Got Game?

by Stephanie Doyle

  A soft rain fell beyond the perimeter of the tent, but the temperature was mild enough not to warrant more than a long-sleeved shirt. Reilly flexed her arms a few times, swinging her driver backward and forward until Odie started to move her around like a Barbie doll to get her in the correct position.

  The camera sat on a tripod and was attached to a USB cable that Kenny had secured to the laptop on the table behind her. Odie lined her up so that her full body was displayed on the monitor.

  “What we’re going to do is anal-lyze your swing. We can record you swinging at full speed and then slow it down to pinpoint where your body goes off-line. The comp-puter can then break down your movements isol-lating any weak points. Once we’ve identified those, we’ll use an ap-para-tus I’ve built with markers to make sure your hips, arms and head are in line.”

  “Hey, Reilly, this is pretty cool.” Kenny was busy studying the computer’s monitor. “Take a swing.”

  Reilly addressed the ball and gripped her driver securely in her hands. She swung at the tee with no golf ball on it because Odie still wouldn’t let her actually hit a ball and followed through with her natural swinging motion.

  “Wow! Check this out. Your hips are off by like a fraction of an inch. According to this readout, you just sliced the ball.”

  Quickly, Reilly checked the area around the tent for Luke. The last thing she wanted to encourage was his nickname. Then she recalled he’d already left early that morning for his next commentating gig.

  He hadn’t been looking forward to it. Since the brief interview he gave on air after her announcement, he’d been besieged by requests to do interviews regarding her decision. Without a doubt, his co-anchor, Jim, was going to bring up the “Reilly” question again. Luke grumbled the night before, he was quickly running out of material.

  In jest he told her he was going to have to create scandalous dirt on her or run the risk of becoming boring. No one wanted golf to be more boring, he insisted.

  Reilly wasn’t afraid. As weird as things had gotten between them since his aborted seduction attempt - he was suddenly being unfailingly nice, which was completely out of the norm - she doubted he would exact on-air revenge.

  Not that he had any reason to want revenge. If anyone should have revenge it should be her. She was the wounded party. She was the one who’d been jilted after a particularly heated round of sex, then nearly seduced only to be dropped again like a hot coal. Just because she called him on it, and he got snippy wasn’t any reason for him to claim the role of victim. No doubt he knew that, which was why he was being so nice. It was guilt over what he’d done. Or guilt over the other woman.

  “Reilly!”

  She came to attention at her brother’s bark. “Are you deaf? I said swing again.”

  Reilly did as instructed but this time focused more as if she were standing on an actual tee box. The game was golf and it was where one hundred percent of her focus needed to be. If she didn’t keep that in mind, if she didn’t have her mental game working alongside her physical game, then all of this hard work was going to be for nothing.

  “Sweet,” Odie muttered as he held the camera steady. He glanced over his shoulder at Kenny. “What does it say?”

  “Straight down the middle. Given the projected clubhead speed, about two hundred and seventy-six yards. Shit,” Kenny whistled. “Can this thing really tell that?”

  “You betcha. It’s all about physics and angles. Ultimately, we can’t make Reilly a man.”

  “Some of us are more grateful for that than others,” Reilly quipped.

  Odie dismissed her comment and continued. “We can make her a little stronger, but more important, we can improve her clubhead speed. By el-limin-nating every twitch, every flaw, every extra movement, we can make her swing faster and cleaner, which in turn will make the ball go higher and with less spin. She’ll gain on it. That’s why you see some skinny boys on tour hitting the ball as far as the boys with the big guts. The key will be to do this without sacrif-ficing her acc-curacy. Now line up again and swing.”

  Knowing she was being analyzed was slightly unnerving. With her next swing she tensed up and neither Kenny nor Odie commented. Then next time she relaxed and let her own natural motion rule. This time she was perfect.

  “That’s it,” Odie muttered. “Again.”

  And so she did it again. And again. And again. Almost two hours later she asked if Odie would let her hit an actual ball.

