Chapter 3 - THEY KNEW WHO I WAS BEFORE I DID
The police interview lasted two hours.
My father wanted me to refuse.
His attorney wanted the interview moved off campus.
I agreed to answer questions for one reason.
If someone had gone to the trouble of manufacturing evidence against me, I wanted to see what they had built.
Detective Warren placed three printed access logs on the table.
“My student credentials accessed the donor database at 1:14 a.m.?”
“Yes.”
“I was in my apartment.”
“Anyone who can verify that?”
“My roommate.”
“You could have accessed the system remotely.”
“From what device?”
He turned another page.
“A laptop registered to you.”
I almost smiled.
“My laptop has been at Sterling Digital Forensics since Monday.”
That stopped him.
“My hard drive started crashing last weekend. My father’s company has a repair division.”
Nathaniel’s attorney, David Ross, slid a receipt across the table.
“Chain of custody began Monday at 9:17 a.m. The device remains sealed.”
Detective Warren studied it.
“Do you own another laptop?”
“No.”
“A tablet?”
“Yes. It was in my apartment.”
“Phone?”
“With me.”
David leaned forward.
“And Ms. Reed voluntarily preserved both devices before this interview.”
Detective Warren exhaled.
The university administrator sitting beside him became uncomfortable.
Her name was Marjorie Voss, associate dean for student conduct.
She had been present during nearly every complaint I had filed over the previous three months.
She had dismissed all of them.
Now she avoided looking at me.
I turned toward her.
“Who reported the hacking?”
She glanced at the detective.
“That information is confidential.”
“Was it Owen Mercer?”
No answer.
“Richard Hale?”
Nothing.
“President Ellison?”
Her silence answered enough.
Detective Warren closed the file.
“There’s another issue.”
He pushed the scholarship application toward me.
I looked again at the forged statement.
My real Westbridge scholarship was the Alden Academic Fellowship.
It was merit-based.
Family income had never been part of the eligibility criteria.
I remembered the application clearly because I had completed it in a hotel room during a Sterling Global conference in Singapore, while my father spent three hours trying not to interfere.
“This form isn’t part of my scholarship.”
Dean Voss finally looked at me.
“It appears in your student file.”
“That doesn’t make it mine.”
“It bears your electronic signature.”
I studied the page.
The signature looked convincing.
Too convincing.
Then I noticed something.
“David.”
He leaned closer.
I pointed at the date.
“This document says March eighteenth.”
“Yes.”
“I was seventeen on March eighteenth.”
Dean Voss frowned.
“So?”
“My Alden application wasn’t submitted until May.”
Nobody spoke.
I continued.
“And Westbridge didn’t offer me admission until April second.”
Detective Warren picked up the document.
His eyebrows rose.
Dean Voss became pale.
“So either I traveled backward in time to lie on a scholarship form for a university that hadn’t admitted me yet…”
I looked directly at her.
“…or somebody put this in my file recently and made a very stupid mistake.”
The room went silent.
David leaned back in his chair.
“Detective, I assume you’ll be preserving the university’s document audit history.”
Dean Voss stood.
“This interview is over.”
“No,” Detective Warren said.
She froze.
He looked at her.
“It isn’t.”
Something shifted then.
Until that moment, I had assumed campus police were simply another part of the university machine.
But Detective Warren suddenly looked less like an employee protecting Westbridge and more like a cop realizing someone had tried to use him.
He gathered the documents.
“I’ll need a preservation order.”
Dean Voss’s face tightened.
“You cannot seize university records without authorization.”
“I can preserve records related to a criminal complaint.”
She grabbed her folder.
“This needs to go through general counsel.”
David smiled without humor.
“General counsel being Owen Mercer?”
Nobody needed to say more.
Thirty minutes later, I walked out of the police building.
My father was waiting beside a black SUV.
He had changed shirts.
I was wearing clothes his assistant had brought from a nearby hotel.
The red dye had mostly come out of my hair, but faint pink stains remained around my fingernails.
Nathaniel opened the door.
I didn’t get in.
“You knew.”
His expression changed.
“Knew what?”
“That someone at Westbridge knew who I was.”
He looked away.
That was enough.
“How long?”
“Amelia—”
“How long?”
He exhaled.
“Six weeks.”
Anger moved through me so quickly that I almost laughed.
“Six weeks?”
“We detected inquiries into your background.”
