Chapter 150: The Reference Number

Chapter 150: Chapter 150: The Reference Number

Audrey dropped the fresh stack of paper directly onto the archive table.

Ben and Daisy immediately leaned over it. The bright red lollipop was still sitting exactly where Ben had left it next to his keyboard.

"I ran the reference number from the corrupted document through the older financial database," Audrey explained. "It took a while to bypass the security walls. I found it attached to multiple administrative documents. Most of them were completely routine."

Ben frowned. "Most?"

"Then I found one that shouldn’t exist," Audrey said.

She pointed at her laptop screen. "A request dated weeks after Daniel Mercer made his financial complaint."

Ben sat up straighter. "What kind of request?"

Audrey turned the screen so they could both read it.

The subject line was printed in stark black letters.

ARCHIVE CORRECTION REQUEST.

Daisy immediately frowned. "Correction of what?"

Audrey scrolled down the page. "The east wing records. The exact same records where Mason’s name eventually appeared."

They opened the attached document. It did not directly say to add Mason Calloway. Instead, it was carefully worded. It was written by someone who knew exactly how to manipulate corporate language to avoid suspicion.

"Update historical access documentation," Audrey read aloud, "to reflect the presence of designated club representatives during the November activity."

Ben immediately noticed the specific phrasing. "Designated club representatives."

"That is how they slipped Mason into it," Daisy said quietly.

Audrey nodded.

Then Ben noticed something else at the bottom of the page. "Look at the approval stamp. The request wasn’t submitted by the senior operations executive."

"It was approved by Executive Administration," Audrey noted.

And right beneath the approval stamp was an internal authorization code. The exact same code that appeared on the corrupted document they had found earlier.

They began investigating the employee field.

The original requester information had been partially deleted from the system.

Name: CORRUPTED.

Department: Executive Administration.

Ben leaned closer to the monitor. "They erased the name."

"But they forgot the authorization trail," Audrey replied.

Daisy quickly pulled up the company’s archived employee database on her own laptop. Her fingers flew across the keyboard.

"Got it," Daisy announced a minute later. "The person who originally submitted the request no longer works for Calloway Football Group. But their employment record hasn’t been completely deleted."

Daisy turned her laptop around. "They were an Executive Administration coordinator in 2019."

Audrey stared at the profile. It was someone who would have been close enough to process confidential administrative instructions. They were not necessarily the mastermind. They were just someone who could have been used to move the paperwork quietly.

Audrey brought up the December photograph from the corporate event again.

The black folder sat innocently on a table in the background. The reference number was printed clearly on the spine. Ben compared the number with the newly recovered administrative request. It was completely identical.

Then Daisy noticed something else entirely.

"Look at the top of the folder," Daisy said.

There was a second document partially sticking out of the black folder. Only the very top corner was visible.

A few letters could be made out from the blurry pixels.

SPECIAL REVIEW...

The rest of the text was blocked by the leather flap.

Ben zoomed in until the image became highly pixelated. "That is not a financial report."

"Then what is it?" Audrey asked.

"We need the original photograph," Ben stated firmly.

They quickly realized a massive problem. The digital photograph on the screen was only a low resolution copy. The original, high quality photograph should still exist in the newspaper’s physical archive downstairs.

Daisy immediately began searching the old photo catalog system. She typed the event date and the photographer’s tag.

Nothing.

Ben reached over and ran a secondary search through the master database.

Still nothing.

The photograph was officially catalogued under the corporate event. But the original digital file and the physical negative were completely missing.

That deeply bothered Audrey. The newspaper had thousands of old photographs stored in these basement boxes. Why would someone bother to remove this particular one?

"Someone knew what was in it," Ben said quietly.

The mystery just expanded. The people who altered the Calloway records may have also tried to control what photographs survived outside the company.

Audrey stood up. She grabbed a black marker and walked over to the rolling whiteboard in the corner of the room.

She started writing the timeline in large letters.

Daniel Mercer discovers discrepancy.

Mercer reports it.

Internal investigation begins.

Mason appears in revised records.

East wing access authorization changed.

Executive Administration approves revision.

Black folder appears in December event photograph.

Then she uncapped the marker and added one more date to the very bottom of the list.

The date the photograph was actually taken.

It fell exactly two days after the formal record revision was approved.

Audrey stared at the timeline on the whiteboard. The sequence suddenly made perfect, terrifying sense.

"The photograph wasn’t taken before they changed the story," Audrey said softly.

Ben looked at her. "It was taken after."

"So whoever had that folder wasn’t hiding the revision," Daisy realized.

"They were carrying the evidence," Audrey confirmed.

That completely changed everything. The black folder wasn’t just evidence. It was a map.

Ben went back to his laptop. He aggressively searched the old employee records again. He refused to hit another dead end.

This time, he found a hidden connection.

"Look," Ben instructed, pointing at a recovered file. "The Executive Administration employee who submitted the request had an unusual connection. They weren’t just an ordinary administrator."

Audrey read the screen. "They were assigned to a senior executive’s office during that period."

"But the database doesn’t name which executive," Ben pointed out. "The assignment record has been completely removed."

Daisy leaned closer. "Keep digging into the calendar."

Ben opened the employee’s old calendar archive. Most of the days were wiped clean. But one single appointment had survived the purge.

November 2019.

Private meeting.

Location: Executive Floor.

Attendees: Senior Operations Executive and Executive Administration.

The attendee field was incomplete. No specific names were listed. But the appointment was created under the exact same reference number as the black folder.

Everyone in the dusty room went completely quiet.

The stakes were suddenly incredibly high. This was no longer just a missing financial ledger. This was a coordinated, high level corporate cover up.

"Does Mason know any of this?" Daisy quietly asked.

Audrey hesitated. She looked at her phone resting on the table. She remembered their conversation in his penthouse perfectly. She remembered the exhausted, honest look in his eyes when he told her he had nothing to hide.

She did not want to involve him until they knew exactly what they were dealing with. If she told him now, he would rip his own company apart trying to find a ghost.

Ben agreed with her silence. "We still don’t have enough to put this in the paper."

Audrey looked at the scattered documents. "No."

She paused. Her journalist instincts completely took over.

"But we finally have enough to know where to look," Audrey added firmly.

Ben turned his attention back to the monitor. He opened the surviving calendar appointment.

There was a tiny paperclip icon in the corner. An attachment.

He clicked it. At first, it appeared entirely corrupted. The screen flashed grey. Then the file slowly loaded.

It was only one single page. A brief meeting instruction.

Most of the text was missing or blacked out by data decay. But one single line survived perfectly intact at the very bottom of the page.

Bring the Calloway file. Do not enter it into the standard archive.

Audrey completely froze.

Daisy looked at Ben. Her eyes were wide.

Ben slowly looked back at Audrey.

"That is why we couldn’t find it," Ben said. His voice was a low, serious rumble.

Audrey stared at the glowing screen.

"They never put it in the standard archive," Audrey whispered.

She looked back at the printed photograph of the black folder sitting on the table.

"They kept it somewhere else," she realized.

And now they knew exactly what they were looking for.