No Defense (Top Tier #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter one

Pratt

Donna Summer sang "MacArthur Park" next door. It wasn't low background. It was impossible to ignore.

Loud enough that the bass carried through the wall and into my kitchen while I lined up three glasses on the counter and checked the spacing twice.

My neighbor had at least four people over. Maybe more. Voices layered over the music, stepping on each other. One laugh kept cutting through the rest, sharp and unfiltered. It didn't stop when the others did.

I adjusted the middle glass a quarter inch to the left. It didn’t help.

The laugh cut through again.

It was four days after the Christmas break. The Chicago Ironhawks had endured a shootout loss in Detroit that Varga named The Tire Fire on I-94. He repeated it to every media outlet he could find, wanting it to stick.

Practice didn't run long. Coach offered no corrections that required us to stay past the scheduled end. I cleared the Performance Center at 5:22. Elevator at 5:28. Inside my condo at 5:34.

I'd only been in the new place for three weeks. My landlord wanted my apartment back on a month's notice. It was just enough time to find something better. This time I bought my home. No takebacks.

The layout was workable. Open concept, with sightlines clear from the entry to the windows. Standing at the kitchen counter, I could see both the door and the windows without turning my head.

I'd set the furniture once and left it. Surfaces stayed clear. Some unpacking remained: books stacked but not shelved, and a lamp still in its box near the far wall.

I hung my keys on a hook by the door and set my bag beneath it.

The bass thumped harder.

Kieran had said six. He was coming with Heath to watch the rush sequence we'd flagged in film. It was a weak-side coverage gap that had opened twice against Detroit and once in Columbus before that.

It was better to address it here, without the rest of the team, and without Coach deciding it required a full practice correction. I had forty minutes to get ready.

I went to the kitchen.

No full meal. There wasn't time, and this wasn't that kind of session. I sliced a block of cheddar into even pieces and laid them flat on the cutting board, edges aligned.

Crackers went beside them in three stacks on the right side. I washed and dried fruit—grapes and apple slices—and placed the bowl on the left side of the counter.

Kieran always reached left. He'd done it the first time I'd had him over and every time after. I noticed it the second time. By the third, I put the bowl where his hand would go.

Heath would eat whatever was in front of him. Like he did in front of the net, he absorbed whatever came at him and made use of it.

My front door swung open.

I'd left it unlocked for Kieran and Heath. The man who appeared was neither of them.

He came through the door with a vending machine bag of pretzels in one hand, already open. Lean with wavy hair. Eating as he walked without hesitation.

His phone was in his other hand, screen lit as his thumb hovered. He made it a few steps inside before he looked up.

His attention moved from the counter to me and held. Long enough to realize something was off.

"Okay," he said. "This isn't my place."

"No, it's not."

He looked around again. I saw no alarm in his expression. "My door and your door are more similar than I gave them credit for." He looked at the counter again. "Very clean kitchen for someone with a lamp still in the box."

"I've only been here three weeks."

"Eight months for me. I've still got a box I haven't touched. It's waiting out my philosophy. If I don't need it by the end of the year, I probably don't need to unpack it." A brief pause. "It's dishes. I don't want to surrender the shelf space."

I folded my arms across my chest. He pointed at the wall as "Disco Inferno" played. Then he moved his hips and smiled.

He stopped. "You don't dance."

"Not usually."

"Right. Sorry. I bartend, so I talk—" He lifted one hand and gestured at himself. "Dance, too. Occupational. I'll get out of your way."

He walked toward the bedroom. "Other direction," I said.

He looked back, and one corner of his mouth twitched. "Right. Bit early for that." Turning around, he crossed to the door and shut it behind him on his way out.

I heard footsteps in the hallway, a pause, and then the correct door opening. A few seconds after that, "Disco Inferno" faded, and Fleetwood Mac took over.

I turned back to the counter. My knife had drifted a quarter inch off the grain line in the stone while I was watching the door. I moved it back and left it.

Kieran arrived at 6:01 with Heath a step behind. They came in without knocking, and Heath stopped just inside the door to read the room before his eyes settled on the cutting board and stayed there.

"You made food," he said.

"It's a cutting board."

"With food on it, Pratt."

Kieran had already moved to the wall I cleared for video and stopped a few feet back, reading the blank space the way he approached plays. He had it all in his head before anything happened.