“From whom?”
“We weren’t certain.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I increased security around you.”
“I didn’t ask whether you increased security.”
Students passing nearby were pretending not to listen.
I lowered my voice.
“You promised me.”
“I promised not to interfere with your college life.”
“You promised you would tell me if there was a credible threat.”
“At the time, it wasn’t credible.”
“Somebody researched my family, forged documents, accessed university systems under my name, and prepared accusations weeks in advance.”
“I know that now.”
I stared at him.
“And if the helicopter hadn’t landed today?”
He said nothing.
That hurt more than if he had shouted.
My father could negotiate hostile takeovers without blinking.
He could sit across from heads of state.
But when it came to me, fear made him controlling.
My mother used to say that was his greatest weakness.
He loved by building walls.
Sometimes he forgot to put doors in them.
“I need space.”
“Amelia.”
“I’m not disappearing.”
“That isn’t what I’m worried about.”
“I know.”
I softened slightly.
“But I need to know I’m not replacing one powerful institution hiding things from me with another.”
His jaw tightened.
Then he nodded.
“Fair.”
My phone buzzed.
Lena.
My roommate had sent fourteen messages.
The last one read:
DO NOT COME HOME.
I immediately called her.
She answered on the first ring.
“Amelia?”
“What happened?”
“Someone broke into the apartment.”
My father was beside me instantly.
“Are you safe?”
“Yes. I wasn’t there. I came back from class and the door was open.”
“What did they take?”
“Your room got destroyed.”
My stomach tightened.
“My tablet?”
“Still here.”
“Camera backups?”
Silence.
“Lena?”
“The external drive is gone.”
My hidden-camera footage.
The backup copy.
I closed my eyes.
“Anything else?”
“Your competition files. Notes. Two flash drives.”
“Call the police.”
“I already did.”
“No. Call city police. Not campus.”
“Okay.”
Then she lowered her voice.
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“I made a copy.”
I opened my eyes.
“Of the camera footage?”
“Of everything.”
I almost laughed with relief.
“Where?”
“You told me if anything weird ever happened, I should upload important files somewhere off-site.”
My father looked at me.
I turned away.
“Lena, where is it?”
“My student journalism cloud account.”
“That’s on university servers.”
“I know.”
My relief disappeared.
“Can you access it?”
“I’m trying.”
I heard typing.
Then Lena went silent.
“Lena?”
“That’s weird.”
“What?”
“My account password changed.”
“Reset it.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because my recovery email changed too.”
My father motioned to David, who immediately began making a call.
Then Lena inhaled sharply.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“Someone is deleting files.”
“Can you stop it?”
“I’m watching folders disappear.”
“Download whatever you can.”
“I’m trying.”
Her voice became frantic.
“Amelia, wait.”
“What?”
“One folder isn’t mine.”
My skin prickled.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a folder inside my account that I’ve never seen before.”
“What is it called?”
She hesitated.
“HALE-WESTBRIDGE.”
My father heard.
His face changed.
“Open it,” I said.
Lena clicked.
Then there was silence.
“What do you see?”
“Financial statements.”
“How many?”
“Hundreds.”
My father held out his hand for the phone.
I shook my head.
“Lena, download them.”
“I am.”
“Send them somewhere outside the university system.”
“Already doing it.”
I heard another click.
Then she whispered, “Amelia.”
“What now?”
“There’s a spreadsheet.”
“What kind?”
“It looks like payments.”
“To whom?”
“I don’t know. Faculty. Trustees. Admissions staff.”
Nathaniel’s expression became hard.
Lena continued.
“There are student names too.”
I felt cold.
“Mine?”
Typing.
Then silence.
“Lena?”
“Yeah.”
My heart pounded.
“What does it say?”
“There’s a line dated three months ago.”
The day after the business competition.
“Read it.”
Her voice shook.
“REED, AMELIA. CONTAINMENT AUTHORIZED.”
Nobody around me moved.
Then Lena gasped.
“Oh no.”
“What?”
“There’s someone at the apartment.”
My father grabbed the phone.
“Lena, lock yourself in a room.”
I heard footsteps through the call.
A door slammed.
Lena started breathing fast.
“Someone’s inside.”
“City police are on the way,” Nathaniel said. “Stay quiet.”
A heavy impact sounded.
Then another.
May you like
I heard Lena whisper my name.
The call went dead.
