6. Chapter 6 — Ava
The system is simple. When something happens that I don't want to think about, I make a list. Break the problem into parts. Assign each part an action item, a deadline, a folder. Get to work.
I've been at my desk since six.
The list is not helping.
The parking structure was last night. His hand flat against the pillar. Neither of us moving. The air went tight. The space between us got very small. I looked at his mouth exactly once, and that was one time too many.
Then stepped back.
That's the part I keep returning to. Not that it almost happened. That I'm the one who stopped it, and I'm still sitting here running numbers I've already run.
Fine. Work. That's what I'm here for.
***
I get back to researching the financials.
The insurance rider documentation is buried in an archived 2024 compliance submission. Not hidden. Just nested deep enough that nobody would go looking unless they already knew what they were after.
I didn't know what I was after. I was following the timing.
The policy adjustment limits the franchise's liability on player injury claims in ways that weren't fully disclosed to the union. Not eliminated — limited. Quietly. In language that takes a specific kind of eye to catch.
Shore didn't write this. His signature isn't on it.
I scroll to the bottom.
A name I don't recognize. Someone inside this franchise before Shore. A title: Deputy Director of Football Operations. Listed end date: 2024. But this document is dated October 2024 — after they were supposed to be gone.
I add three more lines to my list.
Save the document. Create a second folder in my personal drive, separate from the capstone materials. Drag a copy in.
My coffee is cold. I drink it anyway.
***
The anomaly is worse than I thought.
Not wrong, exactly. That's what makes it interesting. Every number is technically correct. Every filing date lands inside the compliance window.
But when I map the decisions chronologically — the rider adjustment, the cap restructuring, the three mid-tier extensions that quietly fell apart — there's a pattern underneath the paperwork.
Shore has been managing this franchise like a short position. Not destroying it. Trimming the right edges at the right times. Limiting long-term liability in ways that look fine until you're in a playoff year and you run out of depth in week fourteen.
I need the original contract addendums from the last three roster restructures. Files above my current clearance level.
I pull up the request form. Stop.
Sending this through the standard channel tells Shore exactly what I'm looking at before I have anything solid enough to say out loud.
I schedule a meeting instead.
***
Shore's office is all glass and good lighting and the kind of quiet that costs money. He's the GM — runs the front office, answers to Declan, and has been here long enough to know exactly how much access to give a coach's daughter doing capstone research.
He stands when I come in. That's the tell. The studied courtesy, the practiced smile, the way he gestures to the chair like he's been expecting me. He's been prepared since I walked in the door of this franchise.
"Ava. Good morning. What can I do for you?"
"Cap structure questions," I say. "I'm building out the financial modeling section of my capstone and a few of the historical addendum filings weren't included in the initial data package."
"Of course." He settles back. "Which filings?"
I give him three. Specific. Low-stakes on their own.
He explains each one. Thorough, unhurried, perfectly framed. Answers exactly what I asked and moves on before I can follow up. Boxes the question in without ever appearing defensive.
I come out with three clean documents and zero of the context I needed.
Which tells me everything.
If the answer were innocent, he'd have let me wander. He contained me instead. You only do that when there's something nearby worth protecting.
***
I'm halfway down the corridor when Ty falls into step beside me.
Not manufactured. He's just there, matching my pace like it's unremarkable.
"How'd the meeting go?"
I glance at him. Practice gear, hair slightly damp. Looking forward. Casual.
"How do you know I had a meeting?"
"Shore's assistant looked relieved when you left." A beat. "She only does that when someone asked the wrong questions."
I stop walking.
He stops too.
I turn and look at him fully. Not the quick professional sweep I've been doing all week. Actually look at him.
"You see everything."
"Occupational hazard." He's not smiling, which is unusual. "Wide receiver. I read the field."
"You should do something useful with that."
"I'm working on it."
One beat. Two.
He's not pushing. When the charm goes quiet, he's just still. Looking at me like I'm a problem he finds genuinely interesting.
I nod. Turn back toward my office.
He falls into step beside me again.
***
I don't invite him in.
He doesn't ask.
I set my laptop on the desk and turn around and he's in the doorway, shoulder against the frame. The parking structure still live between us. Both of us know it.
Twelve hours is a long time to think about a moment that didn't happen.
I look at him. He looks back.
I close the distance.
Brief. Certain. My hand flat against his chest, my mouth on his for three seconds.
Not a question. A decision I made somewhere in the overnight hours, executed.
I step back before he can respond.
"That's done," I say. "Now it's done."
He's quiet for a moment. "Is it?"
"Go to practice, Knox."
He goes.
I stand at my desk and I don't move for a long moment.
The honest answer — the one I'm not going to say out loud — is that three seconds wasn't enough. That stepping back was the right call and I'd do it again. My hands are braced against the edge of the desk right now because that's the only way I'm going to hold this together.
I take a breath.
Put my hands on the keyboard. Get back to work.
***
A decision made clearly should stay made.
I kissed him to close the loop. Take a thing that had been building in the background and turn it into a defined event with a before and an after. Name the thing, resolve the thing, move forward.
It does not feel resolved.
I put my hands on the keyboard and get back to work.
***
By four I have a cleaner picture. Shore's decisions cluster around the same two-year intervals — just often enough to read as normal roster management, spaced far enough apart to avoid triggering any single audit flag.
Careful. Strategic. And it only makes sense if someone has been telling him, over and over, that short-term optics matter more than what comes next.
The question is who's telling him.
I save everything to the private folder.
That's when I see it. A six-minute timestamp discrepancy from this morning — from when I was in Shore's meeting. I locked it when I left. I always lock it.
Someone was in my files.
I pull the access log. Four minutes to find the right admin window.
Two files accessed.
The insurance rider document.
And the list I started on day one — every name, every date, every decision I flagged before I knew what I was looking at.
I open a new document. Encrypted. Buried three folders deep under a capstone section labeled preliminary data notes - discard.
I start moving everything.
My hands are steady. That's the thing about growing up Ruiz's daughter. You learn early — at fifteen, at twelve, at every dinner table where the wrong word costs someone a starting position — that the moment your hands shake is the moment you lose the room.
So I keep them steady.
I move the files. Create a second backup somewhere no one would think to look. Close the original folder and leave two decoy documents in its place — incomplete, slightly off. Early-stage research to anyone who doesn't know what the finished version looks like.
Then I sit back.
Someone in this building knows what I found.
They found it first.
And they went looking while I was sitting across from Shore, asking questions he answered too smoothly, thinking I was the one doing the watching.
***
I pick up my phone. Look at the last text from the unknown number. You took the coffee.
I stare at it.
The door is still closed. He walked out twenty minutes ago and I can still feel exactly where I was standing when I closed the distance. The careful inch of space I left between us every day this week, gone in three seconds.
That's done. Now it's done.
I said it like I meant it.
I open a new message and type: How well do you read the field when the game is off the field?
Hit send.
Three dots appear immediately.
Then: Try me.
I set the phone face down on the desk.
The files are backed up. The decoys are in place. Shore doesn't know how far I've gotten.
And Ty Knox is somewhere in this building, reading my text, thinking whatever he's thinking.
I put my hands back on the keyboard.
Neither problem is going to solve itself tonight.