by Alex P. Berg
The Nyte Patrol
Nyte Patrol, Book 1
Alex P. Berg
Copyright © 2019 by Alex P. Berg
All rights reserved. Published by Batdog Press.
No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer or with written permission from the author. For permission requests, please visit: www.alexpberg.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents portrayed in this novel are a product of the author’s imagination.
Cover Art by: Ravven (www.ravven.com)
If you’d like to be notified when more Nyte Patrol novels are released, please sign up for the author’s mailing list at: www.alexpberg.com/mailing-list/.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
About the Author
1
I swung. My bat whistled through the air. A tenth of a second later it struck. The bat pinged as the softball cracked off the barrel, a few inches above the taper. A ripple flew up my arm from the impact, reaching my shoulder at the tail end of my swing. I gritted my teeth as a blip of pain snapped at my surgically repaired AC joint. I snarled and hung my arm at my side, shaking it to dull the sting. Meanwhile, the ball dropped uneventfully in the dirt fifteen feet from second base, retaining all the momentum of a marble dropped into a vat of molasses.
“God damnit,” I said.
I stormed off toward the dugout, ripping my helmet from my head as I did so. A cool March breeze whistled past me as I stomped down the steps, wicking away the touch of sweat at my brow. I crammed my helmet onto a spot on the burnt orange and white shelf above the bench and let my bat clatter to the floor.
The pain in my shoulder had already dulled to a far off ache, a ghost of its former self, but it was nonetheless enough to put me on edge. Every time I felt it, it sent me back to the moment I’d torn it. The searing pain. The audible pop. The numbness. It had been months, but I still thought about it, much as the sports psychologists told me not to. Sure, it was easy not to focus on it when I felt no pain, but when the muscles supporting the joint snarled and hissed, how the hell was I supposed to ignore it?
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I forced air in and out of my lungs. Clear the mind, they’d told me. Relax. Unclench your muscles. Let the body and mind reach a state of quiet ease and the memory of the pain will disappear.
A perfect, lilting laugh shot through me, shattering the calm I’d been collecting. My eyes snapped open, and I spotted Janie Nguyen half doubled over, arm on Carrie Fletcher’s shoulder as she relished in some meaningless anecdote. Her songbird laugh carried across the dugout, light and airy and free. It grated at me like a chisel.
“What the hell are you laughing at?” I said.
Janie looked up at me, her laugh melting away. “What?”
“You don’t have anything to be chuckling about,” I said. “You were screwing up your position in the outfield again. You were at least twenty feet too far in on most of my swings. You were practically up on the longhorn.”
Janie straightened, her smile disappearing. “I was right where I needed to be.”
Janie had that perfect sort of body—not regular girl perfect, but softball perfect. Five foot nine, lean muscular legs, shoulders just wide enough that she could get a solid amount of power out of them during a swing. I’d never suffered much from body issues, but next to her, I always felt like my thighs were a touch too thick, my hips too wide, and my teeth not white enough, not to mention I hated having to look up at her.
“No, you weren’t,” I said. “If I’d hit a good one, it would’ve sailed over your head.”
Janie planted a hand on her hip. “I was in the right spot, Lexie, same as I always am. I adapt to the batter.”
“Excuse me?”
Carrie looked like she wanted to be anywhere else all of a sudden. “Guys, come on. Relax. It’s just practice.”
I took a step toward them and jabbed a finger in their direction. “No, it’s not just practice. If we screw up in practice, then we screw up in game, and if we screw up in game, then we lose games.”
Janie rolled her eyes and looked away. “Yeah, well, we also lose games if we don’t score any runs…”
I took another step forward. “You want to say that again? To my face, maybe?”
A stern, weather-worn voice cut across the dugout. “Rodriguez. Need to talk to you.”
Coach K’s head hovered at the far end of the dugout, her sunglasses pushed onto the crown of her head and her short gray hair framed by the afternoon sun. My nostrils flared, but I pushed my anger down and skirted Janie to join her on the steps by the fencing.
“What’s up, Coach?” I said, trying to keep my voice level.
Coach K leaned on her right leg, her back leg two steps down from the front. She pushed her sunglasses into place as she glanced at the mound where Heather was still chucking change-ups across home plate. She spared me a quick glance without moving her head much. “How’re you feeling, Lexie?”
“Okay.”
Heather pitched. Valentina swung and missed.
Coach nodded. “And your shoulder?”
“What about it?”
“How’s it feeling?”
“It’s fine.”
Coach stepped onto the back step, pushing her glasses up onto her forehead. This time she looked all the way at me. “It’s fine.”
“Yeah. Fine.”
Over on the mound, I spotted Heather looking our way. She gave me a nod of her head, as if to say, What’s up? I shrugged in reply. Who knows if she saw it.
