Read Chapter 18: The Badge Returns

The keycard reader blinked red when Elena swiped it. She tried again, pressing her thumb against the plastic as if that would somehow change the outcome. The door to the West London FC media wing stayed locked, dead silent, mocking her.

"Try the side entrance," Jack said from behind her, his voice low in the empty corridor. It was a quarter to five in the morning. The club was a tomb.

Elena had used her stolen moments in the archives to good effect, but she still needed her car keys, her press pass, and her laptop—all sitting in her desk inside. All now inaccessible at the exact moment she had minutes to spare.

"These should work." She dug into her pocket and produced a second set of keys—not to the building, but to the lock on the hardware cabinet in the press office. She'd kept a duplicate after a security review two years ago, when they'd almost replaced the locks and she'd never gotten around to returning her copy.

Jack raised an eyebrow. "You've got a key to a cabinet. That'll get us through a solid steel security door."

"Give me a second." Elena crouched, peering at the card reader's mounting plate. It was a standard install, the same model she'd seen electricians servicing dozens of times. She pulled a hairpin from her coat pocket and began working at the seam between reader and wall plate.

"Please tell me you're not trying to pick a digital lock with a hairpin."

"I'm trying to get the plate off so I can short the relay." She wedged the pin into the seam and twisted. The plate shifted, and a thin wire appeared. "Fast camera? Keep watch."

Jack moved to the corner, scanning both ends of the corridor. Elena stripped the wire with her teeth and touched the exposed ends to the contact points inside the device. There was a click, a green flash, and the door swung inward.

"You're terrifying," Jack said, stepping through after her.

Elena was already moving toward the newsroom. She spotted her desk at the far end, beneath the window that overlooked the training pitch. Gray light filtered through, the first hint of dawn collecting over London. She grabbed her press pass, her laptop, and her keys.

Then she noticed the doorway to the security office was open.

Jack followed her gaze. "What's in there?"

"Cameras." Elena moved toward it. She needed footage of Ray's movements on the day Dr. Okafor disappeared. If they were going to Cornwall to confront Sarah, she needed something concrete, something that would make Ray break. Tom's testimony alone wouldn't be enough.

The security office was empty at this hour, but the wall of monitors glowed in the dark. She slipped past the desk where a half-eaten sandwich sat wilting beside last night's match report. She pulled up the archive interface and tapped in the date of Dr. Okafor's last day on site.

A voice from behind her cracked the silence. "You're not supposed to be here."

Elena turned. A heavyset man in a navy West London FC polo stood in the doorway. Colin Becker, head of club security. She'd dealt with him once, months ago, when a stalker's letters had made it past the reception desk.

"I know," Elena said, because lying was pointless. "I'm also not supposed to have lost my badge, Colin. And yet."

Colin's face tightened. He stepped into the room, hands behind his back, and glanced at the monitors. Jack appeared in the doorway behind him, a quiet shadow.

The security chief didn't acknowledge Jack's presence. He studied the screen in front of Elena, the date she'd pulled up, and something flickered in his expression. It was a brief, almost imperceptible tightening around his eyes that told her everything she needed to know.

"You know what happened to Dr. Okafor's files," she said. It wasn't a question.

Colin exhaled heavily through his nose. "I know what I was told to know."

"Ray Rowland's been in the medical room. The kitman saw him. You signed the access log." Elena stepped toward him, keeping her voice level. "Tell me I'm wrong."

"You're not wrong." Colin looked at the floor. For a long moment, the only sound was the hum of the servers in the corner.

"Are you aware," Elena pressed, "that your security records could be evidence in a criminal case? That you could be standing in the middle of it right now?"

Colin flinched at the word *criminal*. His jaw worked for a moment before he spoke. "I don't know anything about the download. I just—" He stopped, swallowed.

"Just what?"

"I was told to take your badge." The words came out in a rush, as if he'd been holding them too long. "The day you arrived. I got an order from the media office. They said you had a history of accessing areas you shouldn't. They wanted you kept out of the inner track until your credentials were reviewed."

Elena stared at him. "Which media officer?"

"Grace Whitmore."

The name hit her like a slap. Grace Whitmore. The club's media operations manager. The woman who'd introduced herself with a laminated smile and a handshake like hold the door. Elena had assumed her blocked access was a bureaucratic mess, or even a deliberate push from whoever wanted to isolate her. Not a mid-level administrator making a power play.

"That was it?" Elena asked. "She just didn't want me in the building?"

Colin shifted his weight. "She said you'd come to stir things up. That you'd be hovering in the dressing rooms, in the players' faces. She wanted control." He glanced at Jack, then back at Elena. "It wasn't about Okafor. I swear. I only found out about that later."

"What did you find out?"

It was Jack who asked, stepping closer. Colin's gaze cut from Jack's face to the badge on his chest—the captain's armband patch he wore even off the pitch.

"That doctor, she had access to things." Colin lowered his voice. "When she disappeared, I ran the logs, because that's my job. I saw Ray's pass in and out of medical. I saw him alone in there for thirty-two minutes. And I saw the manager's override code used to wipe the entry history the next morning."

"Tom said the manager knew," Elena said quietly. "He said you were ordered to keep your mouth shut."

Colin's fists clenched at his sides. "I didn't know what it was about. I told myself I didn't want to know. Ray swore it was a misunderstanding—that she'd taken sensitive files—that he'd been trying to retrieve club property, not harm her."

Jack laughed once, hard and hollow. "My agent retrieved club property from a doctor? By wiping the logs?"

"He said it was her personal correspondence. That there were letters in her files that could embarrass the club." Colin shook his head. "The manager believed him. Or chose to."

Elena processed this. Ray had been feeding Dr. Okafor's files to Manchester City all along—or at least, the ones that served his purpose. The concussion reports that made the club look careless. The player health data that would make a transfer negotiation easier when Jack's medical history was being evaluated by another team.

But the bigger revelation felt like it sat in the corner of the room, still blurred. She looked at Colin.

"Grace. The media officer. Does she have any connection to Ray? To what happened to the doctor?"

Colin hesitated. Then, slowly, he said, "Grace used to work for a PR firm. City Group's PR firm. Before she came here."

The name landed with perfect clarity.

"Manchester City?" Elena pressed.

"She was on their accounts team for three years. It never came up when we hired her—it was buried in her history, and nobody checked. I only know because I do background checks on all the senior staff." He swallowed again, looking older by the second. "I never found a reason she'd still be working for them. But I found she was in the building the night Okafor disappeared."

Elena's blood went cold. She checked her watch: 5:14 AM. Marcus would run the recording at eight. She had less than three hours.

"Then you're coming with us," she said. "You're going to tell Dr. Okafor's grandmother what you just told me. And you're going to tell it to whoever else needs to hear it."

Colin's face went pale. "I have a family. I have a job—"

"You have a conscience," Jack cut in, his voice flat. "And right now, that's the only difference between you and Ray Rowland."

The three of them stood in the humming dark of the security office, the weight of the truth settling between them like sediment. Elena pulled out her phone and dialed Sarah's grandmother—the number Sarah had given her once, in a voice that shook, months ago, when she was still asking questions.

It rang once, and then twice.

On the third ring, a woman answered, breathless and terrified. "Please—please, they're here. They've taken her."