Delay of Game

by Tracey Richardson

  Doubt gnawed her. If Kathleen failed to come up with something from Dani’s phone, what then? In her fantasies, she confronted Alison and Dani, threatened them and did whatever it took to elicit a confession. But her calmer self said that kind of thuggery would get her nowhere and might prematurely tip her hand that she was onto them. Kathleen was right about taking things one step at a time, about playing it smart. Hockey too was very much about having a plan and executing it, not running around the ice without rhyme or reason.

  She leaned against the boards, grabbed a water bottle and sprayed her face. She was stupid to have come back to the team, to have thought that Alison had risen above cheating, unprincipled manipulations, connivery. To have thought that a team presided over by Alison Hiller could win the gold medal fair and square. Or maybe she did know deep down that things would degrade to this, but thought she could look the other way for the sake of a shot at gold. Well, maybe she could have if it hadn’t been for Niki getting caught in the middle. Niki was her Kryptonite, her conscience, her soul, the better part of her that made her want to do things by the rules. It hadn’t always been that way, but it was now, and the realization that she was no longer the person she’d been the last time she played for Team USA or the last time she’d been a part of Niki’s life hit her like a blind body check smashing her into the unforgiving boards and glass, dizzying her for a moment.

  She rejoined the drill, took a pass and went in on the goalie, scored again. Today, she seemed to be able to score at will. Some days were like that in sports, where everything came easy. Tomorrow, who knew? Tomorrow the stick might feel like a foreign object in her hands.

  Kendall, a young defensemen who’d won the NCAA’s top award last year, skated up to her, a grin splitting her freckled face. “You keep scoring like that, Cruzie, and there’s no way we’re gonna lose.”

  Eva shook her head. “It won’t be up to me. Or you. Or any one player. It’s all of us, kid. And then it’s something else entirely out of our control.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We can and do work our asses off, try to be our very best—”or cheat and manipulate—“and there’s still a force out there that has nothing to do with any of that stuff and yet has everything to do with who wins and who loses.”

  Kendall’s eyebrows pinched in confusion. “You lost me, Cruzie.”

  “Luck. Karma. The hockey gods. Don’t ever discount that stuff. And right now, I’ve got a bad feeling those three things aren’t working in our favor.”

  Kendall skated off, shaking her head, the stubbornness of youth making her believe that she and her teammates were the only architects of their future. Eva once thought she knew it all too.

  After the last whistle, Eva sprinted to the showers. If she hurried, she would have Kathleen to herself for a few minutes in the therapy room. She’d let Kathleen rub down her hams and quads with an anti-inflammatory cream because it would give them the excuse to have their heads together if anyone walked in.

  “Find anything?” Eva said to her.

  “A little, but not as much as I would have liked. Her Hotmail account on her phone is password protected, so I couldn’t get into that.”

  “Did you try to guess her password?”

  “No, no time.” Kathleen chuckled quietly. “But knowing the half-wit she is, it’s probably her jersey number and her nickname.”

  Comps34. Or 34Comps. “I’ll try it later if I can borrow your laptop.”

  “Be my guest. The good news is, I was able to check out her text messages from the last few days.”

  “Jackpot?”

  “Not exactly, but better than nothing.”

  “All I want to know is if she was the one who took that damned hot tub picture.”

  “Can’t prove it. I quickly scanned the photos on her phone and it’s not there. Which doesn’t mean she didn’t erase it or move it somewhere else.” A triumphant smile tugged at the corners of Kathleen’s mouth. “I checked the texts she hasn’t gotten around to deleting yet. Stuff from the past week or so.”

  “Please tell me you found something.”

  “I did. Not hard evidence that she’s directly involved, but a few texts gloating to friends about Niki’s demotion and the scandal the whole thing caused.”

  Eva’s spirits dropped. “I wouldn’t expect anything else from her. There’s got to be something else, Kath. I know she had something to do with not only that damned photo, but all the other weird shit, like knowing Niki’s team plays and stuff like that.”