Coach K shook her head, and she let the sunglasses fall back into place. “You know, Lexie. About last weekend…”
“I know, okay? You don’t have to remind me.” I’d gone oh for eight in my plate appearances over the doubleheader. “It’s not going to happen again.”
“I know you don’t mean for it to happen, but sheer force of will isn’t going to make it so.”
“Which is why I’m out here practicing, Coach.”
“And hitting nothing but grounders and pop flys.”
I swallowed back the lump in my throat. “I’m getting better, Coach. I can feel it.”
“I know you are, Lexie. I have no doubt you’re going to break out of this funk, trust me. But in the meantime, we’re two games back of Oklahoma and four back of Baylor already. We can’t afford to lose any more easy ones, so until I see you improve on the practice field, I’m moving Janie into your spot.”
I felt like I’d been slapped in the face. “You’re benching me?”
“I think you need to be honest with yourself. We brought you back too soon. Your shoulder needs more time to heal. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’ll be good for you.
”
The anger lingering in my stomach rushed up my throat, frothy and thick. I felt the heat building in my cheeks. “You’re kidding me, right? This is bullshit. I’ve busted my ass for this team for two and a half years and you’re stapling me to the bench? Are you fucking shitting me?”
Coach K drew herself up to full height, which was the same as mine but felt about a foot taller. She pulled her sunglasses all the way off and fixed me with a granite stare. “Don’t start with me, Rodriguez. You know play time is earned, not given. It’s as simple as that. So get it together and earn some.”
My fists clenched into balls at my side, and I felt my nails digging into my palms. My teeth squeaked as I ground them together. I shouldn’t have said anything else. Technically I didn’t, but the muffled shriek of agony that forced itself out of my throat as I turned and headed back into the dugout wasn’t much better than dropping an extra couple f-bombs.
My feet were leaden bricks, thumping off the dugout floor like artillery shells. My muscles were coiled and tight. The sound of grunts of exertion, yells, and balls clinking off bats faded behind the violent rush of blood in my ears. Darkness crept in at the edges of my vision.
Me? Benched? It seemed like a bad joke. Worse. A nightmare. I wanted to scream, to punch something, someone, to lash out, to break things.
Before I knew it, I’d reached down and grabbed a bat. My hands wrapped around the grip, squeezing it with every ounce of my strength. A green Gatorade jug stood on a pedestal in the middle of the dugout. I howled with rage and lunged toward it, whipping the bat through the air at fastball speed. Plastic cracked and ice water flew as I blasted the jug in the side. I heard screams, but all I saw was the jug. I swung my arms and again I smashed it, bellowing with anger as I hit it again and again. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I logged the screams around me, especially a sharp, poignant one nearby, but I didn’t let it stop me. I kept swinging until I was soaked and my arms ached and my AC joint wanted to kill me.
I stood there, huffing and puffing as the rage bled from me like air from a balloon. That’s when I felt it. The weight of two dozen sets of eyes searing into my back. I turned, taking in the horrified looks of my teammates, but it was the look of fear on the girl who lay on the dugout floor that hit me the hardest.
Janie Nguyen lay almost completely underneath me, as soaked as I was and her eyes wide with fear. For a moment I didn’t understand it, but as the anger fled, memory flooded back. I heard Janie’s shriek above all the others, saw the whip of her black ponytail in the corner of my vision, and heard her thump to the floor as my bat had whistled past her, inches from her face.
Christ. What had I done?
2
I sat at my laptop, clicking idly at the search results without really looking at them. Buds filled my ears, blasting my eardrums with Disturbed and Dark Tranquility and anything else I could find in my playlist that was angry and depressing and fit my mood. My phone buzzed again as it logged another message, but I didn’t look at it. I’d silenced it and put it face down on my desk for a reason.
I’d never been in a traumatic accident, but I finally understood how car crash victims felt. My entire afternoon was a blur. I only vaguely remembered running from the dugout, pushing people away as they looked at me in horror or tried to talk to me. Racing to my ’94 Chevy Suburban and turning the keys in the engine, hitting the gas, and getting the hell out of there. I didn’t remember any red lights, any stop signs, any crosswalks. I didn’t remember a damn thing until the sound of my dorm room door slamming shut behind me signaled I’d reached my safe space.
Thank god Tanya wasn’t around.
I kept clicking on the listings, but I barely read a thing in front of me. God, how had everything fallen apart so fast? Four months ago, I’d been on top of the world, batting in the three hundreds, feeling great about the prospects of my upcoming season, and one stupid swing, a silly, errant swing like any other had thrown it all into chaos. I hadn’t done anything differently. Used a bat of a different weight. Overextended or taken a hack into a dirt. There hadn’t been any reason for the tear, nothing I’d done to deserve it. It had just happened.
