22. Chapter 22 — Ava
The appointment is at ten.
Sienna confirmed the slot without asking what it was for. She just said tomorrow, ten o'clock, I'll make sure his schedule is clear and sent a calendar invite within ninety seconds. No questions. That's how I know she already understands what this is.
Shore's calendar, she mentioned, would show him in back-to-back internal reviews from nine to noon. Also not a coincidence.
***
I printed the report last night. Forty-one pages. Color-coded tabs across the top — insurance riders, personnel decisions, Shore's email chain with the consulting firm, the Voss connection.
I transferred everything to a USB drive at midnight. Triple-checked the encryption before I shut my laptop.
Six rehearsals. That's how many times I walked through the presentation out loud in my apartment with nobody there to hear it.
On the seventh, I didn't stumble once. That's when I went to bed.
***
Declan Royce's office is on the fourth floor, corner position, floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides. I've been in it twice. Once for the capstone approval meeting in November. Once for a brief check-in with Sienna last month where Declan walked through, nodded at me, and kept moving.
Today he's already standing when I come in. Not pacing. Just standing near the window with his hands in his pockets, looking at the practice field below.
He turns when I enter.
"Ms. Ruiz."
"Thank you for your time."
He gestures toward the chair across from his desk. I sit. He takes his seat and folds his hands on the desk. He looks at me with the expression I've heard about but never had directed at me. Cold. Precise. A man who calculates before he speaks.
"Whenever you're ready," he says.
***
I talk for twenty-two minutes.
I don't rush. I walk through the insurance rider first — the policy adjustment, the limiting language, the signature at the bottom that predates Shore's tenure.
I take him through Shore's pattern of personnel decisions.
The way each one quietly narrowed my father's contractual authority over the last two seasons.
I present the email chain between Shore and the consulting firm. I tell him about Martin Voss.
Declan doesn't move. Doesn't write anything down. Just watches me with those gray eyes and waits.
When I finish, the room is quiet.
He looks at the printed report on the desk between us. Then back at me.
"How long have you had this?"
"I confirmed the full picture three weeks ago."
"Why did you wait?"
"I needed to be sure."
He's quiet for another moment. The kind of quiet that isn't uncertainty. The kind that means he's already making calls in his head and letting me finish mine first.
"Your father made a good call recommending this capstone," he says.
He picks up his phone. Dials. Two rings.
"Get Mila Benton here." He pauses. "Yes. Today."
He sets the phone down and looks at the report again. "I'll need the digital backup."
I slide the USB drive across the desk.
He takes it. "You'll hear from Mila's office by end of day." He stands, which means the meeting is over. "Thank you, Ms. Ruiz."
"Thank you for hearing it."
He's already reading the first tab when I reach the door.
***
The corridor outside Declan's office is quiet at ten-thirty on a Thursday. Most of the executive staff is in the weekly operations meeting down the hall. I can hear the low murmur of voices through the closed door.
I walk toward the elevator bank. My heels are quiet on the marble floor. My hands are steady.
My father has been in this building for eleven years. I've been watching him work a room since I was fifteen. I know how to walk out of one.
I press the elevator button.
The doors open.
Shore steps out.
***
He stops when he sees me. Takes exactly one second to reassemble whatever crossed his face.
He's in a navy suit, pale gray tie. He looks the same as every other time I've walked past him in this building. Contained. Polished. The specific kind of composed that requires maintenance.
"Ava." He says it the way he always does — easy, like we know each other. Like the capstone is a friendly project he approved personally and still checks in on.
"Calvin."
He glances at Declan's closed office door. Back to me. His expression doesn't change. But his left hand moves to straighten his cuff.
Left first. Then right.
I know his tell. I've known it for six weeks.
"Good morning," he says.
"Good morning."
I step into the elevator. He steps aside to let me pass. Neither of us says another word.
The doors close.
***
I watch the floor numbers drop. My reflection looks back at me from the brushed steel doors. Composed. Still. My father's daughter.
My hands are steady.
Shore wasn't supposed to be out of his meetings until noon. Which means Sienna's arrangement didn't hold. Which means he left early. Which means he was somewhere in this building while I was on the fourth floor for twenty-two minutes.
My phone buzzes.
***
Claire Osei, 10:38am.
I answer.
"Shore filed a complaint with Stern's academic integrity office." Her voice is flat and precise. No preamble. "Fifteen minutes ago. He's claiming your capstone access was improperly scoped and your methodology violated the terms of your research agreement."
The elevator opens on the second floor. I don't get out.
"He's trying to invalidate the findings," I say.
"Yes."
"Before they can be formally presented."
