Page 123 of Reckless

Meeting records.

Specific enough to feel real. Specific enough that, if I didn’t know every line of our accounts almost by heart, I’d think someone had uncovered something terrible.

“This…” My voice catches. “This i-isn’t…” I can’t even finish the sentence.

“Yeah,” Sandy says quietly.

I shake my head harder, scanning line after line, looking for the mistake that has to be there.

“There isn’t any of this. This is bullshit!”

“I know.”

I snap my head back up to look at her. “Then who the fuck wrote it?”

She exhales frustratingly. “The board won’t tell us.”

I throw a hand in the air, glancing around the room, not really sure what I am trying to find. “Well, they have to!”

“They don’t, Sage.”

I look back at her. “They can’t just accuse us and…” My words trail away as my eyes catch on a date halfway down the page.

Two weeks.

I stare at it, then I look back at Sandy. “The hearing…”

She nods once. “The investigation begins two weeks before the fundraiser.”

Everything inside me goes completely still.

Not because I’m calm, but because my brain has suddenly stopped trying to solve the problem.

This isn’t a mistake.

Mistakes don’t arrive with perfect timing.

Mistakes don’t wait until three years of work are almost finished.

Mistakes don’t know exactly where to aim.

A cold wave rolls through me. “Calloway.”

Sandy’s shoulders sag. “You think he’s behind this?”

“Yeah, I do.”

The room feels too small.

I see every late night around the conference table, every family who sat across from me and cried because someone had finally listened, every volunteer, sponsor, and conversation convincing people to believe in something that didn’t exist yet.

I think about Piper helping me build the website.

Ghost quietly fixing security issues I hadn’t even known existed.

Marley dropping off food because she knew I’d forgotten to eat.

The club turning up to support something that wasn’t even theirs.