Chapter 14 #2
I’ve been skating since I was two years old. I’ve played on frozen ponds and hacked-up public rinks. But this ice is different. It’s faster, smoother—like an oil slick.
I slip. Grab the boards, my stick cracking hard on the fiberglass. I drop it as Everly slips and grabs onto me. I try and hold her up, but I’m losing.
“This was your shortcut,” she says, her feet making a break for anywhere besides solid ground.
“Yeah, that was before it turned into a slip and slide.”
“Can you skate in sneakers?”
“Can anyone skate in sneakers?”
“You’re the hockey player—”
“Hockey players wear skates, Everly. That’s the defining characteristic. Without the skates, I’m just a tall man with good reflexes and a big stick.”
“So we’re stuck.”
“We’re not stuck. Just—go slow.” I pull myself up and then steady her. We find our feet. “Careful now.”
We shuffle. Waddle is more like it. Progress measured in inches. Every step feels like a negotiation with gravity.
I hang on to the boards as we work our way toward the exit.
Then the sound. It’s small, metallic, and changes everything about a room the instant it enters.
A gun being cocked.
At the far end of the arena—at the main entrance, the sunrise glow of the mall acting as a backlight—a figure stands. Not one of our three. A fourth. Bigger. Broader.
The backup. The insurance policy.
Maybe even the boss.
“Nobody move.” His voice is icy calm, relaxed and unhurried. He’s standing on solid ground, and we’re in the middle of the ice like sitting—or rather, sliding—ducks.
Everly’s hand tenses around mine.
“Set the backpack on the ice. Now.”
Everything we survived throughout the night. Every ceiling crawl and closet and kiss and trap. All for this.
No. No way.
“Would it be inappropriate for me to ask him if I can back up my computer onto a thumb drive?” Everly says softly.
I look at her. “What?”
“My story—”
Oh wow, she’s serious.
“You’re not going to lose your story.” Then my brain does what my brain does. It reads the ice, finds a play.
In my left hand—the hockey stick, clutched with frozen, white knuckles.
And there, on the edge of the rink, the puck I left. A sentimental goodbye to the old rink. It sits exactly where I left it, silent and lonely, about three feet away from me.
The man with the gun looks about sixty feet away. The doable distance for a wrist shot. A distance I’ve been hitting since I was twelve years old, half asleep, with my eyes closed.
This is literally the only skill I have that applies to this situation.
“Beckett,” Everly whispers. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t—”
I release her hand.
“You want those files?” I shout, pushing Everly back, positioning her behind me—distracting from what my other arm is doing.
I’ve lunged for the puck while my other arm shrugs off the backpack. It slides down, and I toss it onto center ice. It smacks hard, the sound masking the much smaller one of the puck hitting the ice.
“Come and get it!”
The man eyes me suspiciously, his gun unwavering as he makes his way toward the ice.
“Beckett,” Everly whispers, her voice more afraid than I’ve heard it all night.
The Zamboni stands in the center of the ice, an obstacle set like a mammoth, perfectly blocking his path between the files and the gate. He sees it, his eyes meeting mine with an unspoken threat as he steps out of sight: Move and you’re dead.
I have one second, maybe two, to line up the shot.
My dad was an enforcer. He hit people with his fists, and he was good at it. Me? I’m the Blue Line. I’m the defense. I hit the puck with everything I’ve got because nothing else is standing between it and defeat.
There will be no defeat today.
He steps back into view, straight into the line of fire.
I take the shot. One motion. Muscle memory.
The puck crosses the rink in a line drive. Point A: Me. Point B: Center side, left of the Zamboni.
It hits. Ricochets.
And then the crack of vulcanized rubber on bone carries across the arena. I didn’t mean to, exactly, but it looks like a head shot.
The gun flies from his grip, spinning, arcing, skittering across the flooded surface. The guy goes down, hard.
Out. I don’t see any blood, but my guess is that he’ll have a wicked headache when he wakes up. Good thing it wasn’t a direct shot—the ricochet slowed it down, lessened the punch just enough.
Just to be sure, I stare at him. His chest rises and falls. Okay then, he’s breathing.
From behind me, Everly’s voice: “Holy slap shot, Batman.”
I almost smile, adrenaline still coursing through my veins. I can’t help but let it go a little to my head. “Thanks.”
I soak up the victory as I swagger across the ice, toward the backpack.
I reach down for one of the straps.
And of course, my right foot goes. One moment I’m upright, broad shoulders and heroic, the next I’m on my back, humbled beneath the raining sprinklers.
A noise, like a stifled squeak, sounds behind me, and Everly’s face appears overhead, her copper curls wisping against her cheeks, glazing her blush with sprinkler water. She looks…way too happy about this.
She cocks an eyebrow. “So smooth, Benson. Really. I think that’s one for the hockey Hall of Fame.”
“You think that’s funny, Hart?”
She laughs, and it mixes with the soft patter of droplets over the ice.
“All right, then,” I say. The tone of my voice stops her flat, but it’s too late. I grab her by the arm and pull.
She lets out a yelp and goes down, crashing into me. My hands find her waist on instinct, catching the bulk of her fall. She lands half beside me, half across my chest, one hand splayed flat against the ice and the other clutching my shoulder.
The sprinklers rain down on both of us.
For a second, neither of us moves.
Then she lifts her head. Her glasses have cracked and fogged to complete opacity. She’s blinking water off her lashes and staring at me, gaping in disbelief.
“You,” she says with great precision, “are trouble.”
“I’ve been told.”
She laughs again, softly, almost a scoff. A breath brushing my cheek.
Her face is inches from mine. Water drips from her hair onto my face, drops landing on my forehead, my cheekbone, the corner of my mouth. She watches them land. Goes very still.
She doesn’t move.
I don’t move.
We’re staring at each other. On the ice. In the water. And the thing I’ve been avoiding thinking about since she held out that cracked photograph slips through.
She ran into a fire. For my name. For that picture.
Because she knows what matters to me.
Because I’ve been writing to her.
And just like that, a cop car shows up.
“We should get out of here,” she says, as if she can see it.
No—wait—I want—
What do I want?
I have to pull my eyes away from memorizing the color of her wet curls to look at her. Pull myself back to reality again. I don’t know. Or maybe I just don’t want to admit it.
I clear my throat. Sit up. “Yeah.”
I climb back to my feet, back to solid ground, turning to help her up. She stands on shaky legs as the sound of running footsteps ricochets from the service corridor.
Aw. Here we go again.