Heath stayed at the counter, examining the food arrangement with focused attention. He picked up a cracker. He held it over the cheese and looked at me.

"If I set this down on top—"

"I laid out the pieces so you can see what you're taking before you take it," I said. "Stack a cracker on top and you've blocked half the board."

Heath blinked. "You have a system for the cheese?"

"I have an arrangement. There's a difference."

"What's the difference?"

"One of them requires compliance. The other assumes it."

Kieran, still facing the wall, said, "He's not wrong." He reached back without turning and found the fruit bowl on the left side of the counter. Took a grape. Kept his eyes on the wall.

Heath watched and then looked at me. "You put the bowl there for him."

I didn't answer.

"You know where his hand goes," Heath said. He picked up a cracker, selected a piece of cheese, and then took a bite. "Okay. It's actually easier to see the pieces this way. I hate that you're right about the cheese."

I brought the projection up.

We ran the sequence twice. The weak-side coverage came in half a beat late. It wasn't enough to flag in real time, but it left six feet of open ice in front of the crease. I'd clocked it after Detroit. Seeing it again in Columbus confirmed it was a pattern.

Heath asked one question: "Do you want me on the post earlier, or stay with the man until you call it?"

"Earlier. He's going to the post, anyway. You're better starting there."

He nodded once.

"That rotation held in the third against Columbus," Kieran said. "Coverage didn't give."

"Different shooter with a different release point. There was a full second less in the cycle," I said. "These aren't comparable situations."

"Fair," he said.

We left it there.

I cut the projection. Kieran snagged another grape. Heath went to the window and stood with his arms folded, watching the lights reflected in the Chicago River. I tracked both of them from across the room.

They moved like people who were past the dating stage. Back in November, Varga cornered me like he was sharing big news. Those two are so married it's actually insane, Pratt. You see that, don't you?

I'd seen it before November, but I hadn't figured out a reason to say so.

There was a knock at the door. Two quick raps with no hesitation. I crossed the room, checked the peephole, and opened it.

He was there again, leaning against the door frame, weight easy on his back foot. He'd lost the coat and held a bottle of wine.

"Okay," he said. "I know how this reads."

I waited.

"I went back, thought about it, and landed on the fact that walking into your condo unannounced was probably not the best introduction." He held the bottle up slightly. "This felt proportionate as an apology."

"It's a bottle of wine."

"A good one." He glanced past my shoulder, spotting Heath and Kieran. "You've got people. I'll make it quick."

He extended the bottle toward me. I took it. The glass was cold.

He reached forward with his other hand. "Sully. Next door, when I can find it."

I shook it. "Pratt."

"I know. You're on the TVs—you know, in the bar." He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a key. "I have a problem with my door. The auto-lock. It's not an occasional thing. It's a bad pattern that I've accepted about myself. The last neighbor held a spare. That arrangement worked."

Behind me, Heath turned away from the window.

I looked at the key.

"You'd just have it," Sully said. "For the nights I'm in the hallway at midnight with no good options and worse judgment." He smiled briefly. "No obligation. If I somehow solve the problem on my own, you can throw it out, and we never need to discuss it."

He paused and watched my face.

Heath crossed the room. "Are you actually considering this? Or is that the face?"

"What face?"

"Your nothing face. I've seen it a lot."

I looked at Sully, who was carefully watching the exchange.

"Don't worry about him," I said.

"I'm not worried," Sully said. "I want to know about the face."

"It's subtle," Heath said, behind me. "He makes it when he's working something out. Others have the resting b. Pratt has THE face."

Kieran spoke up. "Heath—"

"I'm giving the man context."

"You're editorializing."

I took the key. "If it's past midnight," I said, "knock twice."

Sully looked at the key sitting in my palm. "Two knocks." He straightened off the frame. "Enjoy your night, Pratt." A brief nod past my shoulder. "Gentlemen. Sorry for the interruption."

He pulled the door shut.

Seconds later, the music came back through the wall, picking up mid-song, as if time had frozen in his condo, waiting for him to return. Heath dropped onto the arm of the couch.

"So," he said.

"No," I said.

A pause. "I didn't say anything."

"You were about to."

"The key was a good call," he said, and let it go.

I set the bottle on the counter, just left of center. I didn't have a place for Sully yet.