Cuffs & Ballers: A Second Chance Sports Romance (Blitz)

by SJ Bishop

  "Yeah, but he's still responsible for a lot of other things I'd rather not think about just now." She tried to smile reassuringly at me. "Let's test this thing out. Make sure it still works."

  I nodded as I pulled my shirt over my head and tossed it on Emily's couch. We spent a few minutes going over the equipment together before Emily taped the wires to my body.

  "You need a looser shirt than what you wore over here," Emily said, "otherwise, it'll be obvious you're hiding something. Be right back." She returned a moment later holding a blue blouse. I pulled it over my head and put my jacket back on.

  "Perfect," Emily said, eyeing me appraisingly.

  I looked at myself in the mirror and agreed that you couldn't tell I was covering anything with my clothes.

  "Now, go upstairs," Emily said. "Let's test this thing out."

  I went up to the roof of Emily's building and sang “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” for five minutes while walking around. When I got back to her apartment, she gave me a big smile and a thumb's up.

  "You heard me?" I asked.

  "Every word. You could really use some voice lessons."

  I giggled and took a long sip of water, trying to wet my drying throat. Nothing seemed to quench my thirst, though. I knew it was nerves. My phone buzzed at me, and the screen lit up. I checked my text messages.

  Calling Coach now.

  "That was Jax. I better get going."

  "Are you sure Coach Allen will meet you there?" Emily asked. "It is the middle of the night."

  "If I'm right, Coach Allen is a greedy bastard who wants Jax gone. If he thinks the only way to get rid of Jax is to meet him at the stadium, he'll do it. Especially if Jax dangles a little money in front of him."

  Emily grunted. "Sounds like a scumbag."

  "What about you?" I asked. "Do you think you'll be able to persuade Anderson to help us?"

  "Oh I'll persuade him, alright," Emily said, her eyes glowering. "I was waiting until this whole thing with Jax was over before I confronted him about the detective exams—I didn't want him thinking we were onto him—but now that I know he's not the murderer, I'm not above a little blackmail. He could get into a lot of trouble if it came out he failed me on purpose. I'll make sure he knows that if he wants me to keep my mouth shut, he better damned well help us."

  I thanked my lucky stars that Emily was on my side in this. I wouldn't want her as an enemy.

  "Alright," I said. "I guess this is it."

  Emily nodded. "You'll be fine. I'll be right behind you. And Keith will be right behind me... if he knows what's good for him." We gave each other a quick hug, and I hurried to the stadium.

  47

  Jax

  The phone rang six times before I finally hung up. Shit. Now what?

  He must've turned his ringer off before going to bed. Why hadn't we thought of that? I knew Coach better than that, though. If his phone was turned off, it was the first time in a year. He was fanatical about keeping it turned on and the ringer turned up so he never missed a call. He used to say, "What if it's the lottery people calling to tell me I've won a hundred million dollars?" We all knew he was kidding –NFL coaches weren’t exactly hard up for cash—but I'd never seen him with his phone off, even during a game.

  I wondered if I should text Treena that he wasn't answering. I didn't want to let her down, though. I tried the number again. This time he picked up on the first ring.

  "Hello?" Coach grumbled into his phone. His voice was hoarse. He must've been asleep.

  "Coach Allen?"

  "Jax? Is that you?"

  "Yeah. I need to talk to you."

  I heard a female voice start screeching on the other end.

  "Who the hell is calling you at this hour?" the woman yelled. Her voice was high and nasally and hurt my ears. "You get off that phone now! I need my beauty sleep." I felt bad for Coach. If that was his wife, no wonder he'd gone off the deep end. A voice like that could drive anyone to murder.

  "It's no one," Coach said, holding his hand over the receiver so his voice was muffled. "Just one of the players. He's having an emergency."

  "Well, you tell him to call back at a decent hour," she whined. "It's much too late for an emergency."

  I heard sheets ruffle as Coach got out of his bed and plodded down the hall to another room.

  "Jax?" he asked. "You still there?"

