Read Chapter 3: Lost Badge

The laminated card was gone.

Elena patted the pocket of her raincoat a second time, then a third, as if the plastic rectangle might materialize through sheer desperation. Nothing but the damp lining and a stray paperclip. She’d hung the lanyard around her neck the whole drive back to the hotel, she was sure of it. The hotel room key was still in her jeans, phone in her hand, notebook tucked inside her bag like a wounded bird. But the press badge with the West London FC crest and her name printed in bold block letters—that badge was not there.

She checked the floor of the rental car. Under the seat. The glove box. In the hotel lobby, the receptionist watched her with glossy disinterest as Elena retraced her steps from the lift to the front door, scanning every meter of carpet like a bloodhound.

Nothing.

She slept badly, the kind of sleep where you keep waking up with the sensation of falling. By six a.m. she was dressed, caffeinated to a tremor, and standing outside the West London FC training ground with a damp newspaper under her arm and no press credentials to show the three security guards who now flanked the main gate like bouncers at a sold-out gig.

“I’m with the *Chronicle*. I was here yesterday,” she said, holding up her phone as if the calendar app proved something.

The head guard—a broad man with a jaw like a brick and a name badge reading DAVIES—shook his head. “No badge, no access. Club policy. New policy, effective this morning.”

“I had a badge yesterday. You let me through.”

“Yesterday’s today was different.” Davies folded his arms. “Club’s tightened things up. Official notification came through at 05:30. Media visits suspended until further notice. You want to appeal, call the comms office.”

Elena felt the heat rise up her neck. “So my badge gets lost at your facility and suddenly you’re shutting down access? That’s convenient.”

Davies didn’t blink. “Your badge. Your responsibility. You’re not on the list, you’re not coming in.”

She stood there, rain beginning to spot the shoulders of her coat, and ran the math in her head. She’d had the badge when she walked through the tunnel with Frank. She remembered tucking it under her jacket when she ducked behind the maintenance shed to watch Jack and Tommy. And then—

The photo. The anonymous photo. Someone had been close enough to take it. Close enough to see her, frame her, threaten her. Someone who could have reached out and plucked the badge from where it hung, hook and all, without her ever feeling a thing.

“Someone took it,” she said out loud, more to the rain than to Davies.

He shrugged. “Not my problem, love.”

She walked the perimeter fence anyway, circling the training ground like a shark testing a cage. The players were out in the distance, half a kilometer of pristine green separating them from her. She could see the shapes of them—the muscular geometry of their warm-up drills, the orange cones bright against the grass. She picked out Jack Reid’s build immediately, even at this distance. That upright carriage, the way he moved like he owned the ground he ran on.

He was laughing at something. She saw the flash of his teeth.

Then he looked up. Straight at her, through the rain and the fence and across all that distance. The laugh died.

She didn’t look away. Neither did he. Then he turned his back on her and rejoined the drill, and Elena felt the snub like a door slammed in her face.

She was still standing there, half-soaked and seething, when a black Range Rover pulled into the staff car park outside the fence. The driver’s door opened and Jack Reid stepped out, still in his training kit, a towelfl j over his shoulder.

He walked toward the gate, not toward the players. Davies straightened up and fumbled for the gate latch.

“Morning, skipper.”

“Davies.” Jack’s voice was flat. He stopped a few feet from Elena, looked her up and down, and for a second she thought he was going to walk past her without a word.

Then he said, “You planning on drowning out here, or are you just making a point?”

“My badge is gone,” she said. “Someone took it off me while I was in your facility yesterday.”

Jack’s jaw tightened. A flicker of something crossed his face—quick as lightning on a lake—and then it was gone. “You sure you didn’t just drop it?”

“I’m sure. I checked everywhere.”

He stood another beat, rain beading on his shaved head. Then he said, “Follow me,” and started walking along the fence line toward a drainage ditch that cut behind the staff car park.

Elena hesitated. Davies said nothing, but his eyebrows had climbed toward his hairline.

She followed.

Jack moved with the unhurried power of a man who’d never had to hurry anywhere in his life. He reached a spot where the ditch ran shallow, clogged with leaves and the detritus of last night’s storm, and crouched down. His hand disappeared into the muck without ceremony. When it came back out, he was holding a laminated card coated in wet grit.

Her badge. Her face stared up at her, smeared with mud.

“How did you—?” she started.

