Cross Check (Chicago Storm #2)

Chapter 1

KIERAN

The shot came from the left circle, low and hard. It registered late.

My blocker dropped. The puck caught the edge of the padding and deflected wide, cracking off the boards behind me. I stayed down in my butterfly for a half-second too long, watching the rebound die in the corner, then pushed back to my feet and reset.

"You cheated right," Luca called from the blue line. He had his stick resting across his thighs, watching me with the look he got during optional skates. Part captain, part analyst. Zero mercy.

"I read the release point wrong."

"You read it fine. You committed early." He snapped another puck onto his blade and settled his weight. "Again."

I dropped into my stance. Hands out, shoulders square, eyes on his hips rather than the puck. The compressors hummed overhead in the empty rink. Late October in Chicago, and the practice facility smelled the way it always did after hours—cold air, rubber, and the faintly chemical bite of fresh ice.

Luca wound up and fired.

This one I caught clean. Glove hand, the puck stinging against my palm through the padding. I squeezed it and held it up.

"Better," he said.

"Your praise is overwhelming."

His mouth twitched. That was practically a belly laugh, coming from Luca. A year ago, before Theo, before the press conference, before all of it, he wouldn't have given me even that much. He'd been locked so tight that even his closest friend couldn't reach much beyond the captaincy.

Now he twitched. Progress.

We ran another twenty minutes of shooting drills.

My hip flexors ached by the end, the left one grinding in a way I'd been ignoring for three weeks.

I made a mental note to get it looked at.

The new physical therapist, Declan, had been after me about it since preseason.

Solid guy. Bishop had come out of a session with him looking vaguely unsettled, though he wouldn't say why.

"Shower?" Luca asked, stripping off his gloves as we stepped off the ice.

"Go ahead. I want to stretch."

He nodded and disappeared into the tunnel. His footsteps receded down the corridor, then silence. I dropped onto the bench to work through my cool-down routine alone.

I liked this part, the quiet at the end of the day.

Most people assumed goalies were wired differently, and they weren't wrong.

You spent sixty minutes reading angle geometry and explosive movement, your entire body primed for a puck you might only face thirty times a game.

When the noise stopped, you needed time to power down.

Otherwise the vigilance followed you home and sat beside you at the kitchen table and stared at you while you tried to eat dinner.

My phone buzzed on the bench. I glanced at the screen, expecting Luca telling me to hurry up.

It was David Park, the Storm's GM.

I stared at the name for two rings before answering. GMs didn't call goaltenders on a Tuesday evening unless something was wrong or something big was about to change.

"Walsh."

"Kieran. You got a minute?"

"Just finished skating. What's up?"

Park had a voice that belonged in a courtroom—measured and careful, every word chosen before it left his mouth. "We're making a trade. Acquiring a forward from Minnesota. The deal closes tomorrow morning."

"Okay." Trades happened. That was the business. But Park didn't call players to announce routine acquisitions. "Who?"

A beat of silence. Too long.

"Nico Varis."

My hand tightened on the phone. "The gambling investigation."

"The investigation is ongoing. He hasn't been charged with anything."

"He hasn't been cleared either."

"No." Park's tone didn't shift, but I heard the acknowledgment underneath. He knew this was a hard sell. "Kieran, I'm calling you specifically because I need something from you."

I pulled off my blocker and set it on the bench beside me. The cool air hit my sweaty palm.

"We need Varis integrated quickly and quietly," Park continued. "The media is going to be all over this. The team is going to have opinions. We need someone steady in his corner. Not advocating for him, just... keeping an eye on things."

"You want me to babysit."

"I want you to house him."

I stood up. The movement was involuntary, some instinct telling me to be on my feet for what was coming. "House him."

"Temporarily. Your place has the extra room. You're the steadiest guy on the roster, you've navigated media scrutiny before, and frankly, you're the least likely person on this team to get manipulated."

"Flattering."

"It's true. I need someone who'll report accurately. No agenda, no bias. Just tell us what you see."

I walked to the boards and pressed my glove hand against the cool surface. Through the Plexiglas, the empty arena seats stretched upward into shadow. Twenty thousand seats that would fill with people who had opinions about every decision this organization made.

"How long?"

