17. Elias #2
"I called Seattle," I said. "I disclosed us to Mac. He now knows the relationship, per company policy. I reported the folder, too. He knows that you know everything."
"What happens to you?"
"Eamon reads it all, and I get a plane ticket to Seattle when the Cup Final is over. I don't know the details yet." I closed my notebook. "They didn't pull me. Mac wouldn't change operators two nights before Game Seven."
Nolan took three steps toward me. "You could've sat on it two more days," he said. "Nobody would've known."
"I'd have known."
"Yeah." He held back a smile. "That call wasn't boring."
He turned around and his bedroom door clicked shut. Maybe there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
***
I slept until 6:05 without Maddie's voice waking me earlier.
Nolan had turned his alarm off the night we got back from Boston, and he left it off. His door stood open. The bed was empty and made. His sneakers were gone from beside the closet, and the mat was still rolled in the corner.
My phone held two messages.
The first was sent at 5:38.
Nolan: I went to the park; my ringer's up; you can reach me.
The second came in at 5:56.
Rollins: Subject entered park at Lindell, on foot. Holding at tree line per your standing order. Lost visual in the woods. Advise.
Nine minutes ago. I called Nolan. It rang.
I was dressing while the phone rang. Shoes, keys, and my gun. I didn't wait for the elevator. I took the back stairs, two at a time, phone at my ear.
Nolan didn't answer. I called again. I still couldn't remember what I told Frey other than up before five. Yesterday, Nolan saw a man with a gym bag and a bland face like nobody. The man followed Nolan, turning down an alley soon enough to dampen suspicion.
It would be difficult for Rollins to follow into the woods without Nolan hearing him. I'd given the order—he is not to know.
I texted Rollins to hold the Lindell side, and I left through the service door, running to the SUV. I pulled onto Lindell with the phone ringing a third time.
Fog sat in the hollows of the park, and the sun was rising behind me, casting early morning sunlight across the deep green grass. It looked like the most beautiful morning of the year.
I took the park road west. I knew the route. Nolan directed me through it with a stop at the top of Art Hill. He told me he walked the woods behind the World's Fair Pavilion.
Where the road bent nearest the woods, I pulled the SUV onto the shoulder, parked, and ran.
My body still remembered what it was for. It was built for forward motion, in or out of the pool. The ground was damp from the overnight rain, and I slowed as I made my way downhill and listened.
I heard birds, my own feet, and the distant traffic on Skinker.
Then I heard an engine. It was idling.
I climbed the next hill and walked out of the trees at the top of the slope.
I saw the Pavilion lightly wreathed in fog. A path ran behind it. There was a midnight-blue car sitting off the service road at the path's far end, engine running.
Nolan appeared. He wore a gray jacket with his cap pulled low. He was approximately a hundred feet from me, walking toward the car, but the building would still obscure it in his sightline. I rang the phone again, but it remained unanswered in his pocket.
The car moved. No lights. Only the faint sound of gravel crunching. Then it veered across the grass. The driver headed in a straight line down the path, directly toward the walking man.
"NOLAN!"
I was already stumbling down the slope. He turned toward my voice, and that half-second was the save. The car continued moving forward, but it caught Nolan with a glancing blow, not head-on.
I heard a sound like shoulders hitting the boards, and Nolan's body landed on the grass, rolling sideways. He didn't get up.
The car didn't brake. It curved around back onto the service road and disappeared. I let it go and ran to Nolan.
The car had been close enough to answer the question about whether I shared the route with Frey. The information I shared was the reason Nolan lay on the ground in the wet grass shortly after six a.m.
I fell to my knees beside him. He was conscious. His eyes were open, and I saw anger in them. Blood ran down the left side of his face from somewhere above the hairline. He breathed through his teeth in short, sharp hisses.
"Don't move yet." I was already checking his body with my hands—head, neck, collarbones. "Eyes on me."
"Elias—"
"Eyes on me. What day is it?"
"Game Seven." He hissed again. "It's the day before game day, and some son of a bitch just—" He tried to sit, but the hip stopped him. He grimaced and rolled his head back.
I placed a hand on his chest. His heart slammed beats underneath it.
"Stay down," I said. "Stay down. I've got you."
He stopped trying to stand.
"Squeeze my hand. Good. Now the left." The grips were even. I saw no unusual dilation in his pupils. The scalp wound was a laceration above the left temple, ragged, bleeding dramatically, but it was probably shallower than it looked.
His collarbones were intact. He successfully took a deep breath at my request, but it caused pain. There could be rib injuries, but likely manageable. The hip was a question mark. I told him not to move again.
I pulled off my jacket, folded it, and put his hand over it against the scalp. "Keep the pressure on. Hold it there."
"I know how head wounds work."
"Yes, you do."
I called Michael. He answered on the first ring. I gave him the details. "I need a doctor, a safe location, and Mac, in that order. No ambulance. No radio traffic."
"Copy. Stay on him." He didn't ask any questions, but he kept the line open.
Nolan lay with my jacket pressed to his head, and he looked around. There were no signs of concussion.
"Elias, the driver," he said. "I saw him for a second when I turned." He breathed. "It was him, the follower from yesterday. It was the guy with the gym bag." He looked at me. "Same face. The face that looked like nobody."
"Okay." I sat on the ground beside him, making sure I could breathe. "Michael's sending a doctor."
"He was waiting for me," Nolan said. "He was sitting there with the engine running. Sitting on my path. I heard the phone ring, and I figured I'd call you from the turn. I needed two more minutes." He stopped for a moment. "Elias, how did he know the path?"
"Doc's eighteen minutes out," Michael said in my ear. "Mac's up."
"Copy."
Nolan started to get up. It was the two-stage process he used to get up off the floor after his routine or the ice after a hard check. He loaded his weight on the right side first. "Fine," he whispered.
I didn't try to stop him. He got halfway and paused. One hand was flat against the wet grass. He raised his head and looked at me.
"Stay," he said. "Stay until the doc gets here."
"I'm not going anywhere."
"Good."
He reached out and held onto my wrist while the fog burnt off around us. Michael said the doc was nearly there, and he asked whether the principal was stable.
I looked at Nolan, and he looked back at me.
"Stable," I said.