Page 67 of Full Contact

“The statement stays in reserve. Nobody’s announcing anything. That’s all I have to report.”

“Okay.” A pause. “And how are you?”

“The meeting went exactly as expected. It went well, and I’m fine.”

“I’m glad,” Trier said.

“Tell Peaches there’s a new person for final approval. The standards may go up.”

“She’ll want that in writing.”

“It is in writing. That’s the theme of the day.”

He laughed, and we hung up.

At ten forty I took the revised availability sheet down to the rink. The cold met me at the door to the lower level, along with the sound: blades biting, a stick slapping the ice for a pass, and Coach Markel’s whistle cutting everything off at once. I stood at the glass near the visitors’ bench.

Markel had them running the breakout again. A puck went deep toward the goal, the defense retrieved it, and the wingers were supposed to be moving before the pass reached them. On the first rep I watched, Larsson waited along the boards, and Markel blew the whistle before the puck got there.

“Again. You’re standing instead of moving. Standing is how we lose.”

Trier went back for the next puck. He reached it a stride ahead of the forechecker, shouldering the man off it without any apparent effort. He looked one way, and shot it hard around the boards the other way.

Larsson was already moving. So was Cross, cutting through the middle. The puck went up the wall, across, and out of the zone in three touches.

Markel didn’t blow the whistle. He let it run all the way to the far blue line.

“Better,” he said. “That. Every time.”

Trier skated back past the glass. He spotted me and he tapped the shaft of his stick once against the boards. Then he was back in line behind Rook.

I gave Markel’s assistant the sheet, said thank you, and took the stairs up two at a time.

Email arrived from a reporter named Deckert at eleven forty. He’d covered the Ironhawks for years. When he asked me to confirm something, he always waited patiently for an answer. The subject line read Checking something—not urgent, but today.

The body was four sentences. He’d heard from someone he considered reliable that Trier and I were in a relationship. He said he wasn’t chasing a rumor. If it were true, he’d like a comment; if not, he’d drop it.

I read it twice. I instinctively started to type a response then stopped. The new structure was three hours old, and I was already working around it.

I deleted the line and forwarded the email to Leah, copying Carla, with one sentence: This is yours. Statement’s in the folder.

Then I called Trier. He answered on the second ring. There was locker-room noise behind him, a lot of it.

“Hold on.” A door, then quiet. “Go ahead.”

“Deckert emailed me. Somebody tipped him. He’s asking about us straight, confirm or deny. Leah has it.”

“Deckert’s fair.”

“He is.”

“Then use the statement,” Trier said. “Give me twenty minutes first. I want the team to hear it from me, not from their phones.”

“Take thirty. He’s willing to wait.”

“Twenty will do it.”

“Trier.” I swiveled away from the screen. “Are you sure? Once it’s out, it’s out.”