  "Still here," I told him. "Sorry about waking up your wife."

  "Eh, whatever. No amount of beauty sleep is gonna help her, no matter what she might think."

  I'd heard Coach make the odd remark here and there about his wife's nagging or her attitude, but I'd always thought they were nothing more than a husband griping about some of the little annoyances that came with marriage. Hearing him talk about her now—and listening to the exchange between them—I wondered if Coach even liked his wife, let alone loved her.

  "So, what do you need, Jax? Why are you calling?"

  I cleared my throat. I'd spent the last hour rehearsing what I was gonna say to him.

  "I decided that you were right. I'm leaving the country. Tonight."

  "Good!" Coach said. The excitement in his voice irritated the hell out of me.

  "I need to see you before I go," I told him.

  I could hear the hesitation in his voice. "Why?" he asked.

  "I'm leaving all my stuff behind. My house... my cars... I need to make sure that someone will be there to take care of it for me." I could almost hear him thinking. "No one else knows I'm going," I continued. "You're the only one I can trust."

  There was silence on his end.

  "Also, I thought I'd leave my Ferrari with you. I can sign the title over to you tonight. I figure if I do that, the courts won't be able to take it from me later since it'll be in your name."

  "Your Ferrari?" Coach asked. He'd always admired my car. He'd had a similar one before his ex-wife had taken it from him in their divorce. "When do you want to meet?"

  48

  Treena

  I walked into the locker room and looked around in the darkness. It was creepy in here this late at night. I flicked on a light switch and made my way toward Coach's office. The security guard who'd let me in had tried to follow me down here. One good thing about having a police badge was that you outranked rent-a-cops everywhere. I'd flashed my old Colorado badge at him and told him to get back to his rounds, that I was fine on my own. He hadn't asked any more questions. I was glad now that I'd kept my spare badge. It had really come in handy tonight.

  I'd taken my time walking to the locker room, giving Emily a chance to catch up to me. The last time she'd texted me, she'd said she was almost here. I'd texted back, asking if Anderson was with her, but I hadn't received a reply. For all I knew, her signal could've dropped and she was stuck in traffic somewhere. Or maybe Anderson had refused to come. Maybe it was Emily, and just Emily, who was on her way to the stadium. She was a great cop, but if she was the only backup I had... I gulped when I thought of the possible consequences. Going into a situation like this was never easy. Having enough backup could make the difference between coming out alive and coming out dead.

  My hand dropped to my stomach as butterflies fluttered around inside it. It's not just you anymore, Jax had said. I was just now starting to realize how true that was. The idea of having a baby had terrified me, but now an even more terrifying thought had occurred to me—what if something went wrong and the baby got hurt?

  If Emily was here with Anderson, they wouldn't be able to make any moves until they saw Coach Allen enter the building. They wouldn't want to be seen by him and scare him off. We needed to get Coach Allen's confession on tape before we could arrest him. Without it, we wouldn't have a case.

  Coach's office was on the small side, a lot like Anderson's. The desk, however, was massive, much more like Captain Murphy's. It was covered in paperwork, and the walls were covered in dry erase boards with various game plans drawn out on them. A big window on the opposite wall looked out on the loc
ker room. I walked around the desk and opened the top middle drawer. There was nothing particularly interesting inside it. Pens and paperclips. Standard office stuff.

  In the bottom left drawer, however, I found a pair of black gloves. I stared at them a moment, searching for any sign that they'd been used to commit a crime. There was a faint white smudge on the thumb part of the right glove. I wondered if it was too much to hope that when the lab examined it, it would come back as gunpowder residue.

  "Gloves," I murmured to myself. "Possible gunpowder." The good thing about being wired up was that I didn't have to speak very loudly for the listening officers to hear me. I just hoped that Emily and Anderson were both nearby.

  The door to the office opened, and I looked up to see Coach Allen standing there. I dropped the gloves, then immediately picked them back up again, shoving them into my pocket. He looked furious.

