Chapter 4 - The Midnight Audit
The administration office of Apex Combat Academy was a small, air-conditioned room smelling of expensive cologne and stale coffee. Framed photographs covered the walls—Rhett Lawson posing with regional kickboxing belts, Rhett shaking hands with local politicians, and a large color portrait of Donald Lawson cutting the ribbon at the Oak Ridge Town Hall annex.
On the mahogany desk sat a high-end desktop computer. The monitor was in sleep mode.
I didn't turn on the overhead lights. Using the flashlight on my phone, shielded by my fingers to cast only a narrow beam of amber light, I touched the mouse. The screen flared to life, asking for a password.
I didn't need to hack it. Taped under the keyboard was a blue sticky note with a series of alphanumeric characters—a classic oversight in small commercial businesses. I typed it in, and the desktop opened.
The primary folders were organized by date. In the folder labeled Marketing_Raw_Footage, under today’s date, were three video files.
I clicked the first one. It was the heavily cropped version Vance had shown the police: thirty seconds long, silence on the audio track, framing only my chest and Rhett flying backward.
I opened the second file.
It was four minutes and twenty seconds long, recorded from the corner post.
I pressed play, keeping the volume at the lowest audible notch.
The audio was pristine. Sammy Vance’s voice could be heard laughing behind the lens as Rhett pulled the ten stacks of cash from his designer gym bag. Every single word was preserved:
"Touch me once, and the ten thousand dollars is yours... Your kid quit because he's built to quit. Hard to fix that when he's got a weak father."
Then came my voice: "I want the remaining tuition back. And I want you to apologize to my son."
And finally, Rhett's mocking challenge, followed clearly by the visual of his left fist snapping forward in a deliberate strike toward my face, followed by my defensive redirect and counter-thrust.
It was open-and-shut self-defense under state criminal code section 35-41-3-2: an invited physical contest accompanied by an aggressive, non-consensual strike by the complainant.
I pulled a blank USB drive from my jacket pocket—a tool I carried daily for backing up municipal pump diagnostic logs—and inserted it into the front port. I dragged the raw video file onto the drive. The progress bar crept across the screen: 20%... 50%... 85%...
Suddenly, the desktop interface flickered. A dialog box popped up:
External Access Detected – Admin Override: Remote Desktop Connection Established.
My spine turned to ice.
The mouse cursor on the screen moved on its own. Someone was logged in remotely from an external IP address.
The cursor darted toward the file transfer window, attempting to cancel the copy.
I didn't waste time trying to fight the mouse. With the copy bar hitting 100%, I reached behind the tower, grabbed the USB drive, and ripped it out of the socket. At the same second, I yanked the main power cable from the back of the desktop unit. The screen died instantly.
From the hallway outside, the heavy thud of footsteps echoed against the tile.
"Who’s in the office?" a loud, abrasive voice shouted.
It wasn't Hank.
It was Derek Cole—the two-hundred-pound amateur fighter who had battered Owen the day before. He had a gym keycard in his hand and gym clothes on, evidently stopping by late to use the weights.
I stepped out of the office into the dim hallway, locking the door behind me with Hank's key, slipping the key into my pocket.
Derek stopped dead in his tracks ten feet away. In the half-light, he recognized me immediately. His face shifted from confusion to a cold, predatory sneer.
"You're the old man from this morning," Derek said, dropping his gym bag. He cracked his knuckles, rolling his broad shoulders. "Lawson told us if you showed your face around here again, we were supposed to detain you for the cops."
"I’m leaving, Derek," I said calmly, stepping toward the exit door.
May you like
"You're not leaving anywhere, pops," Derek said, stepping directly into my path, cutting off the narrow corridor. He raised his fists into a high Muay Thai guard. "You got lucky with Rhett because he wasn't taking you seriously. Let's see what happens when someone actually hits back."
He stepped in, throwing a heavy right cross aimed straight for my jaw.
