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“Maksim?” he said. “What is it? You’ve gone white.”

“Do not look up.”

“What?”

“Northeast. Upper deck. Third row.” I kept my voice level. “A man in a gray coat. Do not look. Do not turn your head. Just look at me.”

I felt him obey, with the terrible, willing trust of a man who does not do this for anyone. He kept his eyes on my face. His hand pressed harder against the glass.

“Is it him?”

“Yes.”

“What does he want?”

“He wants us to know he is there.”

A long silence.

“Then let’s show him something,” said Lex, softly, and there was an edge in it that I had not heard before, a hard bright glint, the thing with teeth. “Let’s play the best hockey game of our lives.”

The door of the penalty box swung open. The official waved us out. I rose. Lex rose. We stood on either side of the door, and skated back onto the ice.

We played.

I will remember that third period for the rest of my life. Neither of us spoke to the other. Neither of us touched the other. We were rivals, fierce and implacable, and the crowd never suspected. Lex scored at 14:02 with a wrist shot from the top of the circle, and looked at the ceiling as though he could see the man in the gray coat and said something to him I don’t think I want translated. I answered with a goal at 17:30, a slap shot I did not need to hold back, and the arena came apart.

The score was tied 2–2 at the end of regulation, and we went to sudden death. The clock ran to the eleventh minute of the first overtime, with the players heavy-legged and the noise a solid thing.

And then Lex took a pass from Reyes at the blue line, and split two defenders, and put the puck bar-down over my goalie’s shoulder.

Kings 3, Ravens 2.

I stood in the neutral zone and watched him fall to his knees with his gloves in the air, roaring, surrounded by his team. His face was scarlet. His teeth were bloody. His eyes found mine through the crush of bodies, and he mouthed something I could read from a hundred feet.

Same. Same. Same.

I put my hand to my chest and did not know why I was smiling.

Series tied, two games each. One game to decide it.

My phone was buzzing when I reached the locker room.

SABINE: I am in Providence. I have broken into a house. Do not be cross.

SABINE: It is not a house. It is a shrine. There is a wall with photographs of her, hundreds. There is a room with a table covered in maps. There are pins in the maps, Maksim. Red ones. Every red pin is a place one of us has been seen.

SABINE: There is a pin in Halden.

SABINE: There are two.

SABINE: One is on the Ambassador Hotel.

SABINE: The other is on a street called Delacroix. Do you know it?

I stood in the steam of the corridor, in my wet undershirt, with the taste of Lex’s blood in the air and the roar of the crowd still pounding in my ears.

Delacroix Street.