20. Chapter 20 — Ava
Professor Grant calls at eight-fourteen in the morning.
My thesis advisor. The one person at Stern whose sign-off the entire capstone depends on.
I don't pick up. I already know what it is.
His voicemail is three minutes of careful language. Shore reached out yesterday, framed it as a routine scope inquiry, but the questions he asked weren't routine.
Was my access properly bounded? Had I stayed within the approved parameters? Were my findings limited to the agreed-upon research framework?
I listen to it twice. Standing in my kitchen, coat still on, bag still over my shoulder.
Shore didn't file anything. He didn't threaten anything. He just made a phone call to the one person whose opinion of my work has real consequences. That's not a blunder. That's precision.
He knows I'm building something. And he wants me to know he knows.
I pull out my phone and call the one person I trust to understand what that means.
***
Wren Calloway picks up on the second ring.
"Ava." Not a question. Like she's been expecting this.
"I need thirty minutes." I'm already looking up the address of the coffee shop she uses for off-site meetings. I've heard Ty mention it. "Lower East Side, if that works."
"I'll be there in twenty."
She already is when I arrive. Back table, coffee in front of her, phone face-down on the table. Wren Calloway does not look like someone who just launched a boutique crisis firm four weeks ago.
She looks like someone who has been running one for years and recently stopped pretending to do anything else.
Calloway Strategic opened last month. Boutique crisis management — transparency over spin.
That's the reason she left Prestige PR in the first place.
She's Jax Nelson's partner, which is how I got her number.
She also coached Ty through a media situation earlier this season. That's the part that matters right now.
I sit down. Order coffee. Start talking.
I tell her about the insurance rider. Shore's pattern of quietly stripping my father's contractual authority. Martin Voss in my father's personal network, feeding information to the consulting firm for at least two years.
The email chain dropped into a folder I never shared. The circled game schedule in my apartment. Shore's call to my thesis advisor yesterday morning.
Wren doesn't move. Doesn't write anything down. Doesn't nod along or make any of the encouraging sounds people make when they're waiting for you to stop talking.
She just listens. Completely still. The focused attention of someone already three steps ahead.
When I finish, she picks up her coffee. Takes one sip.
"You already know what to do," she says. "You've known for two weeks."
I look at her.
"You're waiting until you can protect everyone at once."
The coffee machine behind the counter makes a sound. Someone at the next table laughs at something on their phone. I don't say anything.
"Is that wrong?" I ask.
"It's very you." The corner of her mouth moves. Not quite a smile. "It's also very him."
I don't ask who she means.
She sets down her coffee. Opens her phone, types something, closes it again. "Shore's call to Grant is a tell. He's not filing a formal complaint because he doesn't have grounds yet. He's trying to make you hesitate."
She looks at me directly. "Don't hesitate."
"I need the full picture before I take it to Declan. If I move too early and the Voss piece isn't airtight—"
"Then nail down the Voss piece." She picks up her phone again. "I know someone at the league office who can pull the consulting firm's disclosure history. If they've worked with front office personnel before, there'll be a trail."
She pauses. "And Ava. When you go to Declan, I want to be in the room."
I look at her. "Why?"
"Because Shore is going to move the moment he hears you're meeting with the owner. And when he does, you'll need someone managing the narrative faster than he can control it."
She meets my eyes. "That's what I do."
I nod once. That's enough.
We talk for another twenty minutes. Logistics, sequencing, what Claire Osei at the union needs before she can file. Wren doesn't offer reassurance. She offers a plan.
That's why I called her.
I pay for both coffees. She doesn't argue. We walk out together and part ways at the corner.
I head north toward the subway with the specific feeling of something unmanageable starting to have edges.
***
I'm three blocks from my apartment when I pass the newsstand.
I don't usually stop. I'm not thinking about stopping. But the digital ticker on the sports tabloid screen catches the corner of my eye.
My feet slow without asking my permission.
A photo. Blurry, taken at distance. A hotel corridor, dim, the carpet pattern indistinct. Two figures. One in dark athletic gear, one in a gray hoodie.
I know that hoodie. It's mine. Or it was, before I left it in a Philadelphia hotel room and stopped asking for it back.
I stop in the middle of the sidewalk.
A woman behind me says excuse me and moves around me. I don't move. I'm looking at the photo — at the angle, the timestamp watermark in the corner, the specific staging.
This wasn't a random shot. Someone was positioned. Someone was waiting.
They've been following us.
My hands don't shake. That's the thing about being Ruiz's daughter. You learn early how to keep your hands steady when everything else isn't.
I screenshot the photo on my phone. Pull up Ty's contact. The one saved as Knox — I changed it from Don't sometime around week five, when it started feeling mean instead of accurate.
I send the screenshot. No message. Just the image.
Three dots appear in eleven seconds. Then:
I know. I've been tracking them for three weeks. Don't do anything yet. Trust me.
I stare at the screen.
Three weeks. He's known about this for three weeks and said nothing. I run the timeline in my head — Philadelphia, Minneapolis, the text about the consulting firm, every conversation since.
He's been sitting on this.
I type: I don't trust easily.
I watch the dots appear and disappear twice. Then:
I know. Trust me anyway.
The wind off the street is cold. The newsstand guy glances over at me. This woman frozen on the sidewalk staring at her phone. He looks away.
I think about Ty in the Minneapolis hotel room. His voice steady and stripped of the performance. I think about him saying I agree. But I want you to know I'm agreeing because you asked me to.
Three weeks of him watching a threat form around us. And waiting.
Waiting for what? To protect me from the panic of knowing? To confirm it fully before he brought it to me?
I don't know. Both feel like him.
I put my phone in my pocket. Start walking again.
I don't text back. Not yet. I need to think. I think better when I'm moving.
He's been tracking them for three weeks. Wren has a contact at the league office. Claire has eighteen months of union filings. I have everything inside the franchise.
Four separate people building the same case from four different directions.
Shore called my thesis advisor yesterday morning. The photo is already on a sports ticker. The timeline just compressed.
I turn the corner onto my block. Pull out my keys.
I need to move faster than he does. I need Declan before Shore can get ahead of it. I need to know exactly what Ty has been tracking.
If he has documentation — photos, plates, anything — that's the piece I'm missing.
I push through my building door.
I pull out my phone again. Type one message:
What do you have on them? Everything. I need to see it.
Send.
The dots appear immediately this time. No pause. No disappearing.
Come over tonight. I'll show you all of it.
I look at the message for a long moment. Think about every reason that's a complicated idea. Think about the photo on the newsstand ticker.
Think about Professor Grant's voicemail. His careful, measured tone. Relaying Shore's questions like he was still deciding what to make of them.
I type: Seven o'clock. Text me your address.
I put my phone away. Unlock my apartment. Step inside.
The kitchen counter is bare. No game schedule. No circled dates. Just my space, my things, exactly where I left them.
For now.
I drop my bag on the chair. Pull off my coat. Open my laptop.
There's a lot to do before seven.