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“Piper . . .” His voice was a slow tsunami relentlessly rolling toward the shore.
“I had to put an end to this. He had to be neutralized.”
“So you . . .”
She took a deep breath. “I took the fake and gave him the real thing.”
The tsunami hit the shore. “You cracked my safe!”
“Not technically.” Duke had introduced her to the world of locks—the way the tumblers, drive cams, and wheel flies worked. She’d celebrated her fifteenth birthday by cracking his safe, but breaking into Coop’s had required only a little trial and error. His combination had turned out to be his high school, college, and pro jersey numbers. She’d been in and out of the safe before he’d made coffee. “Your combination was easy,” she said.
“You got into my safe and stole my Super Bowl ring.” Disbelief etched every word. “Then you took it to that bastard’s yacht, sneaked into his bedroom, and exchanged the copy for the real thing?”
“You never wear it,” she said, more unsure by the second of the wisdom of what she’d done. “I’ll make it right, Coop. I don’t know how, but I will. This had to stop for your own good.”
“I’d already handled it!” He shot up from the couch, took a step away, then came right back at her. “While you were breaking and entering, I neutralized the so
n of a bitch. And I did it without handing over my ring!”
“What do you mean you neutralized him?”
He told her. Spitting out the words. Telling her about his nonexistent mercenary friend and the implied threat he’d delivered. Growing more and more furious with each word. “You stepped so far across the line you’re in another universe.”
“Coop, I—”
He leaned forward. In her face. “You have no idea what I went through to earn that ring. The drills, the two-a-days. The surgeries. Watching tape at four in the morning before anybody else saw it. Beating the coaches to the office. I studied fucking thermodynamics!”
“I didn’t—”
“I earned that ring with blood and brains and more pain than you can imagine.” The ferocity he unleashed had built his legend, but she’d never imagined it unleashed on her. “I’ve played in hundred-degree heat, in weather so cold my hands were numb. Do you know what I did to get ready to play when it was that cold? I held my hands in ice water—kept them there—just so I could get used to the feeling. And I smiled while I did it, and do you know why? Because I wanted to win. Because I wanted to make my life mean something!”
She came to her feet, her heart in her throat. “I’m—”
He stormed off, leaving her alone in the middle of a tranquil courtyard that smelled of oranges and lemongrass.
17
The drinks in the sports bar were cheap, the tourists few, and the locals uninterested in a woman sitting in the corner staring blindly at a televised soccer game being played somewhere in the world. It was two in the morning. A few men had approached her, but Piper had turned such blank eyes on them that they’d quickly left her alone.
She was lower than low, and now she was doing what all messed-up detectives did when they were lost. She was getting drunk.
She should never have taken his ring. She wouldn’t have if she’d been smart enough to come up with another plan. But she hadn’t been smart enough—not as smart as he’d been. Some detective she was turning out to be. And now here she sat, drowning her ineptitude in liquor.
She polished off her third drink. Ordered a fourth. She was swilling old-fashioneds, but with no cherry, no orange, straight bourbon whiskey, extra hard on the bitters.
Duke Dove would never have done anything so half-brained. But then, Duke had been a pro, while she was still an amateur.
Her fresh drink arrived. She thought she might be getting double vision, but she sipped it anyway. The ice cubes clinked against the side of her glass as the chair next to her squeaked on the wooden floor. She didn’t look up. “Get lost.”
A familiar hand—a familiar, ringless hand—plunked a bottle of Sam Adams on the table. Another mistake on her part—asking the hotel doorman for directions to the nearest cheap bar. She’d never thought Coop would follow her.
She stared up at the soccer game. “I’m not a team player,” she finally said, her speech only slightly slurred.
“I’ve noticed.” The words crackled with hostility.
Her fresh glass sported a waxy lipstick imprint that hadn’t come from her. She took a sip from the other side. “I don’ know how to be.”
“You against the world, right?”