I’d gotten it repaired. The doctors at St. David’s and at UT Sports Medicine had done a great job. After the rehab I’d gone through, it should be fine. For the most part it was, but every now and then the injury reached out and pinched me, reminded me it was still there, smacking me down any time I thought I might’ve crested its steep peak. Even if it wasn’t physically affecting me anymore, it still had a place in my head, poking, prodding, sapping my confidence. Playing to my insecurities. Building within me anger and resentment.
It had finally gotten the best of me. I mean sure, Janie Nguyen was a catty bitch and there was no way in hell she was deserving of my spot, but that didn’t mean she deserved to get blasted in the face with twenty ounces of aluminum. If I’d been a half a foot to my left when I’d started swinging, I could’ve knocked her unconscious. Broken her face. I could’ve literally killed her.
And now I was going to pay the price. The look on Coach K’s face as I’d run to the parking lot had said it all. She wouldn’t just staple me to the bench now. She’d use glue. Straps. She’d weld me there if she had to. Hell, I might never play again. I might get kicked from the team, not just for being a crappy hitter, a bad teammate, and an increasingly sour grump but for misconduct. For attempted assault. And then what the hell would I do? How would I pay my tuition and room and board if I lost my softball scholarship? To say that my parents were middle class would be stretching the truth. They had a hard enough time pitching in the half my scholarship didn’t cover.
I scrolled through another page on my laptop. Whether consciously or not, I’d started searching for help wanted ads. Anything that was close to my dorm and let me work odd hours. I wasn’t sure if I’d need a part-time job. I didn’t know if I’d really be kicked off the team and forced to fend for myself, but I sure wasn’t going to crawl to my parents and tell them I’d let my anger get the best of me, screwed up the most important thing in my life, and jeopardized the degree that might earn me the living softball almost assuredly never would. Regardless, it gave me something to do. Something to mindlessly click while I avoided interacting with the real world or, even worse, starting on the statics problem set I was in no way ready to tackle at the moment. If I couldn’t concentrate on a webpage, I sure as hell couldn’t focus on moments of inertia.
As I switched over to Craigslist, a pop-up ad appeared in my browser. It didn’t feature ten hot tips for whitening teeth the natural way or fifteen childhood celebrities that I’d be amazed to see now, but I closed it anyway.
I scrolled down the Craigslist home page, looking for the help wanted section, but another pop-up ad blinked to life. Again I clicked on the red button at the top left corner, but as soon as I closed the window, it reappeared. I thought it might’ve been one of those scam pop-ups and that I’d have to reboot my browser, but strangely enough the window didn’t have any flashing banners and threats about viruses. Instead, it was a help wanted ad, for a business nearby no less. Since when did Craigslist have user-tailored pop-ups?
My brow furrowed as I read the ad. It was extremely vague, something about a secretarial position, but the hours seemed right and I actually had the requirements listed, even down to the fact that it wanted someone with a large car. Did Google know what I drove? Corporate data gathering efforts were getting out of control.
Over the blast of heavy metal in my ears, I heard the crack of the door behind me. A moment later, Tanya descended into the beanbag at my side. “Oh my God, Lexie. I had the worst day.”
I glanced at her. Tanya was one of the more perpetually upbeat people I knew. She was a great roommate and one of my better friends. Any other day, I would’ve been interested to know what qualified as a terrible day for someone like her, but not today. Not when I’d literally gone through the worst day myself.
Tanya didn’t ask if I ca
red though. “So first off, I was sure I’d lost my phone. It wasn’t in my pocket. It wasn’t in my backpack. I looked everywhere for it after class. And then I remembered I’d been using it in the bathroom on the second floor of the Cockrell building, and I was like, oh my god, did I leave it there? But when I went back to look for it, it was gone, and I was like, did someone steal it, or did I flush it?”
I pulled my headphones from my ears. “Tanya. Seriously. Not now.”
She cocked her head, but she wasn’t put off. “Are you alright? What’s going on?”
What’s going on was that my world had been turned upside down and I DID NOT want to talk about it. I sure as hell didn’t want to talk about it with Tanya, who would tell me everything was going to be alright and that I should look on the bright side and that every shower had a rainbow, but if I even hinted at what was going on, Tanya would do her darnedest to pull it out of me. She’d poke and prod and insist and I just couldn’t right now. I simply couldn’t.
Tanya’s eyebrows drew together in concern, and she leaned in a little. The popup ad on my computer blinked, drawing my eye. It flashed again as I looked at it. Not the whole thing. Just the address.
Tanya’s lips pursed. “Lexie…”
I grabbed my keys. “I’m fine, Tanya. I’ve got to go.”
