Page 71 of The Tiger in the Sack

“You know I do,” he said, and I could hear the grin in it.

I let him have the grin. I’d rather risk everything holding onto what was mine than keep it safe by handing it to someone who didn’t even want it.

“It’s on. It’s on like Donkey Kong.”

I'VE GOT YOU

ISAK

My gear bag was slung over my shoulder and I was halfway through a text to Fox about whether we had cat food at home or whether I needed to make a fancy pet store run when Coach caught me in the hallway.

“Good work out there today, Kingman.” He nodded and clapped me on the shoulder, then kept walking.

That was it. No speech. No extended note about the drill we’d finally nailed after three weeks of running it like we’d all forgotten what football was. No request for a meeting in his office. Just a pat, a good work, and then he was moving toward the weight room like he had other people to find.

Coach Goetta would’ve run me into the ground yelling at me twenty times to make sure I remembered getting it wrong.

I tucked my phone away and pushed through the door into the lot.

My bike was right where I’d left it. Next to Clover’s cute little blue Toyota SUV.

That had stopped being an accident around tryouts. She parked in the same spot every morning, and I parked next to her because when I came out at the end of the day, there it was. I liked that my bike was the thing her car saw when she came out in the morning.

Then I saw the glass.

On the asphalt, mostly. A webbed hole where the passenger-side window used to be. Tires flat, slashed. One, two, three, fuck, four. All four.

Someone had gotten to her car.

Someone had gotten to her car in our private lot. That was supposed to be guarded.

I didn’t have a car. I had a bike. I would not put a woman on a bike without a helmet, and the one she’d worn before was a loaner from the shop, long gone back. She didn’t have one here. She didn’t have one anywhere.

My hand came up with my phone in it and I was on the local bike shop’s site before I knew I was doing it. Pink. No. Not pink. She’d turn a pink helmet into a whole thing. Plain black would be fine. I paid the extra forty for same-day delivery and then hit the number on the confirmation page. The guy picked up on the first ring.

“Hello, Moto Guys.”

“Hey, you just got an order. Black helmet. One-hour delivery.” I was hoping money would talk.

“Pulling it up now.”

I recognized the voice as the owner’s son. “I’ll give you a hundred bucks to get it here in fifteen minutes.”

“To the stadium?”

“Yep, but come to the parking lot at the back, near the practice fields. You’ll see me, I’m the only bike in the lot.”

“On my way.”

I hung up and called security.

They picked up on the first ring and I told the guy I was in Lot B and that a bunch of cars had been broken into. He swore and said he was already walking.

Then I called Clover.

It rang twice.

“Kingman?”