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“Yes.” Ian rubbed at his beard. “So he decided to go smoke in the bathroom to relax.” He rolled his shoulders, trying to get them down below the level of his ears. It felt like they’d been creeping up higher each day since Gavin had come to live with him.
“Sofia, as awful as this is, I’m grateful my son was in your classroom when he had the seizure. If it happened at some party… I don’t even want to think about what a bunch of drunk or high teenagers would do with a seizing kid, but I doubt taking him to the hospital would have been at the top of the list.”
“You’re welcome.” Sofia’s reply was soft, but then she drew in a breath. “And now me. I found MDMA in the marijuana I tested.”
“Ecstasy?” Ian thought he’d misheard. Hoped he had.
“Yes. And as you probably know, it’s a substance that could cause health problems in students with pre-existing conditions, depending on how much they take.”
“So how much was in the sample?”
“A lot.”
Sofia’s bald answer sent a chill down Ian’s spine. A negative stimulus could make the heart stop. He knew that from the training—medical and…otherwise—he’d had as a SEAL, and parenting a son who’d had medical problems as a boy had given him even more experience with it.
“The seizures Gavin used to have.” The words grated out of him. “As pre-existing conditions go…”
“Hey.” Sofia was on her feet in a second, rounding the desk to him. She rubbed his shoulder and the comfort her touch brought warmed him right through. He liked it, more than he should. He liked Sofia. The amount of time he’d spent thinking about her since seeing her again two days ago told him that. He’d never felt such a connection with anyone, not even his ex-wife. But it couldn’t go anywhere. She was his son’s teacher, and he had a mission to execute. Both very good reasons to keep his head in the game and off her touch. He stood.
“We need the team in on this.” A push of a button on his desk phone connected him to his boss. “Charlie, can you conference right now? My office, yep. Bring Eric.”
He pulled his office’s remaining two visitors’ chairs closer to his desk, using the action to dispel some energy, moving Sofia’s chair to the side of the desk, kitty-corner to him. Sofia went to refill her cup and returned from the water jug with three more, bringing water for everyone. She also laid out notepads and pencils from the stack on his desk.
He didn’t know her well, but the gesture struck him as typically her, practical and proactive, someone who didn’t wait for others to do all the work or tell her what she could do.
A quick rap came at the door a second before it was opened, and Charlie and Eric entered, closing it firmly behind them. The two men were very different. Charlie was tall, with watchful green eyes, slicked-back almost black hair, and an expensive suit, and Eric was broad, clad in business-casual dress, with deceptively mild milk-chocolate-brown eyes, and thick red hair nothing could tame.
Despite their differences, their skills were highly complementary, with each other and with Ian, and all three worked seamlessly together, just as they had on their SEAL team. Charlie had been their CO then, and when he’d finished his twenty years with the Navy and decided to retire with the plan of opening a security agency, Ian and Eric were quick to follow him.
“Sofia Popov, this is Charles Bronte, the big boss.” Ian grinned as they shook hands. Charlie’s name was on the company, but that didn’t make him a desk-jockey or some remote supervisor. “But mainly he’s our tech and science guy. And you met Eric.”
“Briefly.” Sofia shook his hand. “Hello again.”
“Eric is the weapons and muscle guy,” Ian finished.
“And what kind of guy are you?” Sofia asked Ian, her head tilted to one side.
Ian tamped down all the unsuitable answers that wanted to leave his lips. “I guess you could say I’m the planning guy.”
“Yup, the strategist.” Eric nodded.
“Ian reads the situation and plans for every possible problem,” Charlie confirmed. “Shall we sit?”
The men waited for Sofia to take her chair. Charlie pulled out a small recording device and switched it on, and Ian flipped his notebook open.
“Sofia, please tell them what you told me,” Ian instructed her.
She told them about the MDMA she’d found in Gavin’s joint, then shared her belief that it was not a one-off but instead a widespread problem. She described the increased number of drug-related medical incidences she’d noticed among her high school students recently, complete with names and dates of other kids who’d been hospitalized because of drug use since the previous spring, consulting notes of her own to do so. Her narrative was organized and linear, and Ian only needed to ask a couple of questions for clarification, mainly spellings of names.
Charlie stretched when she finished. He turned off his recorder. “Thank you, Sofia. I’m sorry this is happening on your watch.”
“I’m sorrier for the kids and their parents,” she replied. She looked at the three of them. “Can you… I mean, what will you do?”
“I’m going to start by contacting parents of the students you named.” Charlie tapped the recording device. “Try to get them to speak with me, so we can get a better idea of what’s going on.”
“So you agree that this probably all traces back to a new product?” Sofia asked.
“Yes, it looks that way. But that still leaves a lot of unanswered questions about the size of this operation. It would be simplest for us if it traced back to a single dealer, but there’s no guarantee that that’s the case.”
