16. Nolan #2
Misha was the last to arrive, and he performed a traditional ceremony. He set a row of little carved wooden bears on his stall's top ledge one at a time. He carefully turned each one to face the room. Then he sat and closed his eyes, drifting to wherever it was he went.
The coaches came in and said less than they'd said all series. The whiteboard had four things on it. Three were systems and the fourth was the words: EVERY MINUTE.
Boston put everything on the ice. They'd done the math. Win one game at home, and it's over.
Nobody scored in the first period, and that was a win for us. Misha only had to be sharp twice.
Boston scored six minutes into the second.
The goal was nobody's fault. It was the fates smiling on our opponents.
Their winger chipped a puck off the wall past our defenseman.
Suddenly, it was two-on-one going the other way with our tired legs chasing.
Misha interrupted the pass, but it hit the far post and went in on a bounce.
One-nothing. The crowd sounded like they'd already won.
We didn't fold up our tents. Wes said the same four words after every shift, right back at them, and we stayed in the game. Boston did their best to stop chasing the puck and sit on the lead, creating an impenetrable wall between us and the net.
Between the second and third, in the tunnel, my season nearly ended on a rubber mat.
It was nothing, like always. The runner had rucked up half an inch where it met the concrete, and I hit it with my left toe. My hip failed to correct, and I started going down in the hallway.
A hand caught my elbow. It was Elias. He put me back on my feet with zero drama and then whispered, "Win the game."
Elias didn't let go right away. We stood there one beat, his hand on my arm, my heart going, both of us looking at the mat like it mattered. Neither of us said anything. Neither of us pretended it hadn't happened, either.
He didn't step back into being furniture, and I didn't shake him off. Then the horn sounded up the tunnel for the third, and he let go.
We tied it 8:12 minutes in.
It started with me on the wall. Their defenseman had been rubbing me out all night, and this time I didn't fight him for the puck; I let him win it.
Or, I let him think he'd won it. He barreled past me to play the puck, and I spun off the contact on the good side.
The puck sat between his skates, and I chipped it loose to the point.
That was where Brick should have been.
He wasn't there. He had decided to sneak backdoor. The puck went to Wes instead, and he saw the play a half-second before anyone else. He threw the puck backdoor to Brick.
Brick buried the goal in the net as if he'd been scoring his entire life, and then he briefly looked horrified.
The bench lost its mind. Jamie hugged everyone he could find. Wes laughed so hard that he barely set up for the next draw. Brick skated past the bench and yelled, "I've been saving that!"
It was one-one, and regulation ended that way. I could practically see the fans back home standing in front of their TVs.
Overtime is brutal in hockey. All the systems fray, and so do the bodies.
Four minutes in, their center tried to force a pass through the middle of the neutral zone.
I read it leaving his blade and got my stick on it.
It cost me a sharp pain down the outside of the thigh.
Jamie was already moving, and I got the puck to him while he slowed up against the boards.
His eyes went top shelf. The goalie bought the fake, and Jamie shot low, blocker side, six inches off the post, into the spot he'd hammered in the practice rink.
The horn blew, and the building fell silent.
The team dogpiled Jamie at the far boards, and I got there last. I put my gloves on top of the pile. Under the noise, the kid was yelling something over and over.
Finally, I made it out: "Misha! Misha, I lied with my eyes!"
We'd tied the series. There would be a Game Seven at home.
I came off the handshake line and found the pillar past the camera well. Elias was looking at me. We held each other's gaze for three beats, and then I looked away.
***
The team brass decided to get us home the same night to sleep in our own beds. We landed at Lambert a little before three in the morning, and St. Louis was still awake.
Nobody published the time of our arrival, but they were there anyway. Maybe somebody had a cousin who drove a fuel truck. By the time we taxied in there were maybe two hundred people strung along the perimeter fence in the dark.
When the first of us came down the stairs, a roar went up, applause and voices and somebody pounding the chain-link like a drum, all the way until the buses pulled out.
Jamie pressed his face against the window and watched. "They waited up," he said.
