Penalty Box (San Antonio Surge #2)

Chapter 1

Cass

“Not recording the practice, McAvoy?”

I groaned internally. Nick was up ahead, holding the door open with his foot while carrying a stack of Gatorade boxes. Even so, there was no missing that stupid grin the concessions worker wore whenever he teased me about my last name.

My hands remained snug and warm in the pockets of my bomber. Maybe if he were nicer, I would’ve been more inclined to help him out with the door.

“Not today, Nicole,” I replied. His smile dropped instantly, as I knew it would. His careful crate stack quivered. “I unfortunately have better things to do with my time than cheerlead the pre-season training.”

Skates sliced over the ice, the sound of puck sprints and overworked quads leaking down the corridor of the arena. If I had a dollar for every curse word the coach barked at his team, I wouldn’t need this part-time job.

But alas.

“Chill out. Just messing with ya,” Nick said, backing off physically and figuratively.

“Uh huh.” I shouldered past him toward the maintenance room, my boots echoing off the concrete.

The corridor stretched ahead, just far enough from the main rink to feel forgotten. Finally, I reached the sign that read "Authorized Personnel Only” in faded Comic Sans.

It was always the smell that hit first. Grease, scorched rubber, and whatever ancient crap stewed in the busted vending machine I’d been meaning to fix. I ditched my jacket over a chair, shoved my earbuds in, and pressed ‘play’.

Guitar fuzz crackled to life, and Joan Jett screamed into my brain. Bless her.

The reason I hadn’t yet gotten to the vending machine sat like a sullen middle finger on my workbench. A metal bracket, crooked and chewed-up with rust. I was ready to bet my week’s pay the thing had a personal vendetta against me.

“Sure you can’t do a quick fix, Cass? Hey, Cass, bank’s a little dry. Can you work around it? If anyone can figure it out, it’s you.”

I kicked the bench, and the bracket jumped.

I’d welded the damn thing last week and three weeks before that.

Still cracked. Still letting the Zamboni rattle like a rogue shopping cart across the ice.

If it came loose during resurfacing again, my ass would be the one catching heat, even though nobody wants to shell out for a new one.

Budget this, cost-saving that. But whatever.

I yanked on my gloves and snapped the visor into place.

The arc snapped bright, catching with a buzz that was more felt than heard.

I wasn’t hearing anything over my music, anyway.

Sparks danced on the metal, lighting up the dim corners of the room while the smoke curled up my nose.

I angled the tip just right, coaxing the bead across the seam, hands steady.

And even though I was doing a thing I would gladly do without pay, I was mad about it. Because we were going into my second season at the arena, and if the past few weeks were anything to go by, I had some more sucking it up, grinning and bearing it, and not rocking the boat to look forward to.

I quit the weld for a beat, and almost pulled out my phone to check how much these brackets actually cost. If I had enough saved up—

But I shook my head abruptly and picked back up. Not my monkey, not my circus.

Sparks bounced off the steel. I adjusted my stance and leaned in, letting the ghostly glowing dot in my visor pull me into that sweet hypnosis I loved. Just me and the weld. Nobody else. Nobody else’s red tape.

A flicker caught at the edge of my vision.

I paused.

The bracket glowed, molten at the seam, but that wasn’t the thing prickling my Spidey-sense. Everything about my work on this bracket was as it should be.

Flash. Flash. Flash.

Joan wasn’t giving a damn about her reputation and…

A noise cut through the music: Beep-beeep-beep.

I nearly dropped the torch.

Shit.

It was even louder when I pulled out one of my buds. The smoke detector chirped like crazy, deeply offended by my masterful repair work. I reached for the valve to turn off my torch, but it was a great idea about five seconds too late.

The fire alarm went nuclear, its ear-splitting siren ricocheting off the walls like crazy. It settled in the pit of my stomach.

Double shit.

I turned off the torch, heart thudding hard enough to drown out Joan and the blaring wails echoing through the arena. The whole arena.

“No, no, no, no.”

The smoke curled thick and white, far worse than it seemed when my visor was down. Jacket in one hand, greasy towel in the other, I sent my arms into a manic windmill to try and clear the air.

All it did was make things worse.

I swiped the bracket from the bench, scalding even through my gloves, and launched it—dead-on—into the smoke detector. The cover split into little pieces that flew in all directions. The beeping remained. Somehow, angrier than before.

“Yeah? Well, screw you too.”

I darted into the corridor, pulling the door closed behind me as if that would help. But it was too late. Boots pounded. Voices rose. A faint radio crackle drew close to the door I’d pushed through less than an hour ago, and I knew I was toast.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Chief Ortega was very happy to see me. Behind him, a line of fire fighters shared his sentiment. He waved them into the maintenance room to “Turn that damn thing off” and fixed me with a cold stare.

My smile wavered somewhere between guilt and remorse. “Heeeeey, Chief.”

“Don’t ‘Hey, Chief,’ me.”

Inside, the sound of his men calling out to each other, some scraping, knocking, and then the beeping stopped. The fire alarm died two seconds after.

“Like I keep saying, all of this can easily be avoided if they increase the alert period between the smoke detectors and alarm.”

“Third time in two months, McAvoy.”

”Or if they give me actual air filtration down here,” I continued as if he hadn’t said anything. “I mean, it’s not like I can stop doing my job, Chief. Smoke is a direct waste product of ninety-percent of what I—”

“We evacuated the lobby.” He leveled me with a look. “One of my guys pulled a hamstring vaulting over the popcorn cart. If a call comes through to the station, my emergency crew will be five fighters short.”

