Fire & Ice

by Rachel Spangler

  Table of Contents

  Titlepage

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Titles by Rachel Spangler

  Copyright

  About Bywater

  To Susie, who loves me even when I call the wrong shot.

  This is all your fault.

  Chapter One

  “Curling?” Max Laurens self-consciously patted the dark hair that barely fell halfway down her forehead and was even shorter on the sides. The word didn’t make any sense in this context of her job as a sports reporter. “Like hair curling?”

  “Curling, the sport, with the rocks and the brooms on ice.”

  She shook her head slowly, trying to process those incongruous items together. “Wait, the one with the funny pants and all the yelling?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “No.”

  “Hear me out.”

  “No way.” She planted her hands firmly on the arms of the conference room chair, ready to make a dramatic stand, but the man across the table only rolled his brown eyes.

  “You can’t just say no.”

  “I can.”

  There was no triumph in his voice as he said, “Not if you ever want to work here again.”

  “Look, Flip,” she said in a grave tone, “I get that things have been a little crazy around here lately.”

  “Not around here, around you.”

  “Right, but I’m still one of this country’s preeminent sports reporters.”

  He scrunched up his face from his tight lips to his receding hairline in a way that made him appear constipated. “Are you?”

  “Yes!”

  “You’re still a great writer, you still have a great sports mind, and you’re still good both in front of and behind the camera, but your credibility is shot.”

  “I can get that back.”

  “I believe you. I’m in the minority with that opinion, but I’m going to bat for you, which is why I’m offering you a chance to stay in the world of sports coverage.”

  “Sports? You said I’d be covering a curling team.”

  “Yeah, curling is the sport.”

  She shook her head vehemently again. “Curling is not a sport. It’s competitive sweeping, for fuck’s sake. That’s not a sport!”

  “It’s in the Olympics.”

  “So is that thing where people dance around with ribbons.”

  He snorted, then regained his composure, feigning a seriousness she didn’t totally believe. “Curling always sees a massive uptick in viewers during Olympic years.”

  “This isn’t an Olympic year.”

  “Actually, it is.”

  “For the summer Olympics.” She fought the urge to drop her head to the faux mahogany table. “Summer’s the opposite of winter, which means these broom handlers won’t get another shot at TV viewership for another two seasons.”

  “I can’t do this anymore, Max.” He sighed and stuffed a few sheets of paper into a manila envelope. “The network has the TV contract for Curling Night in America to kick off the season in October, the national championships in February, and the world championships in March. We’re funding an embedded reporter for several months. Embedded, Max.”

  She grimaced. “Can we use a different word, maybe one that doesn’t invoke the idea of ‘in bed’ and my stories?”

  He made the constipated look again. “I only meant to highlight the fact that I’m offering you steady work for four months. Whoever takes this job will be on-site doing personal interest stories during the early part of the season.”

  “Puff pieces.”

  “Once the competitive season gets rolling,” he continued, without acknowledging her snark, “you’d get the TV coverage of the matches.”

  “Television? As in cable?”

  “Well, probably mostly live streaming online and through our app for the small events.”

  “Internet coverage. Of course.”

  “The early rounds of the national championship will be televised on the cable channels, and the finals will air on network TV.”

  “Four months.” She sat back in the chair. “Four months in a frozen penitentiary for failing to vet a single source.”

  “You know it was more than that.”

  She rolled her eyes to hide the sting of the truth. It had been more than that, for all the reasons he knew and a few he never would. “Four months in lockup.”

  “You never know. You might get time off for good behavior. Think about it more like probation.”

  She didn’t want to think about it at all, or as anything more than a subpar offer she’d rejected outright. Sadly, the low growl in her stomach and the new constant dull throb at the base of her skull warned her not to be so rash. “Just for argument’s sake, where would this possible good behavior take me exactly?”

  Flip rolled his head, as if trying to crack some of the tension out of his neck, before forcing a tight smile. “Good news is you’d still be in New York State.”

  “And the bad news?”

  “Buffalo.”

  A little whimper escaped her throat. She tried to cover it with a fake cough, but managed only to sound like an asthmatic puppy.

  Sympathy flashed through Flip’s eyes. She hated that.

  “I’m fine.” She coughed a little louder. “It’s fine. I’ll be fine.”

  “You will,” he said seriously, then folded his hands on the table and leaned forward to adopt a less formal stance. “Take the job. Get out of the city. Get back to the basics. You’ll find your feet again.”

  “Sounds like I’ll have to find them on a sheet of ice.”

  He grinned. “You’ve been in slippery situations before. I’m sure a little bit of ice isn’t going to break you.”

