CHAPTER 19
THE REAL ENEMY
OLIVIA
The person who updated the betting spreadsheet had access to the Titans’ private medical system at nine fourteen that morning.
The team’s trust became useful only when paired with verification. Friendship identified what felt wrong; records proved why. Neither could replace the other.
Finding the insider required the team to distrust familiar systems without distrusting every person inside them. Olivia kept evidence ahead of instinct, even when instinct offered the emotional relief of an immediate enemy.
Noah saved every version of the access log before anyone touched the system. Evidence could be altered by a well-meaning administrator as easily as by a criminal. Olivia ordered read-only copies and independent custody, rebuilding trust through procedure rather than promises.
The timestamp became the center of the room.
It proved the criminal network still breathed after its architect entered custody.
Everyone wanted the remaining threat to be a single frightened employee.
Olivia understood the more likely answer was worse: the organization itself had been trained to feed Richard without recognizing the shape of the appetite.
At nine fourteen, Richard Parker was in federal custody, Gerard Mills was being questioned, Paul Mercer was under arrest, and Robert Carter was seated inside a monitored interview room.
That sentence changed the investigation.
Richard had relied on everyone wanting one villain large enough to contain the entire crime. A single enemy offered emotional relief. Systems did not.
Olivia forced the room to accept the harder possibility: removing Richard would not repair the habits that made him powerful.
The leak came from someone else.
Olivia stood in the Titans’ executive conference room with Noah’s tablet connected to the main screen. Alex remained in the hospital. Coach Davis had ordered every player to attend a closed practice, then quietly moved the meeting into the arena to keep the team under one roof.
Daniel sat at the table with his chair tilted back. Luke stood near the windows, weight carefully off his injured ankle. Adam paced. Ben worked beside Noah at a second laptop.
Robert was not present.
For once, Olivia had chosen that.
“Who can access live medical notes?” she asked.
Noah displayed the permissions list. “Team doctors. Training staff. General manager. Assistant general manager. Coach Davis. Ownership. League medical liaison.”
“Paul Mercer’s credentials?”
“Disabled before the update.”
“Could someone use them anyway?” Luke asked.
“Not without triggering a duplicate session alert.”
Daniel lowered the chair. “So our traitor is either medically qualified or extremely boring.”
Adam stopped pacing. “That eliminates me.”
Coach Davis looked at him. “No one was considering you.”
“Still good to establish.”
Olivia studied the list. The team doctor, Dr. Maya Shah, had treated Alex’s shoulder and had no financial anomalies in the federal review. The assistant trainers had limited access. The league liaison worked from New York and had logged in from a verified office.
Sloane had presented himself as the least dramatic man in professional hockey.
He wore identical gray suits, spoke in numbers, and left every team event before dessert.
Robert trusted him because he appeared uninterested in power.
Coach Davis trusted him because he rarely interfered with line decisions.
Players trusted him because contracts arrived on time and complaints disappeared into administrative language.
Olivia searched his history while Noah reviewed access logs.
Sloane had approved medical vendors, sponsor-technology pilots, and the private data contract that allowed performance sensors to store information outside the league’s official system. None of the decisions looked criminal alone. Together they created a tunnel around every safeguard.
“He did not need to steal data,” Noah said. “He made the collection legal, then changed who could see it.”
“That is worse,” Ben answered.
It was also familiar. Robert’s greatest damage had rarely come from breaking rules openly. He shaped structures so harmful choices became ordinary procedure.
Olivia found one photograph from the development camp. Sloane stood behind Evan Hale during a medical evaluation, one hand on the young player’s shoulder. Richard was beside him. Dr. Vale held the altered clearance.
Four men around one boy.
Every adult had called the arrangement opportunity.
No one had asked whether Evan wanted the future they were forcing his body to carry.
The general manager, Victor Sloane, had been with the Titans for twelve years.
He was also the person who had recommended Paul Mercer for promotion.
“Where is Sloane?” Olivia asked.
Coach Davis’s expression changed. “He called in sick.”
Noah checked the security system. “His badge entered the arena at seven fifty-two.”
“Then never left?”
“No exit recorded.”
Adam smiled without humor. “We are hunting our boss inside the building.”
