Page 40 of Thin Ice

"I don't know. Talk to you, apparently." He reached up to run his fingers through his hair. "You're a strange kind of relief, you know that? Everyone else I could say this to has a stake. You just want to know how it works. That's very restful to be around."

Frey sipped from his cup and set it back down. "How do you do it, by the way? You're watching one of them live inside the stress up close. That has to be hard to watch sometimes."

"It is," I said. "The worst of it's the extra hours and the missed sleep. He's up before five. He spends hours just getting the body moving. Athletes are strange animals. They dedicate themselves in ways a normal person never would."

"They are—animals," Frey said. He picked up the check. "Big one tonight. If you go up two-one, the city will get very quiet."

Animals. Quieter. The words turned my stomach. I'd spent an evening with my thumbs pressing into Nolan's hip while it told the truth. He had a body that was still shouting. He listened and then decided to skate anyway. At least it was still his decision.

What Frey described was a body that had stopped saying anything at all. The man inside never got a chance to make a decision. Tarn didn't teach the players to be brave. They cut the signal and told them the silence was courage.

***

Near silence reigned in the arena after the game horn.

Misha was the star. He refused to let anything pass. He had thirty-one saves, two of them miraculous ones that made the crowd groan.

The single goal of the game reached the net in the third period, and it came after a faceoff. Nolan won the draw clean back to Wes and then didn't stop. He drove to the net front and stood there taking cross-checks while Wes wound up, and when the rebound kicked off the goalie's pad it landed on Jamie's stick in the slot. A quick flick, and the kid buried it. Their goalie never had a chance to set.

Nolan killed most of the last minute guarding the puck against the boards and taking one more finished check. The game horn blew, and the Steamers shoved their sticks into the air.

Looking across the chaos on the ice, Nolan's gaze found me. He held it for two beats.

***

The charter home was quiet, but this time it was due to relief and exhaustion. Half the team slept. Misha read a book with Cyrillic type. Wes worked a crossword puzzle. I had a window seat at the back and two rows up, Nolan slept with his head against the window.

I took out my phone and began to compose a message I should have written a week ago.

Mac — Formal disclosure per policy. I have developed a personal attachment to the principal. It is mutual and it has become a relationship. Disclosable as of the night of Game One at which time my judgment regarding the work could plausibly have been affected. Operational impacts observed to date: attention-splitting during live coverage, twice, logged; no compromise of the protective envelope; investigative work unaffected.

I added one more paragraph.

Requesting guidance, not reassignment. Reassignment mid-series would itself elevate risk to the principal: new operator, no rapport, a client who does not extend trust twice.

I read the whole thing through. Every clause was true, but I didn't send it yet. I decided I couldn't send it in text. I needed to speak with Mac face to face.

It would have to hold. I couldn't have the conversation with a Game Four in limbo.

Two rows up, Nolan shifted in his sleep, and his hand moved across the empty seat as if it was checking for something.

I looked down at the tablet. The draft folder asked if I wanted to save my text. I clicked no.

When Nolan closed the condo door behind him, he reached out to cradle my jaw in his hand. He kissed me once and said, "Sleep. You've got your two a.m. face on."

"I don't have a two a.m. face."

"You have a whole two a.m. wardrobe." He turned to go to bed.

I got a glass of water and sat with my notebook a minute before bed. Michael had verified the contract; it was real. Frey had put it in front of me first. He followed up with the white papers and the story about the alumni with the wrong bodies. It all arrived clean and in order.

He told me he had no one else to tell. I was easy to talk to. All of that was plausible. I walked down the hall to the bedroom, where Nolan was already asleep, and climbed in beside him. I lay awake trying to make it all work.

Chapter twelve

Nolan

Boston didn't change a thing for Game Four, and it was unsettling. The plan they'd found in Game Two had beaten us in our building and then lost them Game Three at home. Most teams would go back to the whiteboard. Boston didn't.