Chapter 14
Fourteen
Everly
Please let the plan have worked.
Please let Cole and Beckett get away safely!
As for me—well, I’m betting my life, literally, on the outdated sprinklers in the arena offices.
Yeah, it’s getting hot in here.
Listen, it was all going to plan just fine.
Cole’s message crackled through my walkie, giving the all clear.
Phase one done, phase two just beginning.
If all went according to plan, the head honcho should’ve taken off my way, all ready for Beckett’s bear spray and zip ties set in place, his ladder around the corner, six feet away.
I was feeling good, triumphant even, as I finished fastening my trip wire, pulling it taut across the hall, when I smelled it.
Smoke.
A harsh, chemical scent.
Ah. It’s coming from the arena.
My heart lurched in my chest. The evidence—this was the point, the whole reason I went that direction.
Everything that could prove Beckett’s innocence—the gambling ring’s communication logs, Cole’s texts to the organization, financial transfers timed to match the games Cole flagged.
Put together, they show Beckett’s name was planted in those records after the fact.
Prove that Cole was coerced and put these guys away.
If the evidence burns, they’re just three guys zip-tied in a building. No proof. Cole’s testimony becomes one disgraced player’s word against a criminal organization. Beckett’s name stays dirty. Everything we’ve survived here means nothing.
At least, those were my thoughts—along with I can’t let that happen—as I got up and peered back toward the service corridor, my heart in my throat. I knew I should have waited for Beckett…but my brain said that every moment I waited was wasted seconds.
I couldn’t.
So now I’m doing what Beckett would do, what Blue Line would do. I read the play and see what needs to be done.
And I’m running into the dark.
The west corridor is blistering. Heat that stings my skin and burns my eyes. I pull my sweater up over my nose, trying to filter out the smoke. I know that’s not how it works—I’ve written enough fires to burn down a small city—but I do it anyway.
But it’s not the smoke that burns my lungs—it’s the heat.
My book research did not prepare me for the level of heat.
Somewhere in the distance, I hear my name being called. Beckett’s realized where I’ve gone. He’ll be here soon. I’m running out of time.
I reach the office. The door hangs open. Flames climb the east wall, eating up pictures and rosters and hockey schedules, the accumulated memories of thirty years curling and blackening.
The filing cabinets are against the far wall. Metal. Scalding. But the fire hasn’t breached the drawers—contents still paper instead of ash. I pull the top drawer. Spot the manila folder. I grab it and shove it under my sweater.
You know, the heroine in my novel would have a sleek tactical bag and a one-liner about backing up your data. The real heroine has a bulky folder stuffed inside her sweater like Nothing to see here, folks. Just keep walking.
The smoke is starting to coat my lungs as a hacking cough nearly doubles me over.
I have what I need. It’s time to go.
I turn to leave.
And see it.
On the desk. A framed photograph, the glass flickering with gold in the firelight.
Coach Hart, and I think Beckett’s dad. He’s wearing a number forty-seven jersey, just like Beckett, and they’re about the same age. And with them is a little boy, dark, curly hair, maybe two years old, on skates.
Baby Beckett and his dad and my dad, here in Sutton Arena, and no, I’m not crying—you’re crying! Everyone is grinning. No one has any idea of what is going to go down.
The before picture. Of everything.
And it tells me something big—my dad was a good guy, and clearly there was more to him helping Beckett than favoritism.
Were mistakes made? Absolutely.
Do I need to live in them forever? Nope.
I grab the picture. Of course I do. Because it’s what you do for someone you care about. And I know this now—I deeply care about Beckett Benson (and like we discussed earlier, maybe I always have). And I’m tired of the hurt. I’m tired of a life of ashes and debris.
For both of us.
Three steps from the office door, the building makes a decision.
The fire has reached the critical threshold—the temperature triggers the ancient, failing sprinkler system.
Through twelve hours of blizzard and power failure and every infrastructural indignity, the sprinkler system has sat dormant, patient, its pipes accumulating cold with the quiet diligence of a system that knows its moment will come.
Its moment has come.
Water erupts from the ceiling heads—I can hear it pounding the arena floor, flooding inward toward my burning office door—the entire corridor transformed from a burning building into a deluge, a biblical event that has the sky opening and the great flood descending.
I am drenched. Instantly. Completely. The water is cold—aggressive, Minnesota March-groundwater cold.