"Until the investigation resolves. Could be weeks. Could be longer."

"And if the investigation doesn't go his way?"

"Then we deal with that when it comes. Right now, the kid needs a stable environment and the team needs someone they trust to vouch for the arrangement."

Kid. Varis was twenty-six. Not exactly a child. But I understood what Park meant. A player under investigation, traded to a new team in a new city with no support system, and the entire hockey world watching to see if he'd implode.

"I'll think about it," I said.

"I need an answer tonight."

I closed my eyes. The rink's compressors hummed their low mechanical rhythm. My hip ached.

"Fine."

"Fine you'll think about it, or fine you'll do it?"

"Fine, I'll do it." I opened my eyes. "But Park? If he's dirty, I'm not covering for him. I'll report exactly what I see."

"That's exactly what I'm counting on."

My apartment occupied the fourteenth floor of a building in Lincoln Park, and it was exactly the way I wanted it.

Clean lines, minimal furniture, everything in its place.

The bookshelves were organized by genre and then alphabetically, because I'd tried organizing by color once and it had made my skin crawl.

The kitchen was stocked with the kind of food a professional athlete was supposed to eat, plus the kind of tea collection that would've gotten me chirped mercilessly if the guys ever saw it.

I'd lived alone since my first year in the league.

Eleven seasons now. Most of the guys cycled through roommates, girlfriends, temporary arrangements that reflected the transient nature of a career that could uproot you with a phone call.

I'd opted out of all that early. My space was mine.

I controlled the temperature, the noise level, the lighting, and the schedule.

We goalies are particular. This is well-documented.

I stood in the doorway of the guest bedroom and assessed it with fresh eyes. Queen bed, grey sheets, a nightstand with a lamp, and an empty closet. Functional and impersonal. The room of a host who'd never expected to host anyone.

My phone buzzed again. Luca.

Park told me. You okay with this?

I said yes.

That's not what I asked.

I leaned against the doorframe and honestly considered the question.

Was I okay with Nico Varis sleeping fifteen feet from me?

With monitoring a grown man's daily life and reporting back to management like some kind of corporate informant?

With the media circus that would inevitably descend the moment the trade went public?

I'll handle it.

Keep it professional. Don't let him get under your skin.

I almost laughed. Luca Moretti, the man who'd spent a year pretending he wasn't in love with his rookie, telling me to keep things professional.

When have I ever let anyone get under my skin?

Just be careful.

I set the phone down and went to the kitchen to put the kettle on. The water would take four minutes to boil. The tea would steep for three. These were the rhythms I had built my life around. Small, controllable. Mine.

Tomorrow, all of it would shift.

The kettle began to hiss. I pulled a mug from the cabinet, chose the Assam, and waited for the water.

On the counter, my iPad sat open to the sports feed.

Nothing yet about the trade. Tomorrow morning, every outlet in hockey would have it.

Ansel Rowe would lead with it on the evening broadcast. He always covered Storm trades with that blend of authority and warmth that made people trust his take before they'd even heard it.

I brewed my tea, carried it to the couch, and pulled up film.

Not Storm film. Minnesota film. The last forty games Nico Varis had played before the scandal broke and his ice time vanished.

I wanted to know what I was dealing with.

The footage told me two things immediately.

First, Varis was fast. Not just quick, but genuinely fast in a way that made the other players on the ice look like they were skating through mud.

His edges were elite, his hands were soft, and his hockey sense bordered on prescient.

On one play, he read a developing two-on-one from the opposite side of the ice and backchecked through three lanes of traffic to break up the pass.

The defensive awareness was rare for a forward.

Most of them couldn't see behind them. Varis seemed to feel it.

Second, he was contained. Even in the older footage from before the investigation, there was a carefulness to his game.

He took calculated risks, not reckless ones.

He didn't celebrate goals with anything more than a raised glove and a head nod.

No celly, no theatrics, no sliding on his knees to the corner.

Just a nod, like scoring was expected rather than exceptional.

A man who'd learned to take up as little space as possible.

I watched an hour of film. I drank two cups of tea. And by the time I turned off the tablet and headed for bed, I had formed exactly one opinion about Nico Varis.

He could play.

Everything else remained to be seen.