  “Nope. Not ready for that yet.”

  “Come on. I need to know how I’m doing. Kenny, what was that last distance on the monitor?”

  Kenny opened his mouth to speak, but Odie silenced him with a hard look. “Don’t you worry about it. You’ve still got a long way to go.”

  “I can’t have too long. I don’t have that much time. And distance isn’t everything you know.”

  “I know,” Odie assured. “But it’s the first step. If we can get you hitting it a little farther, we’ll go to phase two.”

  It sounded ominous. “Phase two?”

  “Iron shots. High iron shots,” he told her as he shut down the computer. “Then we’ll pray the sun holds a little longer in the day and the moon waits for the sun a little longer at night so we’ll have enough time to get to phase three. Putting on greens so slick you’ll wish you had ice skates to navigate them. Let’s go. I’m hungry.”

  Kenny tried to hide a smile as Reilly put her driver back in her golf bag.

  “Did he just say the only way I’m going to make it to phase three is if time stops?”

  “I think that’s what he said.”

  “Oh, good,” Reilly said as they followed Odie back to the house. “Then there’s hope.”

  ***

  “Hungry?” Pierce asked the group as they entered through the back doors. “I’m making a power lunch.”

  “That leaves me out,” Odie announced. “I don’t like power in my lunch. I like food. Let me know when you’re done with the rabbit stuff and I’ll make myself up a steak.”

  “Laundry is in piles on the stairs. Take yours up as you go,” Pierce announced.

  Odie headed for the stairs, grabbing his clothes on the way to the bedroom he’d claimed. While Reilly and Kenny eyed the cut-up avocados, tomatoes, greens and sliced chicken breasts.

  “Speaking of laundry, I swear I’m missing some articles of clothing.” Reilly reached for a piece of chicken and bit into it. “Namely, my thongs.”

  “Gross,” Kenny moaned. “Can we not discuss your thongs in the kitchen, please?”

  “Grow up.”

  “I just wash what I get,” Pierce said tightly. “If you’re missing anything, you might want to check in that mess you call a room.”

  “Whoa, that sounded suspiciously like our grandmother,” Kenny teased. “Clearly, Pierce likes order.”

  “Without order, there is chaos,” he declared. “Clean environment, clean mind, clean body. All of these things can lead to a more productive life.”

  Kenny eyed the plate of food. “Uh… speaking of a clean body, I’m not in training and I would like fries with my power lunch.”

  “Then you can make a run for the nearest McDonald’s,” Pierce told him. “I only work with good stuff.”

  Reilly studied the large dish of vegetables and lean protein, and considered the rumblings of her stomach after two hours of Pierce this morning followed by two hours of Odie. “Make it two orders of fries. Supersize. With a Big Mac.”

  “Absolutely not. I’m not working as hard as I am to make your body a lean, mean muscle machine to watch you eat death fries and killer burgers.”

  Reilly snorted and sat on a stool. “There’s an ad campaign for you. I’m surprised McDonald’s doesn’t put you on the payroll. All right, I’ll eat the healthy stuff. For fifty-six days I can do anything.”

  “Not me. I’m going for some fries.” Kenny stood but Reilly reached out to grab an arm.

  “Sit. If I have to eat this then you have to eat it, too.�
�

  “Why?”

  There was no good reason other than the fact that she didn’t want to be tempted by the smell of his hot, greasy fries. “Moral support?”

  “The hell with that. I need my fries. I’ll be back.” Kenny started toward the front door, but stopped abruptly when he spotted several packages stacked on the glass table in the foyer. “What’s all this?”

  Pierce glanced over his shoulder as he continued to cut avocados into wedges. “Two boxes from UPS, a bunch of mail, and a box from Fed Ex. The Fed Ex guy’s name is Doug. I tipped him and then he asked me out. We’ve got a date later.” Pierce wiggled his eyebrows for effect, but Kenny’s eyes were still on the boxes.

  “Who the hell knows she’s here?”

