Page 111 of Reckless

And the rest of the world quietly slips away.

Chapter Twenty-One

GHOST

A Couple of Hours Later

Three live feeds in Sage’s apartment compete for my attention, each one carrying something that should matter.

None of them win.

Information has always been easy. Patterns, data, problems waiting to be solved, but the woman across the table is none of those things.

Sage sits with her laptop open, her hair pulled back the way it gets when she’s stopped caring what she looks like and started caring about what she needs to say.

The financial map takes up my center monitor, twenty years of Calloway’s committee laid out in a language that only makes sense to someone who has spent a decade learning to read the places people hide things. I keep working while Sage talks, because I can do both, and because I think she needs me to keep my hands moving so she doesn’t feel like she’s under a microscope.

“Start with the first family,” I say. “Give me names if you’re cleared to share them.”

She does.

The Hendersons first, then the Alvarez family, then six more after that, each one a story she has been carrying alone for three years, folded into files, testimonies, and photographs that never should have needed to exist. She tells me about a mother who lost her son to a system that was supposed to protect him and instead sold him out to a funding structure built by a man who has spent his entire career pretending to care. She tells me about a father who stopped trusting anyone in a uniform.

Twelve families in total.

Twenty-three individual accounts, cross-referenced and documented with a thoroughness that tells me exactly why Unsilenced hired her in the first place.

She has my full attention.

The map keeps updating on the monitor beside her, pins shifting as new information comes in, but it can wait. She notices. I see it in the way her shoulders ease a fraction every time I ask another question instead of assuming I already know the answer.

“The Alvarez case,” I say, scrolling back through the timeline. “The grant rejection came through in March. Before or after the committee restructures?”

Sage barely looks at her notes. “After. Three weeks after.”

I nod once. “That’s when they stopped losing votes.”

Her fingers pause over the keyboard. “What?”

I rotate my laptop toward her, pulling Calloway’s committee records beside the funding timeline. “Before the restructure, every grant application landed on one person’s desk.” I tap the first column. “That person had to approve or reject it. Their name went on the decision.”

Her eyes track the dates. “And after?”

“Calloway changed the process.” I pull up the new workflow. “Now every application goes to a committee instead of one person.”

She frowns. “Why does that matter?”

“Because committees don’t have to say no.” She furrows her brows. “They can ask for more paperwork, more reviews, more discussion. They can send it back. Move it to the next meeting. Leave it sitting on someone’s desk until the funding window closes.”

Understanding dawns across her face. “So, nobody actually rejects it?”

“Exactly.” I nod. “It dies all by itself.”

I highlight three more organizations. “These all happened after the restructure. Different charities. Different excuses. Same committee. Same fucking chair.”

She studies the list, her expression tightening. “Calloway.”

“He never has to put his name on a rejection.” I tap the final document. “If anyone asks, he points to the committee and says, ‘They made the decision.’ The committee points to the process. The process becomes the villain.”