Page 72 of The Tiger in the Sack

“Your car.” I was looking at it and still couldn’t figure out the order of words. “Someone got into your car.”

The second after I said it, she didn’t make a single sound. Not a breath. Not a question. Zero signs of panic. I didn’t know a lot of people who could do that. The way she just wasn’t a freaker-outer up a tree, in an evil protestor situation and now with this kind of bad news, shorted my brain out.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m in my office, so I’ll be right there.”

“Clover.” My tone was serious and on the edge of anger.

“What?”

“Your window’s smashed. Tires are slashed.” I sighed hating having to relay this news. “It’s not drivable.”

“Okay.” She hung up because she was already moving.

I stood there with my phone, started a new group, and typed, fast, with my thumb.

Clover’s car was hit. Lot B.

Then I looked around, and I saw what I should’ve seen right away. At least a dozen other cars had also been broken into.

Gabrielle’s Mercedes. Window. Coach’s truck. Window. Fox’s beat up Jeep. Soft top, slashed. Monty’s Audi. Window.

A handful of other players and staff, and then Monty’s. But it was strange that it wasn’t all of the assigned staff spots. The VP of Marketing, Alpharetta Smith’s 7-series Beemer looked pristine. Most of the others, just fine and dandy.

It’s as if the thieves either played wack-a-mole or...

My thumb went back to the thread.

About a dozen cars in the lot. All of yours… and Monty’s.

Clover came out of the side door at a walk. Not a run. Her keys were in her hand like she was about to use them, which she wasn’t, because the car they went to wasn’t going anywhere.

She walked around the car once. Slow. Didn’t touch it. Looked at each tire. Looked at the back seat through the broken glass. It reminded me of a TV crime scene tech examining the scene.

“My jacket was back there.” She said it like she was reading an inventory. I heard it the other way, which was that somebody had her jacket now. “The green one. With the thumb holes.”

“It will be okay, Clover.”

She kept looking at the back seat. She was doing the thing where she was handling it, which was not the same thing as being okay. I knew the difference now. It was something I’d learned about her between the tree and this parking lot, and I didn’t have a word for what it was yet, except that it made me want to stand closer to her than I was standing.

I stayed where I was.

Security came jogging up first. Then one of the security guys from the main desk, already on his radio, calling for a patrol officer and a supervisor, and pulling up the camera feeds on the tablet in his hand. He looked at the glass, looked at Clover, looked at me, and said, “I’m getting everyone down here. Players, staff, whoever’s got a car in this row. Give me five minutes.”

He was already walking when he said it, radio to his ear, reading off plates.

Gabrielle showed up in under two. She came out of the building in heels that should’ve slowed her down and didn’t, clocked Clover, me, her Mercedes, and came straight over to us. “You two okay?”

I looked to Clover to answer. “Fine.”

Gabrielle nodded, but clasped Clover’s arm. “You don’t have to be yet.”

Gabrielle held the look for a second and didn’t say anything else. Clover’s mouth did something small that I pretended not to see.

Coach came out next, saw his truck, said “ahhh hell” under his breath, and then was moving toward Clover and Gabrielle before he’d fully processed the damage to his own vehicle.

Fox came out right behind him, saw the Jeep, stopped walking for one full second with both hands on top of his head, and then said, loudly, to nobody, “The soft top? THE SOFT TOP?” and kept coming.

The owners of the other cars started filtering out in ones and twos. Some of our guys. Some of the training staff. A woman from admin I didn’t know by name. Everybody was looking at their cars, then looking at the other cars, and there was plenty of grumbling, swearing, and irritation.