  “Please, will you relax?” Reilly could feel the tension coming from him as he straightened to his full height almost as if in preparation for battle. “Plenty of people know I’m here. Gus, Erica and Pop and Grams. It’s probably some care packages from all of them.”

  Reilly walked over and picked up the first small square box and shook it a few times.

  “Are you insane?” Kenny charged at her reaching for the box. “What if it’s a bomb?”

  Reilly held the box away from her body and out of his reach much like she did with her dolls when he was after them, and shook it a few more times.

  That was how much she didn’t think it was a bomb.

  “You, my brother, are starting to get paranoid.”

  Reilly set it on the table and opened it, pushing back the four sides of the box.

  “Oh, my God!” she screamed, bringing her hands to her mouth in shock.

  “See! I told you. What is it?” Kenny pushed her out of the way and ripped the box out of her hand, clearly prepared to fall on it if he had to.

  “Oatmeal and raisin cookies,” Reilly laughed. “Quick, get the extinguisher.”

  “It’s not funny. It could have been anything.”

  Reilly began to open the second box while she mocked her brother. “You’re right, it could have been snicker doodles. You know how I hate snicker doodles! What the hell…”

  Reilly dropped the second box on the floor as the potent and overwhelming odor of something rotting assaulted her senses. It was the one from Fed Ex. She took a step back not wanting to see what could produce such a smell.

  Kenny pushed his arm over his mouth and kicked up the lid of the box. Inside was a fish.

  A dead fish.

  “Shit.” Squatting down he carefully pulled back the edges of the box. The fish was large and stank to high heaven. A note sat folded on top. Kenny picked it up and scowled. Reilly took the letter from him and read it aloud.

  “I can’t breathe for wanting you. Not having you is like not having air. Please don’t play in the American. Please don’t let all of them have you. At least know I’m close.”

  Reilly crumbled the note in her hand and glanced down again at the fish. “I think it’s a grouper.”

  Kenny shot her an angry look. “Will you get serious! Do you know what this means?”

  “The Mob doesn’t want me to play in the American?”

  “It means the freakin’ Breathe Guy knows where you are. He knows you’re in Savannah. He knows the damn address. How the hell is that possible?”

  “I don’t know,” Reilly snapped. She wasn’t any happier about the fish than he was. Or the note letting her know he was close. But she could either be afraid or she could put the incident in its place. It was just a stupid fish. A stunt.

  “He’s a crackpot, Kenny,” she said with more calm than she felt. “That’s all. It won’t be the first time a professional athlete has had to deal with one. It won’t be the last. Toss the fish and go get some lunch for yourself. We’ve got an afternoon of studying old American footage ahead of us.”

  Feeling better about being blasé, Reilly returned to the kitchen where she picked up a wedge of avocado. After one mushy bite, in which she could only taste fish, she was done.

  ***

  “I can’t believe Kenny called you.” Reilly shifted the cell phone to her other ear as she slapped Kenny on the arm with her free hand.

  “He needed to know. It’s his house,” he whispered back as the two sat and watched Tiger Woods whack a line drive down the 1st hole’s fairway.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” Luke barked through the phone. “This guy’s attacks are elevating and I don’t like it.”

  “A few calls, a few letters and a fish are hardly what I would call attacks. He’s a nut case and it’s not like he’s the only one. You should see what this Bible thumper from Oklahoma said about me. He said I was going to desecrate sacred ground. Jeez. It’s a golf course not the Wailing Wall, and it’s not as if I was considering peeing somewhere in the woods.”

  She heard Luke sigh on the other end of the line and knew she had diffused some of his tension.

  “I don’t like this.”

  “I’m not crazy about it, either. It’s a distraction I don’t need.”

  “I’m a distraction you don’t need,” Luke told her. “This is a potentially dangerous threat. I’m calling an old friend I know at the FBI. I saved one of the letters sent to the farm. We’ll see what he thinks.”

  “He’s going to think you’re as paranoid as Kenny.”