  "Coach Allen!" I cried, taking a step back. "What are you doing here?" I hoped I looked surprised. Clarissa was the actress in the family, not me.

  "What the hell are you doing here?" he asked, looking genuinely surprised to see me. He looked around the room. "Is Jax with you?"

  "Jax?" I asked, playing innocent. "No, why would Jax be here?"

  He shut the door to his office, his eyes staying on me as I made my way toward the far wall, away from him.

  Coach Allen ignored my question about Jax, stepping further into the room. I wished that I knew for certain whether Emily and Anderson were outside the locker room somewhere listening in.

  "Don't step any closer," I told Coach Allen, holding up the gloves I'd found in his desk.

  "What's that?" he asked.

  "The gloves you wore the night you killed Penny Ryder." There, I'd said it. I knew I was taking a chance being so bold, but I had to do something to get him talking.

  "You don't know what you're talking about," Coach Allen snarled.

  "The hell I don't," I told him. "You might have fooled everyone, but you didn't fool me. You killed Penny Ryder and tried to pin it on Jax, figuring he would be the most likely suspect."

  "You don't have any proof of that," he said.

  "I have these gloves," I said, smiling widely and hoping I was portraying an air of confidence which I didn't at all feel.

  "So what? Those are nothing but plain black gloves."

  "With blood on them," I said, bluffing. Coach Allen froze.

  "What the fuck are you talking about?" he asked, his voice low. His eyes turned dangerous. My heart began to thump. I instinctively dropped my free hand to my stomach, as if that would somehow shield my baby from the negative energy in the room. Coach Allen looked like he wanted to kill me.

  "There's dried blood on the fingertips of this glove."

  "There is not," he said. "I've examined those gloves myself."

  I tried not to get too excited. I could tell that Coach Allen was getting worked up. The more worked up a suspect got, the more likely he was to say something incriminating.

  "The gloves are black," I told him, waving them around in front of me. "The blood blended right in. The only reason I noticed it is because I saw something crusty on the fabric. I took a small piece of it and rubbed it on a piece of white paper. It's red. Definitely blood. My guess is, it's Penny's blood. And I found these gloves in your desk."

  I could see Coach Allen getting flustered. "I... it's not..." He was stammering. "Give me those gloves!" He lunged at me, trying to swipe the gloves from my hands. I jumped back, knocking over his desk chair.

  "Why'd you do it?" I cried. We stood on opposite sides of his desk, which served as the only barrier between us. His face was flushed with anger. I knew if he got ahold of me, he wouldn't let go until I was dead.

  "I didn't do anything!" he cried. "And even if I did, the bitch deserved it!"

  "It was your baby Penny was carrying, wasn't it?" I asked as we circled his desk. "What happened? Did she try to blackmail you? Ask you to leave your wife?" An idea struck me just then. It was a long shot, but it might just work.

  "I called your wife, you know, before coming down here."

  Coach stopped moving. His face went from red to white in an instant.

  "You... did... what?" he asked.

  "I told her all about your little exploits with Penny Ryder. She knew more than you realized. In fact, she's been onto your affair for some time. She even hired a private investigator. She's got pictures."

  "That bitch!" Coach Allen yelled. He swiped his hand across the desk and sent everything on it flying across the room. "I should have killed her too when I had the chance. I could've pinned both their murders on Jax!"

  My heart fluttered. "Why Jax?" I asked. "I thought the two of you were close."

  "Yes, but who else was I gonna pin Penny's murder on? He was the logical choice. The only choice. I never meant for him to go to jail. I thought he would've realized he had no choice but to run, to flee the country. But it had never even crossed his mind until I told him to do it."

  Coach Allen was shaking his head.

  "So you killed Penny because she was pregnant?"

  "She was threatening to tell my wife. I've already been through one divorce; I wasn't about to go through a second one. I'd lose everything, just like I did in the first one."

  "So you shot Penny."

  "I didn't want to do it. She made me! What else was I supposed to do? Penny never gave me a choice."

