Free The Edge by Nick Hale

in a booth. The waitress came to take their order. Phillips went for coffee; Jake ordered an orange juice.
    ‘Have you thought about my offer?’ Phillips asked.
    Jake shrugged. ‘I wasn’t aware you’d made one.’
    Phillips smiled as the waitress brought their drinks.
    ‘I’ll be straight with you, Jake,’ he said, spooning three sugars into his cup and stirring slowly. ‘You’re a good-looking kid. Exactly the kind of face we want supporting the LGE brand.’
    ‘Thanks,’ Jake said, wondering where this was heading.
    ‘I could get you a one-hundred-thousand-dollar grant by next week,’ Phillips said. ‘How does that sound to you?’
    It
sounded
great, Jake thought, as he sipped his juice. ‘What’s the catch?’
    Phillips took a slurp of his coffee, and dabbed his lips with a napkin. ‘I’d want a fee, of course,’ he said. ‘Y’know, for oiling the wheels.’
    ‘A fee?’
    ‘Say ten gees.’
    ‘Ten thousand dollars, yeah?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    So there it was. A simple backhander. Jake leant back in his chair and made a show of thinking about it.
    ‘A hundred would be just the start,’ Phillips continued. ‘Perform well, and you’d be getting ten, twenty times that much on an annual basis. We’re talking millions.’
    ‘And you’d get a per cent?’ Jake asked. ‘For doing nothing?’
    Phillips finished his coffee, his jaw tensing. ‘Do I look like a crook to you?’ Jake guessed the question was rhetorical. ‘I’d come on board in an official capacity. Like an agent. You’d need someone to handle all that kind of stuff for you. Protect you from people who’d take advantage.’
    Jake almost laughed out loud. Dodgy deals went on all the time in football. Backhanders, tapping up, agents playing one club off against another. He didn’t doubt that Phillips could deliver on his promises, and the thought of all that money . . . He suddenly remembered what Otto had said to him just before he died – about not upsetting the moneymen.
    ‘Did you make this same offer to Otto Kahn?’ he asked.
    Phillips took a deep breath through his nose, and steepled his fingers in front of his face. ‘You ask a lot of questions.’
    Jake didn’t miss a beat. ‘I’ll take that as a yes. Let’s just say I want to know who I’m doing business with.’
    Phillips leant in closer. ‘Too many questions can be dangerous.’
    Jake held his stare until the waitress arrived at their table.
    ‘Can I get you anything else?’
    Phillips shook his head, still eyeballing Jake. ‘Just the check, please.’
    After he’d paid they walked outside into the heat. The wind had picked up, kicking little dust clouds around the parking lot.
    ‘What do you say?’ Phillips asked.
    ‘Let me think about it,’ Jake replied.
    Phillips opened his door. ‘Well, don’t think too long. Some of the other kids have already agreed, and the door won’t stay open forever. There are only a limited number of grants available.’
    Jake climbed into the car. If it wasn’t so far, he would have walked back to the camp. He’d spent about as much time with Phillips as he could handle.
    As soon as they were in the car, Phillips tuned the radio to some awful country music station. Jake was glad he didn’t have to make conversation. When they were a couple of hundred metres from the complex entrance, Phillips braked.
    ‘You’d better get out here,’ he said. ‘We wouldn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea, would we?’
    Jake tried to smile. ‘No, I guess not.’
    As he closed the door behind him, Phillips leant over to the open window.
    ‘Whatever you decide,’ he said, ‘this conversation never happened. Understood?’
    Jake nodded. ‘Understood.’
    When Jake got back to the camp, he went straight to the dorm block. He was surprised to see Veronika standing outside the door to the building.
    ‘Where the hell have you been?’ she asked. ‘I was worried to death.’
    ‘Where’ve
I
been?’ said Jake. ‘We were supposed to