Page 61 of Play Dirty

“She could still be connected,” I added, taking another drink. “Doesn’t mean she’s clean.”

Grayson nodded slowly.

“Agreed.”

More silence settled over the table. We held our beers, twirling them between our fingers.

Both of us… thinking.

“You talked to Sutherland?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “You?”

I shook my head. “Guy disappears like that, something’s off.”

“He didn’t disappear,” Grayson said. “He got traded.”

“Yeah. And then what?”

Grayson didn’t answer right away. There wasn’t a good answer.

“Trees didn’t want him gone,” I added. “You know that.”

“I do.”

“Management did.”

Grayson took a pull from his beer and sighed.

“Yeah, well… he was losing.”

I scowled a little.

“We were losing,” I said. “All of us. As a team.”

He looked left and right, then leaned in a little.

“Were we?”

The song on the jukebox changed. A few of the cuter girls in the back started dancing. For once, neither of us cared.

“He let up a lot of goals,” Grayson went on. “Way more than normal. And not just on broken coverage, either. Those last few weeks…”

“It was like he had a hole in his blocker,” I finished for him.

Grayson nodded. “He was full of holes. I pulled him aside once or twice, but he scoffed and waved me away.”

“So you think management did the right thing?”

He wrinkled his nose. “Not when it comes to Trees,” he said. “But Sutherland?”

Grayson rubbed at his jaw, as if it hurt. It was one of the things he did, when he was thinking.

“Have you checked his stats lately?” he asked.

“You mean with the Sentinels?” I nodded. “Yeah. They’re on a serious fucking run.”

“Not just the Sentinels,” he argued. “Carter Sutherland’s stats in particular.”