  “Well, there was a curious exchange between her and Alison. I don’t know if some of the texts were deleted or what, but there was one from Dani saying she just wants to play hockey now and to please don’t ask her to do anything else.”

  “And what was Alison’s response?”

  “Something about the luck of the Irish on their side and how the leprechaun was coming through in spades.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “Of course it is, but it is Alison we’re talking about. And then she said she expects Dani to do whatever she asks of her until the Games are over. That’s it, that’s all I got.”

  “What do you think it means?” The information hadn’t done anything to change Eva’s mind about Dani and Alison’s guilt, but it was a riddle that was nowhere close to being solved.

  Kathleen lowered her voice as clanging doors in the distance signaled the approach of others. “I think your gut instinct is right about them, but it’s not enough to confront them. Yet.”

  “Hell, I’m thinking of going over their heads with what I’ve got.”

  “Don’t, Eva. You don’t have anything concrete. Not even close.”

  Eva sighed in exasperation and swung her legs over the side of the massage table. “Will you put a note under Niki’s door asking her to meet me? Tell her it’s important.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Penalty Kill

  She’d been crazy to agree to meet Eva, but here she was skulking around Stanley Park, near the gigantic totem poles that stretched forty, fifty feet in the air, where she’d been instructed to wait. It was dusk and she’d thrown on an oversized Canada Goose parka and matching aviator hat, the fur trim of it flopping over her face and, she hoped, disguising her.

  With the opening ceremonies only two days away, the city buzzed with Olympic fever. People of all nationalities and ages swarmed the streets and the shops like ants on honey. Roads were blocked off, traffic rerouted, cops patrolled in an ever-growing army. Signs welcoming visitors sprouted like weeds, urging them to shop here, buy this, visit that. Languages, most of which Niki didn’t recognize, floated on the air like smoke.

  Concentrating on her team and on her duties was more and more difficult when there was so much to see and hear and smell. Even the street food vendors were going international, the aroma of sauerkraut, curry, fish, cabbage, lime juice, garlic infusing every breeze.

  “There you are.”

  Eva’s voice, deep and warm like a cup of hot chocolate on a bone-chilling day, heated her insides, and Niki jumped at the sheer, sudden closeness of her.

  “Sorry,” Eva said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. You’re actually the second person I did that to. It was your boots that finally gave you away.”

  Her Columbia lace-ups were practical, if a little on the butch side. “If I’d worn Uggs, you’d never have found me, right?”

  “You’re right about that. I’ve never seen so many Uggs! I might be scarred for life.” She pointed to her own feet, clad in Sperry topsiders. “We’re probably the only two women in this city wearing practical boots that you could actually hike with in the mountains.”

  “We never were much for fashion, were we?”

  Eva steered her behind a massive red cedar, its girth as big as a compact car. The sudden movement and the illicitness of it shot a bolt of excitement through Niki. A forbidden excitement that reminded her of the hot kiss in the alley.

  “I’m sorry for making you meet me out
here,” Eva said. “But I think we need to talk about what happened and what we’re going to do about it. What they did to you…”

  A shadow fell over Niki’s heart, Eva’s words a stark reminder of why they were here. Seconds ago she’d wanted Eva to kiss her and to hell with everything else. Kissing had always defined their relationship, had always been the marquee to their attraction. They’d never skipped it and gone straight to sex, all the years they were together. Kissing was an adhesive, sometimes a salve on bad days. Always, it was the low-burning flame that sustained and nourished them and aroused them. Now, kissing had put Niki into one hell of a mess.

  “Wait a minute,” Niki said, putting her lusty thoughts out of her head. “They didn’t do anything to me. We did this, Eva. We kissed in that hot tub, out where anyone could have seen us. And apparently somebody did. We were reckless, and now I’m paying the price.”

