Blind Side (Chicago Storm #3)

Chapter 1

Abbott

The kid was doing it wrong.

It wasn't catastrophically wrong. But it would show up two months from now as a missed pass in the neutral zone. It was a habit that would calcify if nobody caught it.

Jamie Hayes caught it. He was already skating over with an easy stride, his stick loose in one hand. I watched him angle his approach so the rookie wouldn't feel cornered.

That was Hayes. He never made you feel cornered.

"Hey, Mikkola." Jamie pulled up beside the kid at center ice, close enough to talk without shouting.

"You're loading your top hand too early on that release.

Watch." He demonstrated in one fluid motion.

His weight transferred through his hips and the puck snapped off his blade.

"Feel the difference? Load late, release fast."

Mikkola tried it. It was better—not quite right yet, but better. Hayes tapped his shin pad with his stick and skated off, already scanning the drill pattern for the next thing that needed his attention.

I stood in the backup net at the far end and watched him. I'd stopped fighting it somewhere around year two.

My blocker rested on top of the net. The ice was fresh. The clean Zamboni lines were still visible in the neutral zone, and the overhead compressors hummed their constant low drone. It was pre-season skate. Everyone was finding their legs again after summer.

Hayes worked the far end like he owned it. It wasn't the way Luca owned a room. Luca commanded space through sheer gravity. Hayes just made it warmer. He had his helmet off, shoved up on his forehead. His hair was damp at the temples.

He said something to Eriksson that made the Swede laugh. Then he hip-checked Volkov for no apparent reason. Volkov swore at him in Russian.

Hayes's laugh bounced off the boards, too big for the space.

He moved between the different groups—never rushing, never hovering.

A hand on a rookie's shoulder to steer him into the right position.

A word to Bishop that turned the big defenseman's scowl into an almost grin.

He circled back to Mikkola twice without making it obvious, checking the release and adjusting the timing.

By the third rep, the kid's shot was noticeably cleaner.

I watched him without thinking about it. The way his laugh carried was different when it was real; it was louder and less controlled. It started in his chest. He laughed like that more than most people. He just found such joy in life.

He turned and looked at me across the ice. He wasn't checking on me; he wasn't scanning the drill. For two full seconds, he looked at me. Then he lifted his stick in a half-wave, gave me a nod, and turned back to the pattern.

Two seconds. I couldn't tell you what color the rookie's helmet was, but I could tell you the exact angle of Jamie Hayes's chin when he acknowledged me from a hundred and eighty feet away.

That was the problem.

The drill shifted. Luca ran the next sequence.

It was his line, Hayes on his wing, with Eriksson rotating in.

They ran a cycle play that was so clean it looked choreographed.

Hayes anticipated the pass before Luca released it, already cutting to the far post, and when the puck hit his tape he redirected it without even looking.

It went directly to Volkov, who buried it. Kieran hadn't even moved.

I would have moved. I would have read Hayes's hips a half-second earlier and cheated to that side. I'd spent enough hours studying him to know exactly how his weight shifted before a redirect. But Kieran didn't watch Hayes the way I did.

Nobody watched Hayes the way I did.

Kieran took the starter's net for the shooting drill, and I skated to the bench for water. From here I could see the full surface.

Goalies watch everything—it's how we're wired.

You see the whole ice. You track trajectories.

You read intentions before they become actions.

It's useful in net. It's less useful when you apply it to a man across a hundred and eighty feet of frozen water and can identify the exact moment his easy expression shifts because someone new walked into the building.

Park—the GM. Hayes clocked him immediately. His smile didn't change but his shoulders squared a fraction, the way a veteran's always did when management appeared at a non-mandatory skate.

The Zamboni door opened for the ice cut and players drifted off in clusters. I was pulling my chest protector straps loose in the tunnel when my phone buzzed.

It was Marty, my agent.

"Clay." His voice was warm, the tone that meant he was about to tell me something I didn't want to hear. "Quick one. Got an inquiry from Sacramento. They're rebuilding, looking for a starter. Nothing formal. Just a feeler."

Sacramento. Starter position. It was all the way across the country.

"Okay," I said.

"It's the last year of your deal with the Storm. This is how it goes, you know that. I'm not giving advice, I'm just saying they called."