"Get used to it," Brick said from two rows back. "Score the winner tomorrow and they'll rename a highway after you."
The bus dropped us at the arena lot, and Elias drove us home through a city pulling an all-nighter. Lights were on in kitchen windows at three-fifteen. A bar on Euclid had its doors propped open, and a crowd watched a replay of the game from the sidewalk.
***
Elias turned both locks behind us, and I thought we were done for the evening, until he stopped at the island instead of saying goodnight.
"Michael closed the loop on the lease here in the building while we were in the air," he said. "Seven-A. Four floors down."
I turned to face him.
"Gone. They broke it yesterday while we were in Boston—movers in and out in one morning, dissolution filed in Delaware the day after. Manager says the place was barely lived in. It didn't look like they hired a cleanup service. It just looked undisturbed."
"Coincidence?" I asked.
It was the first thing I'd said to him since the discussion of the lie that was more than "yes" or "okay." It came out flat.
"I don't know. They couldn't see up here from there, but that might not have been the point. If they were watching, they'd still be here."
Elias checked the locks and windows before going to bed. "Try to sleep," he said.
"Try to sleep," he said. Not get some rest. Not the client line. Just that.
The guestroom door closed, and I went to bed. I looked at the clock—3:52. I turned off the alarm on my phone and turned it off for the first time in months.
I slept—not much and not well. When I woke, the clock read 6:08. I did a half-hearted version of my stretching and headed for the kitchen.
Elias was up. He was at the island and watched me lacing my sneakers.
"Nolan—"
"I'm walking. Don't."
"After Tierney, I'm not sure—"
"It's the only thing that fixes the hip." I stood. "I'll be gone for less than two hours. Somebody was looking for what Tierney knew. I don't know what he knew. It's the same walk I've done two hundred times. I'll have the phone."
He stared at me, and I kept talking. "Your firm has a policy. You told me the first week you were proud of it—protection without captivity. People get to keep living their lives, and you make it survivable instead of building a cage around them."
He didn't reach for his shoes. He knew he couldn't win the argument.
"Phone on," he said. "Loud, not silent. If you see one thing, don't stop to confirm it. Turn around, call me, and walk toward people. Give me the instructions back."
"Turn around, call you, and walk toward people."
"I mean it, Nolan."
"You aren't my first bodyguard."
"I know."
On the way back, Maryland Avenue was just starting to come to life. A man was hosing down the block, and there was another under the new awning, talking on his phone. He had a gym bag, wearing sneakers and a quarter-zip. It was medical-campus camouflage.
I was half a block past him before I realized he was following. I'd seen his face and there was nothing particularly unique about it. He was like an AI-generated image of a normal guy.
My stride stayed steady, and I didn't look back. If I would, he'd know I clocked him. When I turned onto Euclid, my heart pounded in my chest.
I reached into my pocket and gripped my phone, hearing Elias's voice—Turn around, call me, and walk toward people.
He peeled off three blocks from home, turning down an alley. It's probably nothing, don't make it a thing, you'll know it if it's real
Elias took one look at me when I walked through the door and set his coffee down.
"What?" he asked.
"Coffee place on Maryland. There was a guy with a gym bag. Couldn't be more average, and it was probably nothing. Followed me a few blocks and then turned off."
"You didn't call."
"No."
He didn't push me. "Michael sent something while you were out. I was going to sit on it till you'd had coffee." He turned the phone toward me. "You don't get the coffee."
It wasn't a document or a text. It was a photograph.
Somebody in St. Louis had painted their garage door—the entire garage—Steamers blue, with GAME 7 across it in letters five feet tall.
Underneath, in smaller letters, it read: MERCER WILL YOU SIGN MY BABY?
A woman held a baby in the photograph. The baby looked unimpressed.
"Michael wants to know," Elias said, "if this is a normal thing your city does, or if he should alert someone." I looked at it for a second longer, then something in my chest let go, and I laughed long and hard.
Elias joined me, and I saw tears in the corners of his eyes.
When I finally calmed down, I said, "Game Seven in two days."