Page 69 of Thin Ice

My phone held two messages.

The first was sent at 5:38.

Nolan: I went to the park; my ringer's up; you can reach me.

The second came in at 5:56.

Rollins: Subject entered park at Lindell, on foot. Holding at tree line per your standing order. Lost visual in the woods. Advise.

Nine minutes ago. I called Nolan. It rang.

I was dressing while the phone rang. Shoes, keys, and my gun. I didn't wait for the elevator. I took the back stairs, two at a time, phone at my ear.

Nolan didn't answer. I called again. I still couldn't remember what I told Frey other than up before five. Yesterday, Nolan saw a man with a gym bag and a bland face like nobody. The man followed Nolan, turning down an alley soon enough to dampen suspicion.

It would be difficult for Rollins to follow into the woods without Nolan hearing him. I'd given the order—he is not to know.

I texted Rollins to hold the Lindell side, and I left through the service door, running to the SUV. I pulled onto Lindell with the phone ringing a third time.

Fog sat in the hollows of the park, and the sun was rising behind me, casting early morning sunlight across the deep green grass. It looked like the most beautiful morning of the year.

I took the park road west. I knew the route. Nolan directed me through it with a stop at the top of Art Hill. He told me he walked the woods behind the World's Fair Pavilion.

Where the road bent nearest the woods, I pulled the SUV onto the shoulder, parked, and ran.

My body still remembered what it was for. It was built for forward motion, in or out of the pool. The ground was damp from the overnight rain, and I slowed as I made my way downhill and listened.

I heard birds, my own feet, and the distant traffic on Skinker.

Then I heard an engine. It was idling.

I climbed the next hill and walked out of the trees at the top of the slope.

I saw the Pavilion lightly wreathed in fog. A path ran behind it. There was a midnight-blue car sitting off the service road at the path's far end, engine running.

Nolan appeared. He wore a gray jacket with his cap pulled low. He was approximately a hundred feet from me, walking toward the car, but the building would still obscure it in his sightline. I rang the phone again, but it remained unanswered in his pocket.

The car moved. No lights. Only the faint sound of gravel crunching. Then it veered across the grass. The driver headed in a straight line down the path, directly toward the walking man.

"NOLAN!"

I was already stumbling down the slope. He turned toward my voice, and that half-second was the save. The car continued moving forward, but it caught Nolan with a glancing blow, not head-on.

I heard a sound like shoulders hitting the boards, and Nolan's body landed on the grass, rolling sideways. He didn't get up.

The car didn't brake. It curved around back onto the service road and disappeared. I let it go and ran to Nolan.

The car had been close enough to answer the question about whether I shared the route with Frey. The information I shared was the reason Nolan lay on the ground in the wet grass shortly after six a.m.

I fell to my knees beside him. He was conscious. His eyes were open, and I saw anger in them. Blood ran down the left side of his face from somewhere above the hairline. He breathed through his teeth in short, sharp hisses.

"Don't move yet." I was already checking his body with my hands—head, neck, collarbones. "Eyes on me."

"Elias—"

"Eyes on me. What day is it?"

"Game Seven." He hissed again. "It's the day before game day, and some son of a bitch just—" He tried to sit, but the hip stopped him. He grimaced and rolled his head back.