“Federal agents are,” Olivia corrected. “You are going to practice.”
Four men stared at her.
Coach Davis folded his arms. “She is right.”
Daniel looked wounded. “Coach, betrayal from management is one thing. Betrayal from you is personal.”
“On the ice. Now.”
They obeyed reluctantly.
Luke remained near the door. “Sloane’s office has a private records safe.”
Noah nodded. “And a service corridor connecting to the loading docks.”
Olivia looked at Coach Davis. “Did Sloane know about Evan?”
The coach took too long to answer.
“Mark.”
He disliked when she used his first name. That was why she did it.
“He was an assistant in hockey operations during the development camp,” he said. “He handled player evaluations.”
“Meaning Evan’s medical condition affected his projections.”
“Yes.”
Richard’s network had not begun after Evan’s death. It had grown from the belief that young athletes were numbers to be traded before their bodies failed.
Olivia had spent most of her life seeing the Titans from above.
The owner’s box reduced players to patterns: lines changing, bodies colliding, numbers moving across ice. The locker room revealed something different. Each man carried private habits that made the group function.
Luke sharpened his own skates after losses because repetition calmed him.
Noah kept spare phone chargers in every room because he noticed what others forgot.
Adam taped motivational insults inside his stall.
Daniel knew which rookie had a sick parent and which equipment manager needed an advance before payday.
Their loyalty to Alex was not blind. They criticized him constantly. They also recognized when the world tried to isolate one of them and answered by becoming harder to divide.
Olivia joined Coach Davis at the rink glass while practice continued.
“Will they be able to play?” she asked.
“They will play,” he said. “That is not the same as being able.”
Daniel mishandled a pass he normally caught cleanly. Adam skated directly into Luke during a line change. Noah allowed a soft shot under his glove, then stared at the puck as though it had betrayed him.
“They are distracted,” Olivia said.
“They are frightened. Athletes prefer anger because it has movement.”
The statement described Alex too well.
Coach Davis folded his arms. “You should know something about him.”
Olivia waited.
“He was never the easiest player to captain. He challenged every decision and treated pain like evidence of commitment. But when a rookie made a mistake, Alex stood between the kid and the cameras. When ownership wanted to bury an injury, Alex threatened to sit the whole line.”
“Are you defending him?”
“No. I am telling you why the team sees more than the footage.”
Olivia looked at the empty place Alex would normally occupy at center.
“The problem is that people use the good parts to excuse the harm,” she said.
“Then do not.”
The simplicity helped.
She could love loyalty without calling control devotion. She could acknowledge courage without pretending violence had no consequence. Complexity did not require surrendering judgment.
Coach Davis blew the whistle and ended practice early.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because they are trying to earn a punishment none of them caused.”
He sent the players to the video room instead, where he played footage from their best comeback of the season. Not to inspire them. To remind them that the team had existed before Richard’s scandal and could exist after it.
Olivia watched from the doorway.
Daniel sat apart until Adam moved beside him. Luke passed him a bottle without looking. Noah rewound one play and pointed out the moment Daniel created a goal without touching the puck.
Family, Olivia thought, was sometimes the people who refused to let shame choose your seat.
Federal agents entered through the executive elevator. Olivia gave them Sloane’s likely route and returned to Noah’s screen.
A new update appeared on the betting file.
A line change for that afternoon’s closed practice.
Daniel Brooks moved from first line to third.
No one outside the room knew Coach Davis had made that change ten minutes earlier.
Olivia turned toward him. “Who did you tell?”
“No one. I wrote it on the board in the locker room.”
The leak was not coming from the medical system alone.
Someone was watching the team live.
They moved to the security station. Noah pulled feeds from the locker room, practice rink, and corridors. The camera above the tactical board showed no obvious tampering.
Ben leaned closer. “Go back.”
Noah rewound thirty seconds.
A reflection moved in the glass of a framed championship photograph. Not a person. A tiny red light.
“There is a camera behind the frame,” Ben said.
Agents found six devices in the locker room, two in the training office, and one inside Coach Davis’s private meeting room. All transmitted through a hidden wireless node placed above the equipment storage ceiling.
The node belonged to a sponsor technology company.
Daniel’s sponsor.