Page 31 of Thin Ice

"What did they take?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing at all?"

"Nothing, full stop. There was a watch on the dresser worth thirty thousand dollars, and they moved past it to handle his supplements." I looked down at the street while listening to Mac. The spot under the sweetgum was empty. "It wasn't a theft or a search. They were taking inventory. Somebody wanted to know all the pills he takes."

"The league hired us to look into a dead equipment manager," Mac said, "and now somebody with keys and patience is auditing our principal's medications. Are those unrelated?"

"I don't think they are."

"No," Mac said. "I don't either. Get some sleep, Elias. You did right telling us tonight."

The line went dead, and I stood at the dark window with the phone warm in my hand.

Below, the street lay empty. Last night a car sat under that tree with a person behind the wheel. Michael had offered me the reasonable read, and I'd accepted it. Half the metro area was in love with Nolan and would sit outside his building just to be near him.

I'd come to St. Louis with a second agenda apart from guarding a hockey player. It was one Nolan didn't know.

A rookie died thirteen years ago, and an equipment manager died two weeks ago, trying to reach Nolan. The Cup Final distracted me. Now it was back. The pills were the tell.

It wasn't about hockey at all.

Chapter ten

Nolan

"Rise and grind, old man." I killed Maddie's voice on the 4:45 a.m. alarm and lay still, listening to my condo. I heard a car passing on Euclid with a wet hiss because it had rained overnight. Then, the faint sound of Elias, already up, walking in the living room on the balls of his feet.

After the break-in, I couldn't shake the feeling that someone had watched me sleep. That someone was still watching.

I sat up the usual way: right side, top arm, and feet flat.

Elias appeared at my door with two coffees.

I joined him and looked back at the room: the pad, the roller, and the lacrosse ball. None of it was worth stealing. That was the part I couldn't get past. Whoever came in had wanted nothing a thief would want. They'd wanted to know how much of me was held together with duct tape.

Now they knew. For fourteen years I'd sold the same story. I played hurt, never complained, and dragged myself through every minute, fully committed. It worked because it was mostly true, and the parts that weren't were private.

Last night a stranger walked in and found everything I kept to myself: the heating pad and the pills. If any of it ever got out, the story was over. It wouldn't short-circuit my career, but it would poison the meaning of it. It was my legacy, and I'd spent my whole life making sure my story was told my way.

I carried the mat into the living room and dropped it by the recliner. The bedroom was enemy territory, but they'd ignored the front room. I pulled my knees to my chest, one at a time, then used the roller and shifted my weight onto the ball while the rain started again, ticking against the windows.

Elias sat on the sofa and sipped his coffee. I watched him from the floor.

At seven sharp, my door buzzer sounded. Elias answered it, and a few minutes later a drill bit into my own front door.

The locksmith was a woman named Dee, mid-fifties, with a toothpick in the corner of her mouth and a canvas roll of tools she laid out on the hallway floor. She glanced up when I came to the door, took in the whole six-one of me, and went back to her drill.

"You want the deadbolt and the knob, or just the bolt?"

"Both. And the back door, too."

She nodded. "You're the hockey one."

"Yep, that's right."

"My brother-in-law won't believe this. He's going nuts about the season." She backed the drill out and caught the cylinder in her palm before it dropped. "I don't follow it. No offense. In the time he takes to tell me about a power play, I could've re-keyed his whole house."