“My first and last thoughts were recruiting,” Dad said. “When Caryn called me about the small donations, I thought they might be coming from Oklahoma. The guy who stopped you at the restaurant seemed a little shady. Then the note said, ‘Go Blue,’ which made me think Michigan. I dug a little and discovered that Southwest Central State is called the Big Blue Machine.”
I said a really bad word, and no one even flinched.
“This gives that douche at the NCAA his excuse to cause problems,” I explained.
“What are you talking about?” Mom asked.
“I told you about the investigator and his threats if David didn’t ‘cooperate.’ He wants David to help expose what Springbok and Southwest Central State are up to as far as paying recruits to play for them,” Dad reminded her.
“So?” Mom asked. “I thought you got him to back off.”
“More; I called his bluff. I told him I wouldn’t help with their investigation, and he could basically go pound sand,” I confessed.
Mom looked at my dad in a way that said he might have left some of the details out. He raised his hands in surrender.
“Hey, you would’ve been proud of him. He took charge and never lost his cool. David made it clear that he’d made his one attempt to get them to slip up. That was when he met with Coach Foster for his in-home visit,” Dad said, defending both himself and me.
“I guarantee you Stewart Chadwick will use this to bone me,” I reiterated.
“He didn’t seem happy when he left,” Dad admitted.
“That being said, it looks like we need to deal with this,” Caryn said to get us back on track.
“Why don’t we just take the money and act like it was just a donation?” I suggested.
“You can’t be serious!”
Dad was looking at me as if I’d either grown another head or lost the one I had.
“Think about it. The cost of this is going to end up being more than what we take in after the lawyers get done with us. It would also avoid the whole mess with the NCAA.”
“Is that how you really think we should handle this?” Mom asked.
I wanted to say ‘yes.’ Just sweep it all under the rug and ignore it. It wasn’t only the NCAA that worried me; I was sure the FBI would crawl all over this too. If we messed with them, it could get dangerous. What scared me was that they could basically arrest anyone and say they lied to them. That was a felony and would probably mean jail time. All it took were two parties to give opposing views in interviews. One of them had to be lying, right?
I realized that the FBI ordinarily didn’t do that, but the scary part was, they could. All it would take was someone with an agenda to turn that kind of power into something truly unthinkable.
Since I was in the public eye, I was an easy target if they needed someone to make an example of. When Maddie Addison had warned me not to provide the FBI with the video from our meeting with Stewart Chadwick, it had made a believer out of me. I was afraid she would make me tell them about the money.
I took a deep breath and shook my head. When had I become so cynical? I remembered being appalled when Teddy Wesleyan had more or less accused me of being after his family’s money. That was when his niece had bought me clothes for our date.
Looking back, I had no frame of reference for what he must deal with regularly. I’d grown up sans wealth in a small town and didn’t have any firsthand experience of what could happen. Since then, I’d had to deal with Cal when he tried to take Coby from me. I’d been attacked on a flight when the boxer had tried to strong-arm rob me. I’d had an attempted kidnapping by a gang in Mexico; a recruit’s father attacked me in a bathroom; Zander almost killed me; and Stewart Chadwick threatened my eligibility. Then, finally, Maddie Addison scared the crap out of me about the FBI.
Regardless, I knew the difference between right and wrong. The right thing to do was to report it. But at that moment, I understood why people decided against it.
I also knew, probably better even than my parents, what doing the ‘right thing’ would cost me. My fight with the NCAA would reach a whole new level if this weren’t handled correctly. Stewart Chadwick would be out for blood. It was very possible I would never play college ball.
For a brief moment, I was almost relieved. This could help me decide what I would end up doing with my life. Perhaps I was destined to just do movies.
Then I had a horrible thought.
“Do you think Wolf and Tim got money?”
“What does that have to do with you reporting this?” Mom asked.
“Because if the NCAA finds out about it, they will eventually look at those two. If they pull my eligibility, they would have to do the same to Wolf and Tim,” I explained.
“Would they really?” Angie asked.
“In a heartbeat,” Dad said. “We need to find that out and call Ms. Dixon and Mr. Morris before we do anything.”
“I’ll set it up,” Caryn said.
“What do we do with the cash?” Mom asked. “We can’t leave it around the house, and I suspect we better not deposit it.”
“Caryn and I will go to the bank and open a safe-deposit box for now,” Dad said.
