Page 75 of Kings of the Campus

“Appreciate it,” Jace says, giving her a nod and a charming smile.

Once she leaves, Jace pulls up the access logs. It only takes a few minutes of scrolling through data before we find it—the entry for the night of the laptop theft.

“Tessa’s badge,” Jace murmurs, pointing at the screen. “Logged at 9:42 p.m.”

I frown, leaning closer. “That’s the same night she was with us, though. No way she was here.”

Jace nods slowly, his expression hardening. “Exactly. So either someone stole her badge, or someone’s trying to frame her.”

A knot tightens in my gut. This is bigger than we thought. I run a hand through my hair and glance over my shoulder to make sure no one’s watching us too closely. “You think it’s Ryan?”

Jace’s jaw tenses, and he gives a slight nod. “I’m gonna check the security footage, see if I can get eyes on him. You keep them busy.”

“On it.” I crack a grin, ready to use my powers of distraction.

Jace slips out of the server room, and I turn back to the office staff, catching their eyes. “Hey, you guys want to see a littlemagic?” I ask, pulling out the deck of cards I keep in my pocket with a flourish.

A couple of them raise their eyebrows, but curiosity starts to flicker across their faces. “Uh…magic?”

I spread the cards in a fan. “Indeed, my good sirs! Pick a card, any card. Promise, I won’t peek.” I shoot them my most disarming grin. It works—one of the guys steps up, plucks a card, and shows it to his coworkers.

For the next few minutes, I run through my best tricks, keeping them entertained with disappearing coins, sleight-of-hand card moves, and the ol’ floating pencil bit. A few of them start to laugh and relax, which is exactly what I want. As long as I’m the center of attention, Jace has all the time he needs to work his magic behind the scenes.

Minutes tick by, and I keep the tricks coming. One guy looks genuinely amazed when I “guess” the card he picked. “How the hell did you do that?” he asks, his eyes wide.

I wink. “A magician never reveals his secrets.”

Meanwhile, my mind’s still racing. We’re on the verge of something big, and if Jace finds what we’re looking for, this could blow the whole thing wide open.

Finally, I spot Jace slipping back into the room, his expression grim. He gives me a subtle nod, and I know he’s got something.

“Alright, folks, show’s over!” I announce, tucking the cards back in my pocket and giving a mock bow. “Thanks for playing along.”

As we walk out of the office and down the hall, I turn to Jace. “What did you find?”

Jace glances around to make sure we’re alone before answering, his voice low. “I checked the footage from that night. You’re not gonna believe this—I spotted someone on camera entering the building after hours. Right around the time Tessa’sbadge was scanned. I checked his Facebook and their face matched Ryan’s profile picture.”

I feel my blood run cold. “That son of a?—”

“Don’t worry,” Jace cuts in, his voice tight with anger. “We’ve got him. It’s him, Dev. Ryan’s behind this. He had Tessa’s badge, and he’s the one who accessed the office.”

A surge of anger floods through me, but there’s also a sickening realization. Ryan played everyone.

I clench my fists, my body buzzing with adrenaline. “Why didn’t anyone bother to connect the dots? It seems so obvious now!”

“I don’t know, but when we get to the bottom of all this, we’re going to rain hell on the university administration for how they handled this situation,” Jace says, his eyes flashing with fury. “They only took care of the Sigma issue after Tessa’s podcast came out and it put pressure on them to act.”

As we head back, we discuss what our next steps are going to be. “I say we confront him,” Jace says as I drive, cold rage in his voice.

I grip the steering wheel tightly with both hands, my knuckles white under the strain. “I knew you’d want to do that but we have to be careful about this. Ryan has no idea that we know he used Tessa’s badge to steal her laptop that night. Nor does he know that Julian sold him out.

“We can’t just go confront him,” I remind Jace. “We have to be careful. We need to tell Alec about this, and we can decide together what to do.”

Jace sighs, settling back against the leather seat. “I guess. It feels counterproductive to just wait around though. We don’t know if Julian has spoken to Ryan to warn him though. Time might not be on our side here.”

I keep my eyes on the road but my mind is racing. “We also don’t know if he was working on his own behalf.”

“That’s why we need to confront him,” Jace argues. “We’ll get in front of this andmakehim tell us what’s going on.”

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