"I heard you."

"Okay. Think about it."

I hung up and sat with that for a moment. The tunnel was emptying. Down the hall, Volkov was yelling about someone's car being in his spot. The locker room smelled like rubber and old sweat.

It was simple backup goalie math. I'd been doing it since I got drafted.

You track starts. You track your starter's health.

You track the contract calendar, and you know—you always know—that your future in any building is conditional.

Kieran Walsh was thirty-two, locked in on a long-term deal, and still one of the best in the league.

I was twenty-eight and in the last year of my contract. The math had always been clear.

This wasn't new. Every backup goalie in every room in the league had this running in the background at all times. The call from Marty was the system working as designed.

What I couldn't explain was why the word Sacramento sat in my stomach like I'd swallowed wrong.

Sacramento was a good organization. They were rebuilding with money and a plan.

A starter role there was real—the kind of opportunity that backup goalies were supposed to want.

Men built their entire careers around hoping for this.

I'd wanted it. I'd spent years wanting it.

I didn't want to examine that wanting my own starting position had gotten complicated around the time Jamie Hayes started stocking his kitchen for two without being asked, around the time I started noticing that the mug he always handed me, the blue one with the chipped handle, was always clean and always in the same spot on the shelf.

Like it belonged there.

I put my phone away and finished stripping my gear.

Hayes was at his stall when I came into the room, half out of his pads, talking to Theo about something that had Theo gesturing with both hands.

Theo Callahan didn't have a low gear. Whatever the conversation was, it had Jamie leaning back in his stall with his arms crossed and an amused look on his face, the one that said, Go on, I'm listening. This is going to be good.

He caught my eye as I crossed to my stall. His attention always shifted, landed, stayed for a beat, then moved on. He did that with everyone. He tracked the room like I tracked the ice. He did it so naturally that most people mistook it for personality.

It was personality, but it was also skill. I'd spent enough time watching him to know the difference.

I dressed without rushing. Bishop was telling a story that had Morrison laughing quietly at the edge of the circle. Morrison was quiet a lot these days.

Kieran was three stalls down, re-taping his stick. He glanced up when I sat down, held eye contact for a second, and went back to his tape.

That was a complete conversation between goalies.

When I grabbed my bag to go, I didn't look to see if Hayes was ready. I didn't need to. We'd been walking out together long enough that the timing was instinctive.

"Abbott." He fell into step beside me in the tunnel, close enough that our shoulders nearly touched.

I had long since stopped pretending it was accidental, on either side.

I could smell his body wash over the lingering rink cold.

I'd been aware of it for three years without ever once commenting on it.

"You want my extra protein bar or are you going to steal it again like some kind of parking lot mugger? "

"I'm going to steal it." I grinned.

"At least you're honest." He unzipped the side pocket of his bag without breaking stride and held the bar out. I took it from him, his fingers warm where they brushed mine.

We walked out into the September sunlight. The parking lot was half-empty, and the facility's glass walls threw a glare across the asphalt. Hayes squinted against it and fished for his sunglasses. His SUV was three spots from my car. It always was. I often wondered if he did that deliberately.

"See you tomorrow?" he asked easily, like he always did. As if the answer was obvious—as if there was no version of tomorrow that I wasn't there.

"Yeah."

He tapped the roof of my car twice as he passed. I didn't know when that became a habit. Some things just became part of a friendship. You didn't think about it.

Most days, I could stop thinking about it.

"Hey." He turned back, one hand on his car door, sunglasses on his face. The light caught behind him and I couldn't read his expression. "Good skate today. You looked sharp."

"Thanks."

"I mean it. That glove sequence in the second drill—Kieran didn't have that read."

He was always doing this—noticing specific things. It wasn't general praise. Someone else might have said good practice. Hayes said that glove sequence in the second drill.

He did it with everyone on the team. He did it with rookies and veterans and equipment managers and the woman who ran the facility cafeteria. He made people feel seen because he actually saw them.

I was just one of many. I had made my peace with that a long time ago.

"See you tomorrow, Hayes." He grinned and got in his car.

I didn't need to, but I watched him pull out of the parking lot.

I did it every single time.

I sat in my car for a long minute and ate Hayes's protein bar. I thought about Sacramento and the potential starter position.