I winced through a nervous chuckle. “Luckily it’s not fire season.”

“I was told to report the next one to the board,” he said, his expression as unamused as the concrete wall at his back.

Panic spiked. If it got to the board, it would get to my dad, and if that happened…

“Okay, I’m sorry. For real. I’ll— I’ll get them to sign-off on a new extractor today.” My tone was devoid of any and all snark. It was time to play nice. “No more welding until the workshop’s up to code. I promise.”

Ortega didn’t seem moved by my efforts to sweep this whole thing under the rug. He folded his arms, and said, “You want to know how many false alarms my station got before you started working here?”

I could’ve guessed zero. But that was only because the last maintenance guy failed to maintain anything.

I didn’t say this out loud, of course. Just because I often walked around with my foot in my mouth, didn’t mean I went out of my way to put it there.

“Zero,” he said, predictably. “In fact, the big one of ‘87 was the o—”

“—only time your men were needed,” I finish, adding a solemn nod to show just how on his side I was. “Except the time Lance Oberman got stuck in the equipment cage and you used the Jaws of Life to get him out.”

I was aiming for a laugh. Would’ve settled for a half-hearted one, even. But as this drew on, it became more and more obvious that I’d pissed off the chief one too many times.

“Another preventable accident brought on by reckless behavior.” And he looked at me as though I shared a brain cell with Oberman, who hadn’t walked the halls in ten years.

I could take him giving me a hard time for another unnecessary call-out. Understood that he was pissed off. But lumping me in with that guy?

“Chief, I swear I wasn’t being reckless.” It took some doing to keep the frayed edge of annoyance out of my voice. “It was a regular weld job, responsibly executed. But the ventilation down here, or lack thereof—”

“Is everything okay?”

The chief and I turned at the same time, but whether his eyes popped out his head like mine did, I couldn’t tell. I was too busy picking my jaw up off the floor.

Because the man standing there was Mason Calder. Last season’s rookie of the year, and teacher’s pet.

And he was wearing nothing but a towel.

“I could ask you the same thing, son.” Chief Ortega’s eyes swept over Mason’s dripping frame from head to perfect toe.

As if he only just realized his absolute state of undress, Mason grabbed the loose knot, low on his hips, where his narrow line of fuzz disappeared. He did that, and I tried to jumpstart my brain.

“I was in the shower when the alarm went off.” He had the audacity to sound sorry about it. “Just wanted to make sure no one was hurt.”

(nothing but a towel)

“Another false alarm,” Ortega replied, and I realized he’d been saving up his personable demeanor for when someone famous entered the chat. “I was just explaining that I have to report this one to the board.”

“And I was just explaining that it wasn’t my fault. I’m contending with oversensitive sensors and Depression-era technology.”

Mason cracked a smile. His black hair was still dripping, and streamlets raced into his stubble, down a jaw that could slice through reinforced steel, wait what?

I gave my delirious brain a stern internal talking-to. Now wasn’t the time to be distracted by six feet of muscle and swagger wrapped in a towel. Especially since he was all of that, and also hockey, which was explicitly out of bounds.

“Does your daughter still play?” His smile widened, signed, sealed, and addressed to Ortega this time.

Startled by the sudden pivot at first, he came back with a simple, “Left wing.”

“Awesome,” Mason said. Then he did the unthinkable, and ran a hand through his wet hair to get it out of his face. Bastard. “I have two prime tickets to our season opener with your name on it. Nothing like a father-daughter hockey date.”

“Sounds a lot like a bribe,” Ortega said, narrowing his eyes. “You’d want to be careful with what you say next.”

I wanted to add that he should also be careful about that grip on his towel. Precarious, at best. The last thing I wanted was a butterfinger mishap to leave me in the unfortunate position of having to look.

“I would never.”

I blinked a few times fast, feeling like he’d caught me out mid-thought. But he was still looking at—and speaking to—Ortega.

And I needed to reel it in. Big time.

Mason continued. “I was just taking advantage of the fact that I ran into you. It would be an honor to have you both at the game, Chief.”

Ortega looked at me, then Mason, then his guys who were clearing out of the maintenance room with an “All clear”.

“Don’t make me regret giving you another last chance,” he said to me.

“You won’t. I mean, I won’t. You won’t regret anything, and I won’t make you regret anything. Scout’s honor.”

I was never a scout. I had no idea why I’d said that. Or why I was rambling.

He just shook his head, and followed his crew down the corridor and through the heavy doors that led back into the arena. It occurred to me once they swung shut, and not a moment sooner, that I’d been left alone with Mason and his towel.

“That was kinda cool,” he said, and did the hand through the hair thing again. Goddamn him. “I’ve never bribed anyone before.”

“Congrats, you’re officially qualified to run for office.”

His laugh played off the empty walls but more than that, it made the droplets on his pecs twitch. Made me want to lick th—

“I have to go.”

Mason nearly jumped clean out of his towel on account of me practically yelling at him. Well, it was more to the relentless voice in my head that refused to get out of the gutter. But he didn’t know that.

“Uh, thanks for the bribe and everything,” I said, avoiding contact with his curious blue eyes and endless miles of bare-naked skin. It left me staring at nothing over his right shoulder. “I owe you one.”

His gaze lingered on my face for a beat too long. I felt it. Felt him cock his head, that curiosity sparking brighter.

“You look… familiar,” he said finally. “Are you maybe related to the Zamboni guy?”

I looked him dead in the face. “I am the Zamboni guy.”