All Chapters of Offside with the hockey bad boy: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Richard Halloran did not threaten me.That was the genius of him. He sat behind Coach Brandt's desk like a king in a borrowed castle, poured me a cup of tea from a silver thermos he'd brought himself, and asked if I took sugar."No, thank you," I said."Good. Sugar's a vice." He smiled. He was sixty or so, lean, with a politician's easy face and eyes the exact blue of a swimming pool. "Coach, would you give us the room?"Brandt looked at me. Something moved in his weathered face, a flicker of apology, or of shame. Then he stood and left. Damien didn't move."Mr. Cole," Halloran said. "I'm sure you'd rather wait outside.""I'd rather not," Damien replied."Of course you wouldn't." Halloran turned the cup in its saucer. "Loyalty. It's one of the things I admire about you, Damien. I've said so many times. A captain should defend his own.""I'm staying," Damien said."As you wish." Halloran folded his hands. "Miss Bennett, I'll be brief, because I'm told you're a busy girl. I think we've

Seventy-two hours is a very short time to bring down a billionaire.It is a very long time to sit across from a USB drive, a boy you're in love with, and your own terrible handwriting, trying to remember how a ten-year-old cheated at Monopoly."Okay." Priya clapped her hands together and stood at the center of our dorm room like a general addressing her troops. It was 7:30 on Tuesday morning, and she had been awake since five. She wore her anatomy sweatshirt, a messy bun, and the expression of a girl who had fully committed to a heist. "Let's list what we know. The drive has a three-strike wipe. One strike is gone. Two remain. We cannot brute-force it, we cannot clone it, and my brother Rohan says that if we try to crack the hardware, we'll fry the chip.""So we guess," Damien said from the floor."We think," Priya corrected. "Guessing is for people who haven't been to college."I sat cross-legged on my bed with the little chain in my fist, staring at the scuffed silver rectangle. Dam

"We have to get out of here," Damien said.He was already moving. He had Jace by the arm and was hauling him off the ice, the dropped phone left spinning in the dark with Halloran's pleasant voice still leaking out of it. I do believe she'd like to hear from you. I scooped it up, ended the call with a shaking thumb, and ran after them."My mom," Jace kept saying. "My mom, my mom, they're at my mom's...""We'll call the police," Damien said."They are the police! Half of Tulsa's department is on his payroll!" Jace cried."Then we call someone who isn't!" Damien shoved the exit door open with his shoulder. Frozen air slapped my face. "Move, Jace. Move!"The parking lot behind Halloran Arena was almost empty at midnight. A few cars huddled under pools of sodium light. Damien's black truck sat at the far end, near the dumpsters, its windows glittering with frost. We ran for it, our footsteps ringing off the concrete.Fifty yards.Thirty.I heard the engine before I saw the headlights.It

The screen went black.For three seconds, nothing happened, long enough for me to imagine it all: the wipe, the red banner, the end of everything. Then the black dissolved into pure, silent white, and a single line of green text scrolled across the center.ACCESS GRANTED.I sat there with my hand over my mouth, unable to make a sound."Ava?" A rasp from the bed. Damien had woken. He was blinking blearily, one hand reaching for the bed rail. "What's happening? Is it Jace? Is it...""It's open," I said.He stared at me. "What?""It's open." I turned the laptop around. "It was never Boardwalk. It was something Ethan used to say to me. Chin up, eyes sideways.""You're kidding," Damien replied."I'm so not kidding," I said.He started to laugh, a weak, disbelieving sound, and then winced as the movement jarred his splint. "God. Of course. Of course that's what he'd pick." He shifted, grimacing, and I helped him sit up so he could see the screen. "Okay. What's on it?"There were three folde

I almost didn't go.For six hours I sat on the edge of my bed in the dorm with the key card in my fist, my expulsion letter on the desk, and my mother's voice on speakerphone telling me, over and over, that it was going to be all right. It wasn't. I had lost my school, my job, and my place at the Courier. In two weeks I would be in front of a district attorney. The only thing I still had was a silver drive, a boy with a broken wrist, and a note in a coach's shaking handwriting.I should have said something."It could be a trap," Priya said for the fifth time. She was sitting on the floor, hugging her knees, her eyes red from crying on my behalf. "Brandt's Halloran's guy. He handed you that card in front of a hundred people.""He handed it to me in an empty hallway," I said."That's worse," Priya answered."I know." I stood. "But if it's a trap, it's the first one that came with an apology."Damien was waiting at the foot of the stairs at 11:40. He had changed out of the hospital sling