  She didn’t know if the slipperiness he referred to was her career or her personal life, but she supposed it didn’t matter if the end results were the same. Honestly, she hadn’t been able to separate the two for a long time. Maybe he was right, and she needed some time to untangle herself. She had been through a lot. And she was still here. She had an offer for long-term work with a chance of advancement from puff pieces to network TV. At the very least, the job could keep her foot in the door with a major sports network. She’d been in worse situations, and she’d written her way out of them, or at least she’d worked her way up above them for a while. She had to fight down a wave of anger at the fact that she didn’t think her crimes warranted such a drastic penance, but four months on ice in Buffalo wouldn’t break her.

  “Fine.”

  “Yeah?” He smiled his real smile, one of a little kid who’s just been picked to be on his older brother’s baseball team. “You’ll take the assignment?”

  She shrugged, more resignedly than hopefully. “If this is what it takes to move on, yeah. I can take it.”

  Callie Mulligan tilted the forty-pound curling stone onto its side and ran her gloved hand along the bottom to clear any possible dust or frost, then lowered it gently back to the ice.
Bracing her right foot against the black block of the hack, she bent her knees and lowered herself into a crouch. With a slow, steady inhale, she tightened her fingers around the handle atop the stone. Straightening her knees, she kept her chest low and her back level as instinct took hold. She could have finished the move in her sleep, but she willed herself to stay fully present in her body. Controlling for the angle of her hand, her line of sight, and the slip of her left foot against the ice, she exhaled and pushed off. She fully extended her right leg in a long, graceful line while keeping her left one bent severely toward her sternum.

  For a second, she became pure kinetic mass and motion, an object at one with the laws of physics. She never felt more at home than she did in the slide, but as the blue line drew steadily nearer, other instincts overrode her sense of oneness, and internal equations began to solve themselves. The same way most people could drive and sing along to the radio at the same time, she calculated her speed, her grip, her trajectory, and her position only a fraction of an inch to the right of the thin black center line. Then, with a minuscule twist of her thumb and forefinger, she gently lifted her hand.

  Easing her chest upright, she lowered her straightened leg, causing her own momentum to slow as the rock continued to spin forward.

  “No,” she called immediately. “Nope, no, never, never, never.”

  “We’re not going to bleeping sweep it,” Ella grumbled.

  “Yeah.” Layla yawned as she pushed herself down the ice, slider foot first, and her gripper shoe pumping along as if she were trying to kick some invisible skateboard into gear. “We haven’t swept anything for twenty minutes.”

  “Twenty-five,” Brooke called. “My feet have frozen in place.”

  Callie rolled her eyes at their exaggerations. If this stone landed where she wanted, she’d be ten for ten, which meant she couldn’t have been throwing for much more than ten minutes, but she was still too focused on the rock to verbalize her argument.

  Standing up fully, she followed the path her throw had taken. Striding more than slipping, she caught up with the rock just as it inched past the twelve-foot red circle painted at the other end. It had slowed dramatically, allowing it to spin more full counter-clockwise rotations in a shorter span of space. The increased spin gave the rock’s arc the distinct curl that defined the sport. She’d seen it a million times, but the rhythm of her breathing still faltered slightly as the rock made another slow turn through an eight-foot-wide white ring.

  “She’s dying.” Brooke held up a yellow stopwatch to prove her point.

  “Nope,” Callie said quickly, but with enough authority that neither sweeper lowered her broom.

  “It’s getting frosty here without all the old men blowing their hot air,” Brooke said, her tone more teasing than warning.

  “I accounted for that.”

  “But did you account for the fact that I’m now asleep standing up? And therefore, not breathing as heavily, which means I’m not warming the ice as much around the stone?” Layla asked.

  She heard the smile in her friend’s sarcasm. “Yes.”

  “Of course, she did,” Ella groused, sounding the least playful of them all, as the rock had now twirled through the blue three-foot circle of the bull’s-eye-inspired target.

  Callie’s heart beat a little faster; she worried the stone might stop there, but as so often happened, the last spin held just enough torque for one half-swing around, which inched the entire stone just inside a white center circle barely big enough to hold it.

  “Right. On. The. Button,” Brooke declared unnecessarily, as they all stood directly over it, so close to one another the tops of their heads brushed together.

  “Well, that’s a perfect ten . . . again,” Ella said, leaning back and flipping the padded end of her broom onto her shoulder. “Well done, team. Same time next week?”

  “It’s a date,” Brooke agreed, hooking her own broom through the handle of the stone and pulling it toward her.

  “Wait.” Callie finally glanced up at them. “I wanted to work on—”

  “No,” they all said in unison.

  “But it’s—”

  “Eleven o’clock at night?” Layla asked. “Yes. Yes, it is.”

  “On a school night,” Ella added.

  “Yes, to that, too.” Brooke turned and slid Callie’s stone next to seven others with matching handles. “We’re done.”

  “I thought we were going to try to go twenty-five for twenty-five sometime. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

  The “no” this time wasn’t just unanimous, it was emphatic. She must have grimaced because Layla’s dark eyes softened. “Look, it’s for your own good. If we start enabling you with your twenty-five button shots in a row, next you’ll want to shoot for one hundred.”

