Page 13 of Thin Ice

"It's gone," I said. "The left one. It won't pivot cold. It takes forty minutes of heat and floor work before I can walk like a normal person, and it's getting worse, not better."

We turned right near the Jewel Box. "I don't know if it's normal," I said. It was the first time for that admission. I didn't say it to Brick or Hannah, my closest friends. I kept it from myself most of the time. "Guys' hips go. Everybody's body picks up damage, but I don't know if this is that or something else. It just doesn't feel right."

Elias glanced over. He started to say something back, and then he didn't. Instead, he was polite. "Thank you for telling me that."

I wanted more.

Chapter five

Elias

Michael was in my ear before I had the second cuff button done.

"Tarn Performance Institute, incorporated 1996, privately held," he said. "Clinics in four cities. They have a research division and consumer wellness arm, manufacturing recovery boots, sleep tech, and a supplement line. Your grandmother could buy their stuff at Costco. I'm guessing at revenue, but I'd put it in nine figures. The founder and Chief Science Officer is a Dr. Stephen Reisner, Doc Reis, if you've ever been in an airport bookstore. He's the face on the website, face on the book jacket, and voice on the podcast."

"Who runs it?"

"That's the interesting part. The business side's a blank. No COO named anywhere public, no general counsel, and the corporate filings are signed by outside counsel in three states. Everything with a face on it is Reis." A keyboard clattered over the phone. "One more thing. You asked whether they've got anything near you."

"What'd you find?"

"Their site lists the four clinic cities, and St. Louis isn't one of them, but they're registered to do business in Missouri, and the lease is in the commercial databases if you know the entity name. It's a medical office on the west edge of your neighborhood, bordering the medical complex, tucked between a dermatology group and an imaging center. A wellness company that sells supplements at Costco is running a facility it keeps off its own website."

I stopped with my jacket half on. I'd walked past that building twice. It had registered exactly the way it was designed to register, which is to say not at all. The facade was brick and glass, with a coffee cart in the lobby, and people in scrubs going in and out. It was four blocks from the Colchester's front door.

"Send me the venue floorplan," I said. "And the guest list if you can get it."

"Already did. You're on the list, by the way."

We lucked into a local event sponsored by the company connected with Ty Hawkins, the dead rookie from Carolina. It was a sports-medicine symposium at the university hospital complex that anchored the southwest corner of the neighborhood—hospitals and research towers stacked along Kingshighway across from the park. They were the reason half the Central West End ate lunch in scrubs.

I was a no-brainer for the guest list, a former Movement Studies faculty member who'd published in the right journals asking whether there was room at the evening event. There was always space for someone with PhD after the name. The best element of my cover was that none of it was cover.

Down the hall, Nolan's door opened.

He wore dark jeans and a gray button-down, with sleeves rolled and the fabric fitting snug across his chest. He had a bottle of wine in one hand.

The event was the Brickner dinner in Webster Groves. It was once a month and was purely social, nothing to do with hockey. Sean Brickner was a third-pair defenseman for the Steamers. He'd logged seven hundred games, married an ER nurse, and had one daughter, Maddie.

Nolan and Brick were teammates for a year a decade ago, and they spent years after that trying to drive each other through the boards when their teams met. They landed in St. Louis six months apart, and Brick was standing in the lobby of the Colchester before the ink was dry on Nolan's purchase.

Nolan gave me the once-over. It took him about a second and a half.

"Clean up well," he said. "Who's the lucky donor class?"

"Medical school thing." I adjusted my cuff. "I'll know some people from my previous life, but overall, boring."

"You said that about the call on the plane."

"Yep, boring like that."

He watched me for a moment longer and then decided to let it go. He didn't push. I was starting to understand it was policy more than politeness.

"Doyle's guy is downstairs," I said. "He'll run you out and back. Text me when you're leaving their place."

"You're worse than my mother."

"Your mother isn't licensed to carry."