his footsteps sounding on the top step of the basement stairs. "And I have the external drive in my coat pocket. If you want the registry verification number before the midnight deadline, you're going to have to come up here and tell Knox to sign the timeline waiver."