Chapter 6 - The Burner Phone
Nolan lay in the freezing, muddy ditch until the sound of the van's engine faded completely.
His left knee throbbed with a sharp, agonizing pain from the brutal fall onto the pavement.
He forced himself to stand up in the biting, relentless evening rain.
He had to save Jordan, but he had absolutely no evidence left to prove his incredible story.
His fried, useless cell phone was still sitting heavily in his damp jacket pocket.
He limped toward a glowing neon sign at a sketchy, deserted gas station a mile away.
He walked inside and bought a cheap prepaid burner phone using his remaining lunch money.
He sat on the curb outside and dialed the only adult he felt he could truly trust.
It was Ms. Davis, the school's young, fiercely dedicated guidance counselor.
She answered on the second ring, sounding completely frantic and breathless.
She told Nolan that the city police were searching absolutely everywhere for him.
He quickly and desperately explained the entire conspiracy involving Hale, Kessler, and Whitmore.
He told her all about the red ledger and the completely fabricated arson charges.
Ms. Davis went completely and utterly silent on the other end of the line.
She finally whispered that she believed every single word he just said.
She had noticed extremely strange discrepancies in the wealthy students' college acceptance records last month.
She told Nolan to meet her at the downtown public library in exactly thirty minutes.
She promised she had a secret way to access the school's administrative cloud backup servers.
Nolan felt a massive wave of genuine relief wash over his bruised, exhausted body.
He sneaked onto a late-night city bus and rode it anonymously to the downtown district.
He found Ms. Davis waiting nervously in a dark corner of the library's computer lab.
She had already bypassed the school's basic firewall using her high-level staff credentials.
She was actively searching the deleted files for the video of Mrs. Whitmore tearing the test.
The progress bar on the screen crawled at an agonizingly, painfully slow pace.
Suddenly, the library's main glass entrance doors shattered inward with a deafening crash.
Three men in dark, expensive suits stormed into the quiet reading room with purpose.
They were definitely not local police officers.
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They were private fixers hired by the corrupt, wealthy parents who had bought the fake grades.
The lead fixer pointed directly at Nolan and slowly drew a heavy, silenced weapon.