“Security camera showed someone drop it over the fence last night,” he said. He wiped the badge on his towel and handed it to her. “One of the grounds staff found it this morning. I saw the report.”

He had, Elena noticed, mud up to his elbow. He hadn’t asked a staff member to fetch it. He’d walked out to the ditch himself, soaked his arm in a drainage channel that probably stank of algae and diesel, and fished her badge out of the slime with his bare hand.

“Why would you help me?”

Jack straightened up. He was close now, close enough she could smell the rain on his skin, the clean sharp scent of him under the wet. There was a muscle working at the edge of his jaw.

“Because if it was Tommy—” He stopped. Swallowed. “If it was the kid, they wouldn’t give him the time of day. Nobody would. And he didn’t do anything wrong.”

“The security camera shows someone dropping it,” she said slowly. “That’s not an accident.”

Jack looked at her. There was something raw in his face, something peeled back and vulnerable that she hadn’t seen in any of their press conference exchanges.

“Someone wanted you out of here, Miss Marsh. Someone who knows the badge system and knew you wouldn’t realize it was gone until tomorrow morning.” He wet his lips. “That’s not the move of a petty thief. That’s a message.”

“From who?”

“I don’t know.” He said it quickly, too quickly. A denial with his shoulders already braced for a follow-up.

“You’re lying.”

“I’m protecting my players.” He corrected himself. “Protecting the club.”

“Same thing?”

For a long moment he didn’t answer. The rain had slowed to a fine drizzle, and Elena could see the team staff car park behind him, the distant figures of players running drills. She thought about Frank’s cryptic warning—*keep your eyes open, but don’t look too close*—and about the photo that had arrived on her phone, and about Tommy’s white face when Jack had confronted him, and she realized she was standing in the middle of something much larger than a dressing room disagreement.

“You know what Tommy saw,” she said. “You know what he knows. And you’re terrified it’s going to come out.”

Jack’s expression shuttered. He took a step back from her, wiping his hand clean on the towel.

“Get your badge. Get out of here. Come back when the club lets you.”

“Jack—”

“That’s Captain Reid to you.”

He turned on his heel and walked back toward the gate. Elena stood there, holding the mud-streaked badge in her palm, watching him go. He didn’t look back.

She looked down at the badge. Someone had wanted to clip her wings before she even flew. Someone had gone out of their way to steal her clearance, shut her out, and make sure whatever story was rotting inside West London FC stayed buried.

But Jack Reid had fished her badge out of a drain with his bare hands.

Jack Reid, who told her to get out and didn’t give a reason.

Jack Reid, who had a muscle ticking in his jaw and lies all over his face but who had, she realized, just told her exactly where to dig.

She turned over the badge. Mud had seeped into the laminate, and as she wiped it clean, her thumb caught on something etched into the back of the plastic—a small, deliberate scratch, fresh enough that the edges were still white.

A phone number.

Not hers. Not an office line.

She didn’t recognize the digits, but she knew what they meant. Someone else inside the club wanted to talk. Someone who couldn’t be seen reaching out. Someone who had watched Jack John fish her badge out of a drain and made a decision.

Elena pocketed the badge and walked back to her rental. She didn’t call the number until she was sitting in the driver’s seat with the engine running and the doors locked. Her thumb hovered over the call button for a long moment.

On the training pitch, Jack Reid was running drills with his back to her, seemingly fully absorbed in the game.

She pressed call.

It rang three times. Four. Five. She was about to hang up when a voice answered—low, careful, and unmistakably familiar.

“You found it.”

Frank the kitman.

“You took my badge,” she said.

“I borrowed it.” A pause. “And I left you the number for a reason, love. I’ve got something you need to see. But it can’t be here. Not where they can watch.”

“Where, then?”

“The Perseverance. Pub on Goldhawk Road. Back room, ten tonight.” Another pause, longer this time. “And Miss Marsh? Don’t tell Reid. Don’t tell anyone who loves this club. Because what I’m about to show you will hurt every one of them.”

The line went dead.

Elena lowered the phone. Through the rain-streaked windscreen, the training ground glowed green and peaceful, players moving in graceful patterns of practice and play. The club looked whole. It looked fine.

She looked down at the badge in her hand, at the scratched phone number, at the mud still caking her fingerprints.

Nothing about this club was fine.

She started the engine.

The rain hammered down as she drove away from West London FC, and she kept her foot on the accelerator until the training ground was a smear in the rearview mirror.