Page 95 of No Safe Place

“Show me?”

“What I really do. What my real job is for Frank Stone. That bookshelf behind you is false. Press the paneling in until you hear a click.”

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I fiddled with it. When I pushed in, what sounded like a latch gave way and the bookcase swung out on an unseen hinge.

Behind it was a steel door with a lock plate.

“The key is in my desk,” Cushing said.

I went and found the key.

“You first, moron,” I said, pulling Cushing to his feet.

The small room I unlocked was dark except for the light that came from several computer monitors on a desk. It was cold. Powerfully air-conditioned.

Then I saw why. Along the back wall were rows of computer servers on a rack. There were over a dozen of them.

I looked back at the screens on the desk. The monitors were huge, the size of televisions. On each were sixteen different screens in a grid.

They were surveillance cameras, I realized.

“No,” I said in horror as I saw what was on them.

Because they didn’t show hallways or common areas.

But rather, bedrooms and bathrooms and showers.

They were Peeping Tom surveillance cameras of students themselves in their rooms.

“Yes,” he whispered. “This is it. This is my job.”

“You have hidden cameras?” Colleen said. “You watch...the students? The kids?”

On one of the monitors, a girl turned in her sleep under a comforter.

The screens unnerved me. A real urge to start shooting them flared up. They made me feel filthy for just being there.

I turned to President Cushing.

And the screens weren’t the only thing I wanted to shoot.

“You scumbag,” I said, putting the barrel of the Glock to Cushing’s head. “You filthy disgusting scumbag.”

“The parents send their kids here,” Colleen said. “And this is what you do? You watch them? You record them?”

“Do you know what Beckford College is?” Cushing said. “Its significance in the scheme of things?”

“No, please enlighten us,” I said as I sat Cushing down at the desk and I shifted the barrel to between his eyes.

“Beckford is known among the very wealthiest of elite Americans as a minor Ivy. It is a place that the Park Avenue rich send their black sheep who like to party. My job—my real job—is to gather information on these sons and daughters of the rich in compromising positions.”

“Record them?”

“Yes. Every inch of the students’ dorms is covered with the latest in pin camera tech. We capture everything. Everything they say. Everything they do. The sex, the drugs, all of it.”

“To get your rocks off,” I said.

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