Chapter 37
Coast POV
The heavy mahogany doors of the Athletic Director's executive boardroom did not latch when I hit them with the flat of my boot.
The brass hardware sheared off the jamb with a sharp, splintering crack that echoed off the high coffered ceilings like a rifle shot.
Inside the boardroom, six heads snapped toward the doorway.
Seated around the twenty-foot walnut table beneath the portraits of past national champions were Director Aris Thorne, Compliance Officer Corinne Vane, Coach Bramwell Hayes, two university legal counsel representatives, and Derek Mercer.
Mercer was wearing his blue team polo, a silver pen balanced between his fingers, sitting in the primary presentation chair where the team captains usually sat.
He didn't hold the pen for long.
The moment his eyes met mine, his face drained of every drop of color, leaving his skin the shade of dirty dishwater.
I didn't carry my duffel. I didn't have my skates.
I wore a black thermal, dark canvas trousers tucked into mud-caked winter boots, and my eyes were rimmed in crimson from eighty hours without sleep.
My jaw was locked so tight the masseter muscles felt like twin blocks of iron beneath my stubble; my pulse was a slow, concussive pound against the inside of my ribs.
I walked into the center of the room, my boots leaving wet salt tracks across the Persian carpet.
I reached inside my heavy wool coat, pulled out Sonya’s blue university IT forensic folder and a red flash drive, and slammed them down on the center of the walnut table directly in front of Corinne Vane.
The impact rattled the crystal water carafes.
"Shut up and listen," I rasped.
My voice was stripped of volume, but the gravel in it had the lethal, unyielding density of an artillery barrage.
"Stuart, what is the meaning of this—" Thorne began, half-rising from his leather armchair.
"Look at the file, Aris," I commanded, my unblinking green eyes locking onto Mercer’s twitching mouth.
"Page three. Video surveillance feed from the Sub-Level Two corridor, March sixth, six-ten PM.
While Tallulah Barry was in your office delivering my certified recovery telemetry, Derek Mercer used a forty-dollar cloned keycard to enter the biomechanics lab. "
* * *
The boardroom went dead quiet, the only sound the low hiss of the steam radiators against the glass.
Vane pulled the folder toward her, her manicured fingers flipping to the forensic printouts.
"Page six," I continued, each syllable dropping like a hammer against the table.
"Digital keystroke logs. Mercer logged into the local console under Barry's terminal profile.
He downloaded my unredacted cortisone injection scans to the red flash drive currently sitting on your blotter.
At six-eighteen PM, he connected to an off-campus proxy server and emailed those confidential medical files to Rick Miller at The Boston Hockey Ledger. "
Mercer surged up from his chair, his hands flat against the mahogany, his voice pitching high and ragged. "That's a lie! He's trying to cover for her because they were sleeping together—"
I moved so fast the university lawyer flinched.
I didn't swing. I leaned across the table, my 228-pound frame casting a shadow that blotted out the chandelier light over Mercer’s face. I planted my left hand on the walnut right in front of his nose, my scarred knuckles inches from his chest.
"Sit down, Mercer," I whispered.
The quiet finality in my voice froze him in mid-motion. He dropped back into his seat, his Adam's apple bobbing in frantic swallows as he stared at my bloodshot eyes.
"You bought the cloner on your campus debit card," I murmured, leaning in until he could smell the dry adrenaline on my breath.
"Sonya pulled the purchase receipt from the bookstore terminal.
You leaked my medical file to force Hayes to give you my blue-line minutes in the ECAC tournament.
And you tried to frame an undergraduate fellow for academic fraud to cover your tracks. "
"Corinne," Hayes barked from the head of the table, his cigar forgotten in his fingers, his eyes blazing at the compliance officer. "Is this authentic?"
Vane’s eyes moved rapidly across the server logs, her mouth pinching into a thin, bloodless line. "The MAC address on the proxy connection matches the wireless network card of Mercer's campus laptop. The timestamp on the keycard clone matches the electronic lock on the Sub-Level Two door."
She looked up at Mercer, her administrative veneer cracking into naked disgust. "This is a federal HIPAA violation. It is an intentional breach of university academic integrity, and it constitutes criminal fraud under New York state law."
"Director Thorne," the senior university counsel intervened, leaning forward with his elbows on the table, his voice slick and cautious.
"If this evidence is verified, we have an internal disciplinary matter.
But if Stuart takes this to the state police or the NCAA before the Frozen Four in St. Paul, the athletic department is exposed to catastrophic public scrutiny.
Boston will pull draft personnel; the press will turn this program inside out. "
Hayes looked at me, his jaw tight, his voice carrying the harsh, commanding tone of a coach trying to preserve a championship season.
"Coast, we handle this in-house. We suspend Mercer indefinitely.
We tell Boston it was an internal clerical error.
If you drop a public bomb twenty-four days before the national tournament, you torch your own draft standing.
You'll lose your entry-level bonus. You could lose your eligibility for the Frozen Four. "
A dark, ruined laugh rattled in my chest.
The sound was hollow, devoid of humor, vibrating with a ferocity that made the university lawyer lean back in his chair.
I stood upright, looking Hayes dead in the eye, my hands hanging loose and steady at my sides.
