Page 65 of Disciplinary Action
“The cops are already involved, you moron. You’re going to fuck up everything,” Doug hissed.
Gideon processed that bit of information. The cops were already involved. Doug was talking to a houseplant. Shit. The place was bugged. But by who? “You should probably start talking to me…quickly.”
Once more, Doug looked to his ficus. “Help,” he whimpered.
A full thirty seconds ticked by with the man staring at his plant, like he expected it to morph into something that might help extricate him from the situation. A cell phone chirped from somewhere on Doug’s person, and he slipped it from his pocket, answering it with shaky hands.
“Hello,” he said timidly. “Yes. But I—How was I supposed to know that? No—That’s not fair. Yes. Yes, I’ll tell him.”
He disconnected, setting the phone down. He didn’t say a word as he scribbled something on a notepad and handed it to Gideon.
“You need to go here. They’ll find you,” Doug said, sounding like Gideon had stumbled into a spy movie. Once more, he had to shove back images from his nightmare.
“What is this?” Gideon asked, looking at an address.
“Look, I can’t say anything else. They’ll explain everything. Just, please go. Go now, before my wife starts asking questions.”
Gideon reluctantly left, plugging the address into his GPS only to find himself parked in front of a diner in a sketchy part of town twenty minutes later. He exited, activating his alarm and saying goodbye to his brand new low profile tires, which likely wouldn’t be there when he returned.
Once inside, the smell of bacon and grease hit him with the force of a sledgehammer as he searched the room. It didn’t take long to suss out who exactly had invited him to the meeting. Two middle-aged men in dark colored suits and ties sat in a back corner of what Gideon assumed was supposed to be a fifties style diner. The two men blended in with the patrons about as well as Gideon did. The short pudgy one with the receding hairline waved him over like they knew exactly who he was. Maybe they did.
Gideon made his way to the back booth and sat across from the two men, waving off a frazzled waitress when she asked if he wanted anything to drink. The taller, better looking man with deep brown skin, a bald head, and a full beard that couldn’t possibly be regulation was the one who spoke first.
“Mr. Gideon, I really wish you’d have stayed out of this.”
“Are you Feds or locals?” Gideon asked, ignoring the man’s useless comment.
The pudgier one sighed. “I’m Langston. That’s Simmons. We’re FBI, and you’ve just stumbled into the middle of a huge operation.”
Gideon folded his hands in front of him. “Surrounding what’s going on at Roosevelt.” It wasn’t a question.
Langston scoffed. “This goes way beyond Roosevelt. This involves Radcliffe, Sutton, Great Falls, and several universities and colleges, including your own. Or maybe you already know that?”
Gideon tried to make the pieces fit together, but he just didn’t have enough information. “What’s happening here, gentlemen?”
Simmons took a sip of his coffee. “You tell us. What do you know about Tri-State?”
“I don’t know anything about it except Roosevelt seems to be paying them a ridiculous sum of money. I figured I could bluff my way into finding out why and use that to get Shea to retract some allegations he made against one of my students.”
“Callum Whyte?” Simmons asked with a smirk.
“Yes. How did you know that?” Gideon asked, the hairs on the back of his neck standing at attention.
Langston laughed before wiping a hand over his face, like he couldn’t believe his life had come to this. “God knows we wish we didn’t. I don’t know how to tell you this, but your office has been bugged for the past six months, which means you’ve made several federal agents very uncomfortable.”
Gideon’s heart pounded in his chest, and for the first time in a long time, his palms grew sweaty. “My…office at the school…” He trailed off as every filthy thing he’d done to Callum in that office came back to haunt him in a rush that made him dizzy.
“Relax, Mr. Gideon. Your…boyfriend?...is well above the age of consent, and we know he blackmailed you…or tried anyway. We truly have much bigger fish to fry. The real headmaster of Roosevelt is in this up to his eyeballs, and given how close he is with your mentor from the college, we thought you might be as well. But, from what we can tell, you seem to be uninvolved.”
Gideon shook his head. “Uninvolved in what? What’s happening here?”
The two agents looked at each other, and Gideon had the urge to knock their heads together. He just wanted some answers.
“What we’re going to tell you stays between us. You can’t tell anybody and that includes your co-ed boy toy,” Simmons said, pointing a pudgy finger in his direction.
“Alright,” Gideon agreed. Whatever it took to get answers.
Langston leaned back in his seat. “For the last several months, we’ve been tracking some high level targets who are participating in a scheme to place children of wealthy and influential parents into ivy league colleges.”
