Chapter 14 - The Coach's Price
Coach Danner asked to speak with Maya after the ledger was found.
Detective Ruiz said she did not owe him that.
Maya went anyway, with Elena and Ruiz in the room.
Danner looked ten years older than he had in the gym.
"I didn't kill your father," he said immediately.
Maya sat across from him. "Then what did five thousand dollars buy?"
He stared at his hands.
"Information."
"What information?"
"Gabriel asked me where Mercer would be the night he died. I told him about the banquet at the fieldhouse."
"That sounds helpful."
"It wasn't."
Danner swallowed.
"After Gabriel called me, I told Gordon he was coming. Gordon paid me. I told myself it was for staying loyal to the program."
Elena's face went rigid.
"You sent my husband into a trap."
"I didn't know they would hurt him."
"You knew enough to take cash."
Danner looked at Maya.
"I was a coward. There isn't a better word."
Maya thought of every whistle he had refused to blow.
Tyler.
Her.
All the students whose complaints disappeared.
"You kept choosing cowardice," she said. "That's different from being scared once."
He flinched.
Ruiz asked about the night Gabriel died.
Danner described seeing Gordon arguing with Gabriel behind the fieldhouse. Gabriel threw an envelope of cash at Gordon's feet. Gordon threatened to ruin him.
Then Hargrove arrived.
"Hargrove was there?" Ruiz asked.
Danner nodded.
"He wasn't principal yet. He was district facilities director. He had approved the change orders."
The corruption went higher and older than Maya realized.
Danner said Gabriel left alone.
Ten minutes later, Gordon's foreman, Clay Rusk, left in another vehicle.
Clay Rusk was the same former assistant coach arrested in Seth's abduction.
Ruiz stood immediately.
"That's enough."
Within hours, prosecutors added new charges against Rusk and sought to question him about Gabriel's death.
That night, Maya was doing homework when someone knocked on the front door.
Luis checked the camera.
"You need to see this."
Principal Hargrove stood on the porch.
Alone.
His shirt was dirty. One cheek was bruised.
He raised both hands toward the camera.
"I need to talk to Maya Torres," he said.
Luis reached for his phone to call Bennett.
May you like
Hargrove leaned close to the door.
"Tell her Gordon Mercer knows where she keeps her father's letter."
