Chapter 6: The Badge Trail
Rebecca ended the call without returning Travis’s demand. She put her phone facedown beside the folder, but her fingers stayed on its edge, as if he might reach through the metal table and take it.
Claire arrived twenty minutes later carrying two coffees and a thin stack of printed pages. She looked from Rebecca’s tight expression to my face.
“He called,” I said.
“I know.” Claire set down the coffees. “That’s why I brought this.”
The top page was an access report. Rows of dates and times ran beneath a heading that named my badge number. I recognized the 9:14 entry from the night I’d been under Travis’s desk. Seeing it printed among the ordinary turns of my work schedule made my stomach clench.
“I asked my supervisor for the shift records before they suspended me,” I said. “These are the nights I went to the supply cage.”
Claire tapped the report. “I matched the dates.”
I leaned over the table. On two nights, the log showed my badge entering the records room while my shift sheet placed me on the other side of the building, collecting cleaning supplies. Both times, my supervisor had signed the supply checkout.
“Could I have gone back afterward?” I asked.
“Not according to the times.” Claire drew a line between the entries. “You were signed out with the cart, and the records-room entries are minutes later.”
Rebecca studied the pages. “So somebody had her badge?”
“Or somebody made the report say the badge was used,” Claire replied.
Her certainty came too quickly. I looked at her.
“You said you didn’t know Travis was using my badge.”
“I didn’t know what he was doing with these entries.” Claire’s gaze dropped to the paper. “That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”
The words stayed between us. Claire had brought the records, but that didn’t make her explanation true. Her hands curled around the coffee cup. I wondered how many times I’d mistaken calm for honesty because I needed someone on my side.
The former building technician met us at a diner near Northgate. Claire had called him, she said, because he’d maintained the access system before leaving the company. He arrived in a faded work jacket, glanced at the pages, and didn’t sit until he’d checked the front window.
“My name’s Dennis,” he said. “I can explain how the system works. I can’t tell you who touched it.”
“I’m not asking you to guess,” I said.
He examined the report, then pointed to the records-room entries. “A normal badge swipe leaves a door scan. But an administrator can add an entry to the access history without the door reader recording a scan.”
“Then it can look as though I opened the door when I didn’t,” I said.
“It can look that way in an exported report.” Dennis slid the page back. “The regular report doesn’t always show whether an entry came from the reader or was typed in later. There may be a separate system record, depending on what was backed up.”
Claire’s face had gone very still. “Would that record show who added it?”
“Maybe the administrator account. Maybe only that someone used it. Depends what was kept.” Dennis pushed his untouched coffee away. “Don’t tell anyone I said more than that.”
He stood and left without waiting for an answer.
Outside, the afternoon air smelled of rain and hot pavement. I held the report against my chest as Claire unlocked her phone.
“There’s an archive mailbox,” she said. “I started saving some of Travis’s requests after the first time he asked me to pull your logs.”
My attention snapped to her. “When?”
“Months ago.”
She opened the mailbox and searched. Her thumb moved rapidly, then stopped. The small shift in her expression was enough to make me step closer.
“What is it?”
“An email from Travis.” Claire’s voice had thinned. “He asked for your badge history.”
The message was brief. The subject line read Routine Review. Travis had asked Claire to export my access records for a routine review of after-hours procedures. No explanation, no accusation—just my name, my badge number, and a request for the full history.
“That was before the transfer authorization,” I said.
“Before I knew about the transfer,” she replied.
“You told me you didn’t know he was using my badge.”
“I didn’t know about the transfer.” She pressed her lips together. “Eliza, please.”
I watched her open the attachment. A loading circle turned in the center of the screen, then vanished. A notice appeared: Your organization account has been disabled. Contact your administrator.
Claire stared at it.
“Was that there before?” I asked.
“No.” Her thumb tapped the screen once, then again. “It was open this morning.”
A text arrived. Claire read it, and her shoulders drew tight.
“From Travis?” I asked.
She turned the screen toward me. The message was only one sentence.
Protect yourself, Claire. Don’t let anyone turn a routine report into something it wasn’t.
For a moment neither of us spoke. Traffic hissed along the wet road. Somewhere inside the diner, a bell rang as a customer opened the door.
“Did you make the report?” I asked.
Claire looked at me, then at the disabled account.
“I made a report,” she said. “Travis called it a harmless routine review.” Her voice broke on the last word. “I didn’t think—”
She stopped, and the silence that followed felt less like an answer than a door closing.
“You didn’t think what?” I asked.
May you like
Claire pressed both hands against the phone. Her face had lost its careful office calm.
“I can’t tell you the rest yet.”