  “The letters threaten to take you away. That’s kidnapping and it’s a federal offense. I’ll mail him the copy when I get back. Maybe he can do some weird FBI voodoo and get prints off it or something. In the meantime you don’t leave the house without Kenny or Odie.”

  “What about Pierce?” Reilly asked just out of curiosity. Out of all of them he was buffest.

  “I don’t know Pierce. Why the hell do you want to go anywhere with him, anyway?”

  “He makes me look good,” Reilly drawled.

  “Stay close to Kenny. Better yet, sit tight and work hard. I’ll be back Sunday night.”

  “Going with the gray sport coat for Saturday’s broadcast?” Reilly asked innocently.

  “I was thinking about it.”

  “You should wear it. It brings out your eyes.”

  “My eyes are brown.”

  “I know. But the gray makes them pop.”

  Reilly could almost sense Luke smiling on the other end of the phone. Part of her hated to feed his ego, but the other part couldn’t stand to let a decent pair of eyes go to waste on television. After all, the lady viewers had to have something to watch.

  “You said you liked my eyes. You so want me.”

  “I said wear the gray coat and you wanted me first.”

  “I did. I definitely did. Sleep tight tonight.”

  Reilly snapped the phone shut, wearing, she had no doubt, a goofy grin. It wasn’t until she realized that Kenny was still sitting next to her that she grimaced.

  “What the hell was that about? Wanted you for what?”

  “Wanted me first… for fashion advice… before asking Jim Mercuro because you know how bad he is at fashion advice. I mean, my word, those ties.”

  Kenny scowled and turned back to the television. “I don’t want to know.”

  Silently, Reilly agreed. Because if she wasn’t careful, she might actually decide to give the mystery brunette in Luke’s life a run for her money. If that happened she was pretty sure hell was going to break loose.

  CHAPTER 19

  She was leaving the gated community. Just like his guardian angel said she would. If he watched long enough, waited patiently enough, eventually she would come out. It seemed like years since he’d been waiting, but in reality it had only been weeks.

  She was in a car, a big jeep, and the side windows were dark, but through the front windshield he could see her. Her blond ponytail was visible over her right shoulder, but a baseball cap hid most of her face.

  He hated baseball caps.

  For a while he wasn’t sure what he should do. He’d been sent to Savannah by the guardian angel and had known the joy of being only a few mi
les from where she ate, where she slept, where she existed.

  A gate had stopped him from getting any closer, but that was okay. He didn’t need to be with her in the same room. That might be too much. Just to be close was special. Only now she was outside the gate, and she had passed him by mere feet.

  There were others with her. They were bad. The angel had told him so. It’s why they kept her locked away behind the gate. His mission was to find a way to free her from them. To bring her to the light of the angel.

  He should follow her now. The angel had meant for this moment to happen. This moment where she was free of the gate and he could get closer to her than a mile.

  But not too close. Too close was too much.

  ***

  Forty days and counting. For Reilly the number was significant. As a fall away Catholic, much to her Pop’s chagrin, she could understand there had to be forty days of suffering before the main event. It was the first week in March and the American was now only forty days away. She liked to count Monday through Wednesday as training days, but Odie had declared the event officially on as of the first practice round.

  So really she only had thirty-seven days left. Thirty-seven days wasn’t nearly so Catholic as forty.

  “Why am I nervous?”

  “Because you haven’t hit a ball in weeks and all the physical training and swing tweaking might have decreased your distance and your accuracy rather than improved them.”

  Odie whacked him across the head from the backseat. “Boy! Do you not have the sense God gave a grasshopper? Why would you say a thing like that for?”

  “I believe in speaking the truth.”

  “No, he believes it’s his duty as my older brother to torture me,” Reilly said over her shoulder.

  This morning, out of the blue, Odie had decreed it was time to put tech-nah-logy to the test. He’d already prefaced the day’s events with the warning three weeks was nowhere near enough time to work on extending Reilly’s distance, but with the Ides of March upon them, it was time to move on to phase two: iron shots.