My gasp is involuntary. My lungs seem to collapse in on themselves, every nerve firing, sharp and icy.
The files! I clutch them tighter, wrap my arms closer around my body, shield them from the storm. Because I did not run into a burning building and jam a manila folder into my waistband to have the evidence destroyed by the rescue system.
The fire hisses. Retreats. The sprinklers are winning, the building saving itself messily, belatedly, with the grace of a system that waited until the last possible moment to do its job.
I stumble into the corridor, soaked and shivering. Water is streaming from my hair, my clothes plastered to my body. I look like a wet poodle robbing a Staples. But it doesn’t matter.
The bag guys are caught. The evidence is safe. And the building is standing.
I’d call that a pretty great act-three victory.
“Everly!” A voice calls out to me through the downpour.
Out of the steam and water, a shape materializes. Moving fast. Broad shoulders, dark curly hair, dripping wet. Hands clutched around my forgotten hockey stick. Water runs in rivers down his face, but his eyes find me in an instant—ice blue and devastating.
He came after me.
I could cry.
Beckett came after me.
He stops ahead of me, shouting over the sprinklers. “Are you insane?”
“Probably!”
“You ran into a burning building. I was—”
“I got the evidence!” I hold up my shirt (don’t get excited, not that much), the folder visible above my waistband.
“You ran into a burning building for paper—”
“For proof. For Cole’s freedom. For your name.” I wiggle out the folder—the paper trail of a corrupt betting ring, soggy and cold. “Without this, they walk. Your record stays dirty. Cole goes to prison with no leverage. This is what makes it right.”
He stares at me. Water cascades over both of us, dripping down the stern lines of his face. His lips part slightly, his brows drawing together as though trying to make sense of me.
Then I hold out the photograph.
It’s water-spotted and the glass is cracked—it must have happened when I hit the floor, a single fracture line running diagonally, bisecting the two buddies and the boy between them. But the faces are clear. The grins are clear. The before picture, damaged but surviving.
“This was on his desk,” I say. Quietly. Under the sound of the water, the hiss of the dying fire.
He takes it.
Looks at it.
And something in his expression breaks, the hard lines softening, the slope of his shoulders letting down just a little. The way a single degree changes ice to water.
“You saved this for me?” he says, his voice breaking.
“I thought you’d want it.”
And then he looks up at me. Nods.
And quietly, Mr. Blue Line Benson falls apart.
BECKETT
Get. Yourself. Together!
Yes, I’m standing here in the hallway, crying.
Yes, I hate myself a little for it—not just the crying, but my anger and the terrible fear that made me scramble to find Everly, even if I had to light myself on fire to do it.
Because…shoot, I’m in love with this woman, and the fact is, I probably have been since before either of us knew what to do with it. Jealous, yes. But also curious, and maybe even a little mesmerized by all that gorgeous red hair and spitfire spirit.
But—not now, Beck! There’s no time to think about the photo or what Everly just said. There’s still another thug out there. It’s time to get out of here. No more plots, no more traps. No more crazy Home Alone scenarios.
No more crying. For the love.
So yeah, I tuck myself back together, wipe my eyes, fast and hard, hoping she didn’t see that.
(Okay, I’m not stupid, but…maybe she’ll think it’s the sprinklers?) Then I slide the backpack off my shoulders, unzipping the back pocket.
I stuff the photo inside, cramming it next to Everly’s laptop bag, and then hold it out to her. “Pack up the file. We need to go.”
Everly wastes no time. She tucks the folder inside, and when she’s finished, I heft it back onto one shoulder and grab her hand.
My fingers thread through hers—I’m choosing to push aside the thought that the last time I took her hand like this, the evidence of her betrayal sat burning a hole in my pocket.
There will be time to unpack that later. For now, we run.
Sorta seems like a theme at this point, but…whatever.
We take off through the corridor. Through the water and the smoke. Toward the arena—the fastest route to the south exit—through the rink, across the ice.
The rink is chaos.
The sprinklers have flooded the ice surface—inches of standing water on top of the existing ice, which is the worst possible combination for human locomotion outside of a greased trampoline.
The Zamboni sits, drained, on the center of the ice.
Dawn is leaking through the high windows, gray light filtering through steam and spray, turning the rink into something that looks like a cathedral being baptized by a plumber with a grudge.
We step onto the ice.