  In the day’s fading light, Eva’s eyes darkened to the pitch of night. “No, Nik. We didn’t do anything wrong. Somebody’s been gunning for us all along. Even before the hot tub. Look at how my team miraculously figured out your team’s strategy ahead of that game, and Lynn and Alison having dinner together. And then at the hotel in Whistler, I saw Dani Compton and Lynn O’Reilly texting one another.”

  “Wait. You never told me about that.”

  Eva shook her head. “No, I didn’t, because you didn’t want to go there.” Her voice thickened with worry. “I want to know how you’re doing, Nik. How you’re feeling. About what happened.”

  Niki closed her eyes, leaned against the sturdiness of the tree. It had been there for hundreds of years, and the thought of its longevity, momentarily at least, reduced her worries into fleeting annoyances. “It sucks. And it totally blindsided me. But there’s nothing I can do about it. For the sake of my players, I’m going to see this through. They’re the reason I haven’t walked away from this whole thing, because that would be worse for them right now.”

  “Aw shit, Niki.” Eva kicked lightly at the base of the tree. “I’m so fucking sorry. It’s not fair, what’s happening. And I know we can’t undo what we did, but I want to find out who’s behind this.”

  “Don’t.” Niki employed her harshest tone. “You need to concentrate on hockey right now, not run around playing Sherlock Holmes. Besides, the damage has been done. It’s over.”

  “Don’t you want justice against whoever did this? They don’t deserve to get away with it. Jesus, Niki! For once in your life, fight, goddammit!”

  Niki’s throat tightened with the words jumbled there. Eva was wrong; she was a fighter. She’d successfully beat back her grief and despair and loneliness enough to raise a daughter by herself. Was that nothing? Well, Eva wouldn’t know about that. Eva had only ever lived for herself, doing whatever she wanted, erupting into temper tantrums, disregarding consequences, letting her emotions rule her. Well, not Niki. Emotions slowed you down, clogged the road, diverted you until you got lost in one hell of a hurry. It was why, in Shannon’s final weeks, she shoved her emotions aside so she could be strong, stoic, a wall that wouldn’t crumble. She couldn’t imagine what it would have been like for both of them, for Rory too, if she’d lashed out or crumpled into a quivering heap of raw emotion.

  In a trembling voice, she started to say, “You have no right,” when Eva’s mouth suddenly found hers, snuffing out the rest of her words, scrambling her brain until no other words or thoughts could form. The kiss was a trip wire beneath her running feet. And oh, was it sweet.

  Eva pressed lightly against her, her body firm, familiar, reassuring. Niki grasped her shoulders, held them like she was clutching onto the sides of a lifeboat. She kissed Eva back, drawing strength from her steadiness, her mere presence, and from her fierce sense of right and wrong. Eva was no less a rule enforcer than Niki, even if she went about it in a way that was loud and raw.

  Eva’s lips brushed her jaw, her ear. “We can’t let this happen again,” she whispered urgently. “We can’t lose each other again over this…this nonsense. Please. Help me find out who did this.”

  Eva was right. They couldn’t undo what had happened, but they might be able to stop any further injustices. “How?”

  * * *

  Eva told her about Kathleen checking Dani’s cellphone and about the strange text exchange with Alison. “This luck of the Irish stuff and the leprechaun, it bothers me,” Eva said. “Like it’s a code for something.”

  “Shit.” Niki’s face paled. “It could be nothing, but Lynn O’Reilly is Irish. And very proud of it. On game days, she always wears either a tiny leprechaun brooch or shamrock earrings.”

  Relief swept through Eva, but not for long. They were onto something, but solving it wasn’t going to be easy. “That’s got to be it, then. We have to find evidence that Lynn’s involved in this. Can you get into her phone? Or her laptop or something?”

  “I suppose. I don’t know. I’m not good at this clandestine stuff.”

  “You can do this, Nik. You have to. We can’t let them get away with this.”

  Niki looked shaken, but not scared, not weak. She was trusting Eva. “She has her phone with her all the time, but I can get into her laptop. I know her password, since it’s team property.”

