Page 73 of The Tiger in the Sack

The patrol officers pulled in about the same time Monty showed up.

Phone still to his ear. Saying loud things into it. “Can you believe this and in our own lot? I want this on every camera we have.”

He was off the phone by the time he got to his own car, which was already inside the cluster of damage. He looked at the window. Made a frustrated sound. “How did this happen?”

Nobody answered him, because he hadn’t asked anybody in particular.

“In our lot,” he said, louder. “In broad daylight. Where is security?”

“Standing next to you, sir,” the head security guy said, without looking up from the tablet.

Monty didn’t miss a beat. He turned with his arms folded, the way a dad does a kid he’s about to be disappointed in. “Not blaming you, son. You can’t be everywhere at once. This is a resource failure. We’re going to have to have a real conversation about coverage in this lot.”

He did not look at me at all, which was actually the part I clocked the hardest, because Monty always looked at me. Quarterbacks were currency to Monty.

Not today.

The patrol officer was taking down names. He got to Clover and walked around her car in the same way she had, except he stopped at the back and crouched.

“Shit,” he said. “They got your catalytic converter.”

Clover nodded like she’d already known that.

“Pretty standard on a job like this,” the officer said. “Sounds like they hit the whole row. Probably two, three guys with a saw, in and out in fifteen minutes. Opportunistic.”

“Right,” Clover said.

“Right. Opportunistic.” Monty said from six feet away, loud enough that the officer looked up. He said it like he was agreeing with the officer. “That’s what it looks like.”

I was not agreeing with the officer. I wasn’t saying that out loud yet.

The tow truck hooked up to Clover’s Toyota. Coach and Gabrielle had gone back in. Fox was still at the Jeep, on the phone with his insurance guy, voice doing a full Shakespearean arc about the soft top.

Monty made sure he was the last to leave.

He passed me on the way out and put a hand on my shoulder that I didn’t want there.

“You keep an eye on your girl, Kingman.”

What in the WTF was he doing? I didn’t move.

He patted twice and walked off.

Clover came up beside me. “Your girl?”

“That’s what he said.” Was it to make me uncomfortable or Clover or something else.

She narrowed her eyes at the space Monty had occupied. “He doesn’t know me well enough to call me anybody’s girl.”

She didn’t deny that she was mine. That was a hopeful romantic heart talking. It needed to shut up. I was barely back in her good graces, much less getting into her heart.

“C’mon, I’ll take you home.”

“I’ll get an Uber.” She was already looking at her phone.

The app was loading. I watched the little car icons start to circle her dot on the map and that was not happening. No. No way. Some guy in a Prius she’d never met before was not driving her out of this lot.

“I’ll take you home.”