All Chapters of Offside with the hockey bad boy: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

I had never thought pepper spray could be so loud.Pike howled. His gun went off, a sharp, flat bark that echoed off the walls, and something whined past my ear and slammed into the dumpster behind me. I screamed. Damien grabbed my arm and yanked me sideways as the two men in black jackets lunged toward us."Run!" Damien shouted.We ran. I don't remember choosing a direction. I remember the pavement slapping under my sneakers, the burning in my lungs, Damien's breath ragged at my shoulder. I remember the long shadow of the arena sliding past on our left. And I remember a voice, high and furious, yelling behind us, "Get them! Get the girl!"A black SUV tore around the corner of the building."Left!" Damien shouted. "The fence!"There was a gap in the chain-link, the same one I'd seen from the bus a hundred years ago. We plunged through it. The wire clawed my sleeve. We came out into a narrow alley between the arena and the old athletic annex, a strip of dark pavement walled in by brick

The Courier newsroom was the last place anyone would have looked for a team of fugitives.It sat in the basement of the student union, between the campus radio station and a closet marked LOST AND FOUND (MOSTLY SHOES). A single fluorescent tube hummed over a dozen scarred desks. Old issues papered the walls. A half-dead ficus drooped in the corner. When Priya's hatchback screeched to a halt at the loading dock at 2:14 a.m., the only light in the building was the green glow of a desk lamp at the back.Marisol Vega stood in the doorway, holding a baseball bat."Don't shoot," Priya said."I'm not going to shoot." Marisol lowered the bat. "I'm going to hit someone with it, and I haven't decided who yet."She took one look at us. At Damien's swollen eye and torn cast. At Priya's smeared makeup. At the tears I hadn't realized were running down my face, and the black phone clutched in both hands."Oh," she said softly. "Get inside."We sat in a circle on mismatched chairs while Marisol made

The FBI took four hours to finish with my family.They sat us in the kitchen, the same kitchen where Richard Halloran had once poured my mother a cup of tea and told her that the kindest thing was to let it go. Now a federal agent named Dana Reyes sat at the head of the table with a legal pad and a voice like warm gravel. She took Ethan's statement first. Then my mother's. Then mine. Then she played the recording from the cane, start to finish, and nobody in the room said anything when Halloran's voice rang out, calm and unmistakable: Finish it, Dale. I don't want him walking again."That's a confession," Agent Reyes said quietly, when it ended. "Not a perfect one. But with the audio from the phone, the stairwell footage, and your brother's testimony, it's more than we've had on any of these cases in ten years.""Will he go to prison?" my mother asked."I don't make promises." Reyes capped her pen. "But I can tell you that nobody wearing a suit like his has ever been this thoroughly p

The line outside Halloran Arena stretched three blocks.I had never seen so many people in one place. Ten thousand tickets, sold out in four minutes, and half the crowd had been turned away at the doors. Students in gray Wolves sweatshirts, alumni in jerseys older than I was, families with signs, kids with painted faces. Somebody had covered the huge white letters over the main entrance with a black tarp. Somebody else had spray-painted a word across it in dripping red.JUSTICE."Ava! Over here!" Priya shouted.Priya waved from the media entrance, bouncing on her toes. She wore a Courier press pass the size of a dinner plate, a Wolves scarf, and the expression of a girl who had not slept in thirty hours and had never felt more alive."The FBI's got every exit covered," she said, hugging me. "Rohan's inside, running the cameras. Marisol's in the press box. Agent Reyes says there are forty agents in the building.""And Pike?" I asked."Not a sign." She pulled back, studying my face. "He

"Don't," Damien said.His voice was very quiet. He stood in front of me with his good arm out, shielding me from Pike's line of sight, and I could feel him shaking. Not from fear. From a rage so deep it made the air hum."Put it down, Pike," Damien said."Why would I do that?" Pike asked."Because you're going to prison either way. And if you hurt him, you'll never see the sun again," Damien said."Wrong." Pike's smile widened. "If I hurt him, Mr. Halloran's lawyers will say it was self-defense. The kid fell. Again. Terrible accident. Poor boy with a bad leg. Wandering around a dark arena. Who could say what happened?""There are agents all over this building," Damien said."Not on this floor." Pike's smile never wavered. "Every door above us is locked. Every camera is dead. The only way down here is the way you came." He cocked his head. "I counted. You have about six minutes."Six minutes. Four, Rohan had said. Give me four.I did the math. Three minutes had passed since the lights