  “When can you get into it?”

  Niki thought for a moment. “The best time would be during the opening ceremonies. We’ll both be there, but in the chaos, I could easily sneak off. Especially if I use Rory as an excuse, that she’s tired and has to go back to the hotel or something.”

  “Won’t she be pissed at having to miss part of the ceremonies?” Knowing what little she did of Rory, the kid wouldn’t want to miss any of the action.

  “She will, but not if I promise to make up for it somehow.”

  “And how are you going to do that?”

  “She’ll want to see you. She talks about you all the time. What if I promise her she can have a lunch date with you? Maybe you could give her a tour of the athletes’ village or something?”

  Before Eva could do anything to stop it, tears pressed against the backs of her eyes. “Niki, I…” She cleared her throat roughly. “Of course. I’d love to.” Spending time with Rory was an honor, and it was all she could do not to get ahead of herself, not to picture the three of them as a family. Rory was a great kid, easy to get to know, fun to be around. She felt like she already knew her so well, like they had a bond and a shared sense of familiarity that transcended the small amount of time they’d spent together.

  “All right. It’s settled. I’ll see what I can find on Lynn’s laptop. And I’ll have a quick look around her room. But if I don’t come up with anything, then what?”

  Eva didn’t have another plan, and she told Niki as much. She’d managed to hack into Dani’s email account last night, but it had been wiped clean. For all she knew, Dani had several email accounts. “We should meet again after you do it. Here at our tree. I’ll text you from Kathleen’s phone, okay?”

  “No. I don’t want anything on my phone tracing back to anybody with Team USA. Text my sister-in-law’s phone. And use the code word Stanley and the time. I’ll know you want to meet here at our tree.”

  Our tree. Eva asked for Jenny’s number and committed it to memory. She’d enter it later on Kathleen’s phone.

  “Promise me you’ll consider dropping this little game of detective if I don’t find anything, all right?”

  Eva set her jaw. “You’ll find something.”

  Niki began to step away, but with a tug on her coat, Eva pulled her back. She wanted to talk about after the Games. Wanted to wring out every last drop of what might happen to them as a couple or as a not-couple, when all this was over. She remembered with the same lump of dread in her stomach that day almost thirteen years ago, when they both discovered they’d made their respective national teams and that they’d be playing against one another in the first Olympic Games for women’s hockey. It was what they both dreamed of and worked so hard for. It was the top, the very pi
nnacle by which their success on the ice could be measured. They celebrated by treating themselves to dinner out, a bottle of wine, but they’d stared watchfully at each other across the little flickering candle, afraid to rejoice too deeply because they knew that one’s success at the Games would mark the other’s failure.

  “What?” Niki implored.

  “When this is all over…”

  “One thing at a time, okay?”

  “All right. And Nik?”

  “Yes?”

  “As long as Lynn’s the head coach, I’m going to be especially happy to kick your team’s ass.”

  Niki’s laughter cut the tension like the sun breaking through the storm clouds. “I don’t blame you one bit.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Cross-checking

  Niki held tight to Rory’s hand as they sat in the stadium watching the opening ceremonies unfold. It wasn’t that she was afraid Rory might wander off or trip and fall—she wasn’t a baby anymore, as she was only too happy to remind Niki. The contact was because Niki had missed her these last few months. Had missed her more than she had accounted for. Her work had kept her supremely occupied, but she’d mistakenly thought that being back in the arenas and around the players and on the ice would happily transport her back to the days when she was a player and had no encumbrances. The opposite had happened. Being away from Rory reminded her of how much she wanted the responsibility of raising a child, of how far her life had drifted from being a player who lived, slept, ate and breathed hockey, with nobody else to answer to, with nothing else to do but work out in the gym and perfect her on-ice skills. She didn’t want that self-indulgent lifestyle ever again. Nor could she wait until these Games were over in two weeks and she could resume her life again.