"I don't give a damn about the Frozen Four, Coach," I rasped, the words tearing out of my throat with an absolute, terrifying clarity. "I don't give a damn about my draft standing. And I don't give a damn about Boston's entry-level bonus."
I pointed a calloused index finger at the compliance folder.
"Here are my terms," I said, my voice rattling the crystal glasses on the table.
"You will draw up an official administrative document exonerating Tallulah Barry of all misconduct by nine o'clock this morning.
You will reinstate her fellowship waiver, you will add a ten-thousand-dollar departmental research grant to her account, and Thorne will write a personal letter of recommendation to Northeastern and Boston University confirming her academic integrity. "
I turned my gaze on Mercer, who was trembling in his seat.
"And you will have campus security escort Mercer off this property in handcuffs before I walk out this door," I growled.
"If that paperwork is not signed in twenty minutes, I am walking down to the local news affiliate in Plattsburgh.
I will show them every file, I will show them every scan, and I will burn this athletic department down to the foundation stones. Decide."
Thorne looked at the lawyer. The lawyer looked at the floor.
"Get the campus police," Thorne said softly to his assistant. "And draft the exoneration letter."
* * *
The cold sleet hit my face as I burst through the double glass doors of the athletic administration building.
The Adirondack wind scoured the flagstones of the quad, whipping gray slush across my boots.
Standing beneath the concrete overhang of the science annex fifty yards away, her dark blue parka zipped tight, an umbrella clutched in her bare hand, was Sonya Finch.
She had watched the campus police cruiser pull up to the administrative lot. She knew what I had done inside that boardroom.
I crossed the flagstones at a dead run, my boots sliding on the wet slush, stopping four paces from her umbrella.
My chest heaved in short, ragged expansions, cold sweat prickling at the nape of my neck.
I didn't use my size. I didn't step into her space.
I stood there in the freezing rain, my broad shoulders sagging, my head dropping forward until my chin rested against my collarbone.
My hands hung open at my sides, trembling with a raw, shattered agony that stripped away every ounce of the captain, every ounce of the enforcer, every shred of the armor I had worn since I was seventeen years old.
"Sonya," I choked out, the word breaking into rough, bleeding pieces against the pavement.
Sonya didn't move her umbrella. Her pale blue eyes watched me through the sleet, cold, analytical, and uncompromising.
"The board cleared her," I whispered, my voice cracked, my throat raw from dry swallowing. "Thorne signed the exoneration. The fellowship is back. The grant is on her account. Mercer is in the back of a patrol car."
"That fixes her transcript, Stuart," Sonya said quietly. "It doesn't fix what you did to her."
"I know," I rasped, lifting my head.
The rain ran down my face, stinging the cut on my lip, mingling with the bitter moisture burning behind my eyelids.
I didn't have an argument. I didn't have a defense.
"I'm not going there to make her forgive me," I pleaded, my voice dropping into a desperate, hollow rasp that rattled my ribs.
"I'm not going there to ask for my life back.
I just need to see her. I need to get on my knees and tell her that she was right about everything. I need to tell her that I'm sorry."
My knees gave a slight, sickening tremor on the asphalt, my hands coming up in a raw, helpless gesture.
"Please, Sonya," I begged, the enforcer who had put twenty men through the boards reduced to a shattered dog begging for scraps. "Tell me where she is. On Julian's life, I swear to you I won't hurt her. Just tell me where she is."
Sonya stood motionless for five long seconds. The sleet drummed against the black nylon of her umbrella.
She looked at my hollowed-out face, at the ruined green of my eyes, seeing the absolute, irreversible death of my pride.
She reached into her coat pocket, pulled out a small piece of folded blue memo paper, and held it out into the rain.
"Sixty-four miles south," Sonya said, her voice dropping into a low, somber warning. "Her mother's house in Saratoga Springs. Four-twelve Maple Street."
I took the paper, my wet fingers closing around the wet ink as if it were the only oxygen left on the planet.
"If you raise your voice to her, Coast," Sonya whispered, "I will personally drive down there and finish what Mercer started."
"You won't have to," I rasped.
* * *
I didn't take the campus access road.
I hit the accelerator of the Ford truck, the heavy diesel engine roaring as the four-wheel drive tore through four inches of slush onto Route 73 South.
The wiper blades slapped against the windshield in a frantic, metronomic beat, clearing the gray mountain spray.
I shoved the transmission into drive, my left hand locked in a white-knuckled vise around the top of the steering wheel, my right hand gripping the blue memo paper flat against the console.
Sixty-four miles.
The highway signs for the Adirondack Northway flashed past through the freezing mist: INTERSTATE 87 SOUTH – ALBANY / SARATOGA.
My speedometer needle climbed past seventy, past eighty, the tires humming against the wet grooved concrete.
My heart hammered against my ribs with a ferocious, terrified rhythm that made my breath come in ragged gasps.
The Frozen Four in St. Paul didn't exist. The ninety-five-thousand-dollar signing bonus was garbage. The National Hockey League could shred my draft rights and scatter the pieces into the harbor for all I cared.
There was only a white timber house sixty-four miles away, and a woman whose hands had held my scars.
I pressed the pedal flat to the floorboards, staring through the sleet into the gray void of the highway, my soul screaming a single name into the freezing Adirondack wind:
Tallulah.
I was coming.
And I wasn't leaving until she broke me into the dirt or took me home.