Rogue Risk

I stared at the back of the driver’s head, and he stared at me in the mirror, and the car hummed on through the snow as if nothing in the world had happened. The man had a gray cap and a thick neck and a scar across his left eyebrow that I knew from somewhere, and it took me three full seconds to place it, because the last time I had seen that scar it had been dripping with bus window glass.

“Hank?” I said. “Hank Dube? You drove the Tides bus for twelve years.”

“Thirteen, if you count the year I only drove the second string.” His mouth twitched. “Good to see you, Coach. Although I would have preferred a different car.”

“You work for Frostmere?”

“I work for whoever lets me keep my pension. And before you ask, yes, I know everything on that sheet of paper, because I was the one who put it in your folder.”

I almost dropped the contract. “You wrote the note.”

“Pencil, in the glove box, while Mr. Voss was inside charming you.” Hank sounded almost embarrassed. “He leaves the folder on the seat, since nobody in the north has ever stolen anything. The slip was already stuck to the back of the stack, so I just turned it over and said what I thought.”

“Why?”

“Because I watched that man’s secretary feed three years of Saltmarsh paperwork into a shredder, and I did not like the sound it made.” He cleared his throat. “Read the paragraph, Coach. Out loud if you want, since nobody can hear us in this car except me. The chair does not bug his own drivers because he does not think we are interesting.”

I flipped to page thirty one with my heart thumping in my ears. The paragraph was buried between a clause about equipment and one about parking, written in the same dull gray language as everything else, and I had to read it twice before I understood the words.

“Frostmere may declare a player a rogue risk at any time, at the sole discretion of the pack chair,” I read slowly. “Upon declaration, the player’s contract is void and the player will be released into the custody of the relevant Coast authorities within twenty four hours.”

“Within twenty four hours,” Hank repeated. “No hearing, no lawyer and no appeal.”

“The Coast authorities.” My mouth had gone dry. “They closed my case. They told me the evidence never mentioned me.”

“They closed the case against you, Coach. They never closed the investigation.” He met my eyes in the mirror, and his face looked older than I had ever seen it. “Your uncle took the fall, but there are still two missing ledgers, and the Coast Council would love a rogue alpha who knows where the old books went. If the chair says the word, you would be in a cell before breakfast.”

I felt something cold climb my spine. “So that is why they paid me so much. It is not a salary, it is a leash.”

“I would not say it that loud, but I would not say you are wrong.” Hank turned onto a long road lined with iron lamp posts that had begun to glow against the dusk. “Here is my advice, for what it is worth. Be perfect. Be on time and be quiet, and do not give Alaric Locke one single reason to call you a risk.”

“I am not good at being quiet.”

“I know, I drove you to the championship, and you sang the entire way.” He smiled a tired smile. “But try.”

I leaned my head against the cold window. “Why would he want me in his house if he could just ruin me from the Coast?”

“That is the question, is it not?” Hank slowed the car. “Welcome to Frostmere, Coach.”

The arena rose up out of the snow like a cathedral built for giants, all dark glass and silver beams with a blue light glowing through the roof. I had played in forty thousand seat domes and fifty year old barns, and I had never in my life felt as small as I did standing at the foot of those steps with my two duffel bags and my terrible wool coat.

“You must be Rourke!”

A young man had come flying down the steps two at a time with his scarf streaming behind him, his cheeks pink with cold and his smile so wide that I thought his face might split. He could not have been older than twenty one, with a gap in his front teeth and the biggest hands I had ever seen, and before I could say a word he had thrown both of my duffel bags over his shoulders like grocery sacks.

“I am Mika Holloway, left wing, second line, and I have been waiting for you since six this morning.” He talked as fast as he skated. “I watched your tape from the Coast final, the one where you scored from your knees, and I told my mother that woman is a legend.”

“You have been very polite,” I said, a little dazed.

“I have a problem where I say everything.” He beamed. “The coach wants you right away, by the way. She is a gray eyed wall of disappointment, and I love her.”

“Right away? I just got out of the car.”

“That is how she likes them.” He took off up the steps again, and I hurried after him with my knees still stiff from the drive. “Also, a warning. The captain is on the ice. Do not talk to him unless he talks to you first, and he usually does not, so you will have a very restful time.”

“Why? What is wrong with him?”

“Nothing is wrong with him.” Mika lowered his voice to what I assumed was meant to be a whisper, although it carried across the whole lobby. “He just looks at you like you are a play he has already solved.”

We passed under a banner of howling wolves and through steel doors into a locker room that smelled of cedar and money. A woman stood in the middle of it with her arms folded, built like a fire hydrant and wearing a gray tracksuit zipped to the throat. She had short iron colored hair and a face that had never been charmed by anything, and her eyes went over me once, from my snow wet boots to the top of my head.

“Rourke.” Her voice was low and flat. “Marguerite Frey. I coach this team, and I do not do speeches.”

“That is a relief, ma’am, because I do not either.”

“Good.” She jerked her chin at a locker with my name already on it. “Your equipment is there. You have ten minutes to dress, and then you are going on the ice with the first line for a scrimmage. Sixty minutes, full contact, and no warm up.”

“I drove four hours, Coach.”

“I am aware. The chair wants to see what he is paying for.” The corner of her mouth tightened, and it was not a smile. “If you are as good as your tape, you will not need a warm up. If you are not, I would rather learn that today than in February.”

“Understood.”

“One more thing.” She stepped closer and dropped her voice. “I run the bench and nothing else in this building, and I do not like to be surprised. If something is wrong with you, tell me now.”

I thought about page thirty one and the twenty four hours, and I held her gray eyes and lied with every muscle in my face. “Nothing is wrong, ma’am.”

“We shall see,” said Marguerite Frey.

Nine minutes later I skated through the tunnel in a borrowed Frostmere jersey that fit like a hug from a stranger. The ice was flawless, hard and blue under the lights, and every muscle in my body unclenched at once. Twenty big men and women in white and silver were stretching around the center circle, and every one of them stopped and looked at me.

Then they parted, and a man skated out of the middle of them.

He was tall and long limbed, with dark hair cropped close and eyes the gray of a winter lake, flat and calm and without a flicker of welcome. A captain’s C was stitched on his chest, and he stopped a few feet from me and regarded me for a long, level moment.

“Rourke,” said Jarrett Locke.

“Captain.” I tilted my chin up. “I would shake your hand, but I hear you do not like it when people are friendly.”

Something moved at the corner of his mouth and was gone. “Coach Frey wants us on opposite sides for the first shift,” he said, and his voice was the cool, even rumble of a man who had never raised it. “I told her I would take you myself.”

“Is that supposed to scare me?”

“It is supposed to be efficient.” He pulled off his right glove, finger by finger, and tucked it into his belt. “Let us see whether the tape was honest.”

The whistle blew, and the puck dropped, and I had exactly one second to wonder why he had taken off his glove before he came at me with every ounce of his weight.