Page 1 of Play Dirty

~ 1 ~

HAVEN

The house looked like it should’ve been condemned years ago.

I sat in my car, hands gripping the steering wheel, staring at it while the snow piled up on the hood like it was trying to bury me alive.

Lake-effect, they called it.

Back home, snow fell. Up here?

It kicked you in the face.

I checked my GPS again, hoping it would tell me I’d made a wrong turn.

Nope.

This was it.

The North Shore Reavers team house.

Three stories of dark, weather-beaten wood hunched at the center of a dying cul-de-sac; its wraparound porch sagging just enough to make me queasy about walking on it. One of the porch railings had been replaced with a banana-shaped two-by-four. Another missing section hadn’t been replaced at all.

Upstairs, a single light burned in a lone window. Everything else was shadow.

“This is a joke,” I muttered.

It had to be.

Lowering my head, I thought about my expectations. Minor league teams didn’t exactly offer five-star accommodations. But this?

This looked like the kind of place people avoided on purpose.

A gust of wind shoved my car, rocking it just enough to make my stomach tighten. The snow was blowing sideways now. It streaked my windshield, blurring the already dim outline of what was barely a neighborhood. Half the houses on the street were dark. The rest looked like they’d given up trying.

Beyond the sagging fence line, the skeleton of what looked to be an old factory jutted up like a broken tooth against the leaden sky. It’s rusted steel and missing windows assured me the place was silent and empty; devoid of all but whispers from the ghosts of its haunted past.

Perfect.

This was exactly the kind of place a struggling hockey team would call home.

Exactly the kind of place I should’ve turned around and left.

Instead, I reached for the door handle, missed it, and broke out laughing. It should’ve been a sign. I didn’t have the luxury of heeding signs however, so I tried again, and this time I stepped out into the cold.

The icy wind hit me like a slap to the face. Sharp. Immediate. Biting my tender skin right through my coat like it wasn’t even there. My breath was a puff of white smoke that disappeared the second I exhaled.

My rolling suitcase rattled noisily as I pulled it up the broken walkway. Of course, the missing wheel didn’t help. Finally I’d dragged it onto the porch, which started groaning the second I put my weight on it. I made so much noise on the way to the door, I half-expected it to open.

It didn’t.

“Wonderful.”

The front door looked older than the house itself, if something like that were possible. I rapped hard, ignoring the crooked brass knocker that looked frozen solid. The only thing that happened were a few paint chips flaking away, mixing with the snow that fell at my feet.

I tried the handle.

Of course it opened.