Chapter 3 - The Missing Work Order
Laura called her union representative before she left school.
Renee Walsh arrived forty minutes later carrying a legal pad and the kind of expression that meant someone had already made her angry.
“You are not speaking to Mercer again alone.”
Laura maneuvered her wheelchair toward the faculty exit.
“I didn't invite him.”
“That man walks into rooms like doors are suggestions.”
Despite herself, Laura smiled.
Renee crouched beside her.
“Seriously. No meetings. No phone calls. Nothing without me or counsel present.”
“I understand.”
“And send me every email you ever wrote about that storage room.”
“I already searched.”
“Search again.”
Laura had.
Three times.
The first email remained.
September 2:
Upper shelving in West Storage is pulling away from wall. Red inspection tag placed today. Please confirm room should remain closed.
But her second email, sent September 5 after the tag disappeared, was missing from her district account.
She remembered writing it.
She remembered receiving a reply.
Repair completed. Safe for normal staff use.
Neither message now existed.
Renee looked troubled when Laura explained.
“Were you using your district laptop?”
“Yes.”
“Any chance you forwarded it elsewhere?”
“No.”
“Screenshots?”
Laura shook her head.
Renee sighed.
“People never save the boring email until it becomes the important email.”
They reached the parking lot.
Laura's sister Claire waited beside the car to help her.
Before Laura transferred into the passenger seat, Ava came running from the building.
“Ms. Bennett!”
“Ava?”
The teenager stopped several feet away, breathing hard.
“My phone.”
Laura frowned.
“What about it?”
“Principal Ruiz gave it back, but somebody tried logging into my school cloud account.”
Renee immediately looked alert.
“When?”
“Twenty minutes ago.”
“Did they get in?”
“I don't think so. Two-factor authentication blocked it.”
Laura's stomach tightened.
“What is stored there?”
“The videos.”
Renee stood.
“Do not delete anything. Do not edit anything. Do not post anything publicly.”
“I wasn't going to.”
“You already sent copies?”
Ava hesitated.
“Yes.”
“To whom?”
“My personal email. My mom. And the newspaper archive.”
Renee nodded approvingly.
“Good.”
Ava looked at Laura.
“There is something else.”
Of course there was.
“What?”
“The old video is longer than the part I showed you.”
Laura waited.
Ava opened her phone.
“I stopped the clip when Mr. Mercer told Tyler to remove the red tag. But after that, Tyler asked him something.”
She pressed play.
Grant's recorded voice came first.
“You go inside, you remove the red tag, and you bring it to me.”
“What if Bennett comes back?”
“Then you make sure she never knows why you were there.”
Several seconds of wind muffled the microphone.
Then Tyler spoke again.
“What about the work order?”
Grant answered.
“I'll handle the computer record.”
Renee's expression went still.
Laura replayed the sentence in her head.
I'll handle the computer record.
Ava lowered the phone.
“That's why somebody tried to access my account, isn't it?”
“We don't know,” Renee said carefully.
But none of them believed that.
Laura looked back at the school.
Somewhere inside that building, a digital record might once have existed proving the district knew the shelf was unsafe.
And Grant Mercer had been planning to make that record disappear before Laura was injured.
That evening, Laura sat at her kitchen table with her leg elevated and every school document she owned spread around her.
Claire cooked soup behind her.
“You've been staring at those papers for an hour.”
“I know.”
“Your doctor told you to rest.”
“My doctor doesn't know Grant Mercer.”
Claire set down the spoon.
“Laura.”
“I can't let him intimidate Ava.”
“Then let the union deal with it.”
“What if they can't?”
Claire leaned against the counter.
“You nearly lost the use of your leg protecting that boy. You don't have to sacrifice the rest of yourself proving his father is terrible.”
Laura looked down at the scar visible above the cast.
“I didn't save Tyler because his father deserved it.”
“I know.”
“I saved him because he was seventeen and a shelf was falling on him.”
Claire softened.
Laura continued.
“If Grant sent him into that room to destroy evidence, Tyler was being used.”
“He still humiliated you today.”
“Yes.”
“And threatened Ava.”
“Yes.”
“So don't turn him into another person you have to rescue.”
That sentence stayed with Laura.
At 9:17 p.m., her phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
She almost ignored it.
Then a text appeared.
You want the work order?
A second message followed.
Ask Mr. Alvarez why he kept paper copies.
Laura stared.
Mr. Alvarez.
Mateo Alvarez had been Cedar Ridge's head custodian for twenty-two years.
He had gone on medical leave four days after her accident.
A third message appeared.
And don't tell Ruiz I contacted you.
Laura typed one question.
Tyler?
No response came.
But thirty seconds later, another message appeared.
My dad lied about what happened.
May you like
Then the number went silent.
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