Chapter 7 - THE FIRE
The fire department called it electrical until they found the melted plastic bottle beneath the server rack.
Accelerant.
Not much.
Just enough to make an old wiring cabinet look guilty.
The building was evacuated for three hours.
Students stood on the football field filming smoke rising from the east wing. Rumors spread faster than the fire.
By dinner, social media had decided Dad burned the server room himself to destroy evidence that I cheated.
I stared at my phone in disbelief.
“They think you did it.”
Dad was at the kitchen table answering calls from district lawyers.
“They can think what they want.”
“You always say that when you care exactly what people think.”
He looked at me.
I sounded like Mom when I said it.
Then his expression softened.
“Mia, this may get ugly.”
“It’s already ugly.”
“No. I mean people may come after my job.”
I sat across from him.
“Because of me?”
“Because someone wants this investigation stopped.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
He sighed.
“No. Not because of you.”
Ben called at nine.
The physical backup drives were damaged.
But three months earlier, after a ransomware scare, he had quietly configured an off-site mirror that copied critical security logs every night.
“Who knows about it?” Dad asked.
“Me,” Ben said. “And now you.”
“Crowe?”
“No.”
Helen came to our house with a laptop.
The off-site mirror held fragments of video and thousands of access records.
One record stood out.
The night the cafeteria footage was deleted, Crowe’s badge entered security at 11:39.
But another badge entered two minutes later.
BOARD ACCESS - P. MERCER.
Peter Mercer.
Sloane’s father.
Dad leaned back slowly.
“That badge should only work during public foundation events.”
Ben nodded.
“Someone changed the permissions.”
“Who can do that?”
“Me. IT director. Principal. Vice principal.”
I thought of Crowe.
Helen opened another log.
“Peter wasn’t just in the building Friday night.”
She pointed to six more dates.
All late at night.
Then Ben recovered a single audio file from a hallway camera.
The video was corrupted, but the microphone had survived.
Crowe’s voice came first.
“You promised nobody would get hurt.”
Peter answered.
“Kids get embarrassed. They transfer. Life goes on.”
Then Crowe said something that made Dad stand up.
“What about Daniel? If he finds out—”
Peter cut her off.
“He won’t. And if he does, the board removes him.”
May you like
There was a pause.
Then Peter added, “Just keep the scholarship kids quiet.”