  I smiled. That was it. I'd just gotten everything I needed. There was no way they could convict Jax now. I just had to wait for Emily and Anderson to come in and arrest Coach Allen. It should be happening any second now. I stared at the door, anticipating their entrance. Unless... of course, something had gone wrong and there was no one waiting to arrest Coach.

  "I'm sorry," Coach Allen suddenly said. I turned back to him and saw a gun in his hand.

  "Wait!" I screamed. "Don't shoot!"

  But Coach Allen had no intention of waiting. He pulled the trigger, and the gun went off.

  49

  Jax

  I stared through the window into Coach Allen's office, horrified. He was pointing a gun directly at Treena's chest. I cursed myself for ever letting her come down here alone. I should never have let her out of my sight, not even for a second. What the fuck was I thinking?

  They were both too absorbed in what was happening to notice me. I slid along the wall toward the door, walking quietly so as not to freak anyone out. If Coach harmed one hair on Treena's head, I would rip his balls off and shove them down his throat. If he hurt our child, I would do even worse.

  The gun went off, and my heart stopped beating. I swung the door open and saw Treena still standing there, her face pale. Coach Allen was banging his hand against the gun, furious.

  "Fucking piece of shit!" Coach screamed. "Do you know how much I paid for this thing? Enough that it shouldn't misfire!" He was checking the chamber while Treena stood there, frozen.

  "Treena!" I yelled. She turned to me, seeming to recognize for the first time that I was in the room.

  "Jax!" Treena cried out, taking an automatic step toward me.

  Coach Allen looked up from his gun. Surprise registered on his face. "You!" he said, pointing the gun at me. He had closed the chamber, and his finger twitched over the trigger.

  "What the hell are you still doing here?" Coach roared at me. "You were supposed to leave the country! Why did you call me and tell me to meet you here? Are you plotting things with this cop?" He spit the last word out and shifted his gun from me to Treena. Anger rose up in me. I could feel the blood boiling in my veins.

  "Stop pointing that gun at my girlfriend!" I growled and charged at him. Treena screamed. The gun went off, and this time there was no misfire. It breezed past my ear. I could hear the whistle as it came within an inch of me. I tackled Coach to the ground, grabbing for the gun but unable to pry it from his fingers.

  Coach kicked me in the groin, and pain shot through my body like someone had just severed my spine. I fought the
urge to curl up into a ball and punched Coach in the face instead. His lip began to bleed.

  "Treena, get out of here!" I called. "Run!"

  I should have known better. Treena was a cop. Instead of running, she grabbed a stapler off the desk and cracked it over Coach's head as we wrestled on the floor. I had to admit, it was a nice jab. It was enough to daze him, but only for a second. I grabbed the gun, but it slipped right out of my sweaty fingers and hit the floor. Coach picked it back up with lightning speed and jolted away from me.

  Thundering footsteps echoed from outside the room.

  "Freeze!" a woman's voice shouted. It wasn't Treena. I looked toward the door and saw Emily standing there, her gun drawn. The look on her face was one of fierce determination. Detective Anderson stood beside her. Coach Allen took one look at the two of them and fired his gun without thinking twice about it.

  "Look out!" Detective Anderson yelled and pushed Emily out of the way. I saw the bullet sink into his shoulder. Treena lunged at Coach Allen, missing the gun but grabbing ahold of his arm as it flailed through the air. I ran to help her.

  I kicked Coach as hard as I could between the legs.

  Coach doubled over in pain, his head almost touching his ankles. He sucked in a deep breath and tried to right himself, but Treena wrenched his arm back and he dropped the gun, howling in pain. I grabbed it before he could get it back and held it on him. His pale face looked up at me.

  "Fuck," he moaned, realizing that he was out of options.

  "You okay, Anderson?" Treena asked, looking over at the detective as he rose to his feet. Emily was frantically examining him.

  "I'm okay," Anderson said, speaking to both Treena and Emily, who didn't look convinced. A small patch of blood had formed on his clothing.

  "We got it all on tape," Emily said. "Every word."

  I turned to Treena, who was grinning at me now.