  She felt the thrill of a challenge tingle in her chest, but she knew better than to express her excitement. Still, she did want more. She always wanted more. Thankfully, she didn’t have to inconvenience her team in the process. She had had plenty of practice pursuing perfectionism solo. “Okay, you’re right. You all can call it a night. Good practice.”

  “‘You all,’ as in us, but not you?” Brooke asked, pulling off her stocking cap to reveal the havoc the dry static had wreaked on her shoulder-length copper hair.

  “I won’t be long. I just want to hang around another half hour or so, to see how the weight changes as the temperature drops a few degrees.”

  Her teammates shifted uneasily and glanced from one to the other. She could sense the guilt radiating off them. Their reaction would likely depend on what she said next. She was the skipper, the play caller, the leader. She could easily bend their emotions, their drive, their loyalty to her in order to make them stay, and part of her wanted to. Why should she let them off the hook when she still burned with a desire to push harder? But guilt was a poor substitute for passion, and loyalties too often tested bred resentment.

  “Okay, okay. I get it,” she said with a little laugh. “No need to stage an intervention. I’ll call it a night, too.”

  The surrender sparked a series of relieved sighs, and she had to smile more genuinely. They cared about her, even if they didn’t quite share her level of obsession. That had to count for something.

  She exited the ice, and they all began to pack up their gear, shoving jackets and gloves into athletic bags. She went through the motions, going so far as to slip off her curling shoes and stash them away. When she did, her hand touched a slip of paper she’d tossed in there earlier. “Oh hey, I forgot to mention, there’s a reporter coming to see us next week.”

  “From like Buffalo Spree or something?”

  “No, like a big-time reporter. From TV or the internet. They were a little vague, but I got an official email from the USA Curling press secretary.”

  “Whoa.” Layla sat up from tying her sneakers and flipped a few dark braids off her forehead. “Curling USA is sending someone here to talk to us?”

  “The email said it was connected to the TV coverage of the season. I told you they’re taking us seriously this year.”

  “Maybe I should make an appointment to get my hair done,” Ella said, not exactly capturing “serious” with her tone. “I could use a little more on-screen work.”

  “Go ahead.” Layla laughed. “I’ll be right here waiting. No need to improve on perfection.”

  Callie shook her head. “All jokes aside, more exposure could be the first step in getting some endorsements, which would help fund travel to more tournaments. And the more we play, the better our chances of picking up additional funding. A couple more years of climbing steadily would put us in a great place as far as our Olympic chances go.”

  Her teammates’ eyes glazed over as she talked. They’d all heard this before, but they smiled politely anyway, all except for Brooke, who nodded through a yawn.

  “I mean, you never know, right?” she asked, reining in her enthusiasm.

  “Anything is possible.” Layla slapped her on the should
er.

  It wasn’t quite the endorsement she’d hoped for, but even if her friends didn’t share her vision for the next few years, she at least appreciated their willingness not to rain on her parade. Now it was her turn to do the same for them. “Anywho, it’s a good step for the future of the team, but we won’t have a team if we all drop dead from exhaustion tomorrow. Let’s call it a night.”

  “Thank you,” Brooke said, almost reverently. “We’ll be back at it again tomorrow.”

  “I know.” And she did. “You go ahead. I’ll lock up and be right behind you.”

  Everyone slung their bags over their shoulders and headed for the lounge. Layla stopped to hold the door for her, eyebrows raised in both question and challenge.

  Callie went so far as to pat her hoodie pocket and pull out a jangling key ring before turning out the lights over the ice. “See you tomorrow.”

  She walked them all the way to the door and made a big show of closing it behind her while everyone else crossed the parking lot. Pretending to lock the door, she waited until the sound of their tires rolled across the gravel lot. Turning under the amber glow of a streetlight, she waved as each one pulled onto the main road and headed off in different directions.

  Then she turned and pushed the door she’d left open. She strode back past the lounge, switching on lights as she went. Tossing her bag on the floor, she pulled out her curling shoes and laced them up. She inhaled the sharp, clean scent of frost and stepped back onto the ice.

  She always had work to do.

  Chapter Two

  Max’s GPS remained adamant she was on the right road even as her own doubts grew. She seemed to have entered an industrial park of some sort. To her left, an interstate overpass hummed with the remains of rush-hour traffic, but to her right, empty loading docks gave an almost ghost-townish feel to the place. She’d always imagined Buffalo to be run-down and rusted out. While so far, she’d only seen the airport and whatever this place was, she felt a little satisfaction to find she’d been right.

  She came to a small asphalt cul-de-sac, and the woman on her GPS app announced she’d arrived. Slowing her rental car to a stop, she glanced around for a few seconds before noticing a small white sign with what she supposed was a curling symbol overlaid with a white buffalo. Below the sign, an arrow pointed to a gravel parking lot between two large buildings. She pulled all the way to the end without seeing any other signs.