"Yes. He'll want Stern to pull your faculty sign-off. If your advisor suspends the capstone for review, anything you've built becomes academically contested." She pauses. "It won't stop Declan's legal team. But it muddies the water and buys Shore time to build a counter-narrative."
I press the lobby button. The elevator starts moving again.
"He filed fifteen minutes ago," I say. "I was in Declan's office for twenty-two minutes."
A pause. "He found out while you were in the room."
"Yes."
She's quiet for a second. "That means the Voss connection is still active. Someone on your father's side is feeding Shore's people in real time."
I already know that. I've known it since Philadelphia when I found the fourth file in my encrypted folder. Shore finding out today just confirms it's still live.
"Forward me everything Shore submitted to Stern," I say. "And send me your union filing timeline. I need to know exactly where we are."
"I'll have it to you within the hour."
"Good."
I hang up. The lobby doors open. I walk through the atrium and out the glass front doors into the January cold.
***
The street is loud after the quiet of the building. A truck goes past. A cab. Two women in workout gear walking fast with their heads down.
I stop on the sidewalk and breathe.
Shore filed with Stern while I was in Declan's office. He knew within minutes. Someone in my father's network told him.
Voss. It has to be Voss. I've had the name for three weeks and I still don't have enough on him to move. Just the email chain. Just Claire's circumstantial evidence from the union filings. Just Ty placing him with Shore twice in the last month.
I need more. Something direct. Something clean enough to take back to Declan.
I pull out my phone and open my notes. Start a list.
It's what I do when something threatens to undo me. I make a list. I assign each item an action. A timeline. A next step.
The Stern complaint: call Professor Grant before two. Get ahead of Shore's framing before Grant hears it secondhand.
The Voss connection: pull his access logs from the facility system. If he's been feeding Shore in real time, there's a trail. There has to be.
The leak: figure out how Shore found out today. Someone in that building made a call. I need to find the gap.
My phone buzzes again.
***
Ty.
Ava. How'd it go?
I look at it for a moment. The sidewalk moves around me. A pigeon lands six inches from my foot and I don't move.
Three weeks ago I would have answered this with: Fine. Working on next steps. Professional. Contained. The version of myself I've been performing in this building since December.
I type: Declan has everything. Shore found out while I was in the room. He filed with Stern. Clock is running.
Three dots. Then: I know. Wren just texted me. She's already moving.
I stare at the screen.
Of course she is.
Tell her I'll call her in an hour, I type. I need to get to Professor Grant first.
Already told her. She said take your time, she's got the Stern piece handled.
I close my eyes for one second.
That's the thing about having people in your corner. I'm not used to it. I've spent four years being the one who handles things. The one who builds the case and shows up with a USB drive and forty-one color-coded pages.
I'm not used to someone else already moving before I ask.
Tell her thank you, I type.
Tell her yourself. She likes you better than me anyway.
Something pulls at the corner of my mouth. I press my lips together before it gets anywhere.
Go to practice, Knox.
Already there. Crush it today, Ruiz.
***
I pocket my phone.
The facility is behind me. Shore is somewhere inside it, calculating his next move. Voss is somewhere in my father's circle, still feeding information he doesn't know I can trace.
The complaint to Stern was Shore's mistake. Not because it won't cause problems — it will. But because filing it tells me exactly how scared he is.
Scared men make the wrong calls. I've watched my father say that at the dinner table since I was young.
Shore is scared. He filed in fifteen minutes. That's not strategy. That's panic.
I put my bag over my shoulder and start walking toward the subway.
I have a call to make. A trail to find. A list with three action items and a deadline of today.
***
The Stern complaint hits my email at eleven-oh-two.
I read it on my phone standing on the subway platform.
Shore's language is careful — improperly scoped, unauthorized access to proprietary financial data, breach of research parameters.
Every sentence technically arguable. Every sentence designed to make Professor Grant doubt me before I can get to him first.
The train comes.
I get on.
The doors close behind me. I stare at my reflection in the dark window across the car. My hands are steady. My face shows nothing.
But I'm already writing the email to Professor Grant in my head. Every word. Every paragraph. Six rehearsals worth of muscle memory pointing me toward the right sentences before I've typed a single one.
Shore filed the complaint at ten-thirty-eight.
By noon, I'll have answered it.
***
My phone buzzes one more time as the train pulls out of the station. Not Ty. Not Claire.
A text from a number I don't recognize. No name saved. Just an area code I don't know.
Ms. Ruiz. You should know — Voss has been using a facility access card registered to a retired staff member. Check the badge log for the week of November 4th. He was in the building on a day he wasn't cleared to be.
I read it twice.
The train goes dark in the tunnel.
Someone just handed me the thread I've been missing.
The question is who.