Chapter 51 The Move

Chapter 51 The Move

"Get in the car, Lila," Knox said, throwing the passenger door open before the tires had even stopped rolling against the slushy curb of the dorm parking lot.
I didn't wait for him to help me. I slid into the front seat, my bulky gauze bandages sliding awkwardly against the cold plastic dashboard. Knox slammed the door shut, marched around the hood, and killed the engine. The silence inside the cabin felt instant, cutting off the distant noise of the campus quad.
"You shouldn't have said that to Sienna," I said, my voice shaking as I turned to look at his profile. "The cameras were still rolling. The dean was standing right behind you."
"Sienna was twenty seconds away from handing the dean a copy of our original text thread," Knox said flatly. He didn't look at me. He reached into the backseat, pulled a flat cardboard box into his lap, and tossed a roll of heavy packing tape onto the center console. "She’s been tracking the housing office Wi-Fi logs since last month. If I didn't tell the press you were moving in tonight, the board would have signed the expulsion orders before lunch."
"So now I'm actually supposed to live in your duplex?" I asked, my fingers throbbing inside the cotton wrapping. "We don't even have a second bed, Knox. It's a one-room apartment."
"You take the bed, I take the floor," Knox said, pulling the keys out of the ignition with a sharp click. "But right now, we have exactly forty minutes to get your clothes out of room 302 before the housing director locks the floor for the midday audit. If your bags aren't in my trunk when the inspectors walk through that door, the dean calls the lie."
He didn't wait for me to answer. He pushed his door open, grabbed the empty cardboard box under his arm, and walked straight toward the heavy concrete steps of the girls' dormitory.
I scrambled out after him, my boots slipping on the icy pavement as I tried to keep up with his massive strides. The lobby of the dorm was completely empty, but the girl behind the reception desk didn't look up from her monitor. Her face was lit by the blue glow of the student forum page, where our names were still pinned to the top of the trending list.
Knox didn't stop at the elevator. He took the stairs two at a time, his heavy boots echoing off the concrete walls until we hit the third-floor landing.
Room 302 was dead quiet. I pushed the door open with my elbow, the smell of lavender detergent and old textbooks hitting me instantly. The room looked exactly how I had left it before the cellar fire—my desk covered in loose printouts of my father's code, my winter coats hanging over the back of the desk chair, and my laundry basket sitting near the closet.
"Where are the suitcases?" Knox asked, dropping the box onto my mattress.
"Under the bed," I said, pointing with my wrapped forearm. "The black canvas ones."
Knox dropped to one knee, hauled the two heavy bags out from under the dust ruffle, and threw them onto the desk. He didn't ask questions about what to pack. He just opened the closet door, grabbed a handful of sweaters directly off the plastic hangers, and shoved them straight into the bottom of the largest bag.
"We need the paperwork from the top drawer," I said, moving toward the desk. "The original medical power of attorney files for my dad. If Richard's lawyers try to challenge my rights to the source drive again, I need the physical signatures."
"I'll get it," Knox said, his hand catching my wrist before my bandages could touch the metal drawer handle. "Sit down on the bed, Lila. You're bleeding through the gauze on your left thumb."
I looked down at my hand. A small, dark red circle was blooming through the white cotton wrapping where the blister had popped against my sleeve. The pain was a sharp, steady needle prick, but I forced myself to ignore it, sitting down on the edge of the mattress as Knox yanked the desk drawer open.
"Is it there?" I asked.
Knox didn't answer. He froze, his hand hovering inside the open drawer. He pulled out a small, rectangular piece of white plastic, a thumb drive with a cracked silver casing. It wasn't the master file we had uploaded at midnight, and it wasn't the dashcam drive Mason had given us.
"Lila," Knox said, his voice dropping into that quiet, hard register. He held the drive up between his fingers. "What is this?"
"I don't know," I said, my heart skipping a beat as I looked at the silver casing. "That drawer was locked until yesterday. My father kept the key on his watch chain."
Knox turned the plastic drive over. Scratched directly into the silver metal were three letters: R.S.Y.
"Ryder Senior Year," Knox whispered, his jaw clenching so hard the skin over his cheekbones went tight. He looked back down into the drawer, pulling out a single sheet of folded notebook paper that had been tucked beneath my father's old tax files.
"What does it say?" I asked, standing up from the bed despite the stinging in my thumb.
Knox unfolded the paper with one hand, his blue eyes scanning the messy, handwritten lines. I recognized my father's erratic script instantly, but the date at the top of the page was from November 2023—two weeks after Knox’s older brother had been kicked out of the league for an unverified drug test.
"It’s a list of blood panel numbers," Knox hissed, his breathing slowing down until it was completely silent. He slammed the paper flat onto the desk, his fist hitting the wood with a loud crack. "Richard didn't just steal your dad's code to buy the stadium, Lila. He used your dad's access to the team medical files to swap the labels on my brother's drug test three years ago."
My blood turned back to ice. The room felt completely silent, the sound of the wind rattling the glass window pane the only noise between us.
"He framed him," I whispered.
"He destroyed his entire career to clear a roster spot for Mason," Knox said, his voice dropping into a tense, venomous whisper as his fingers locked around the silver thumb drive. He looked toward the door, his eyes turning darker than they had been in the cellar. "And the dean's signature is right at the bottom of this lab report."