Page 33 of Thin Ice

"The other units," he said. "Has anything changed hands in the building in the last six months? Sales, new leases, or corporate rentals."

"That's casting a wide net for a break-in," Michael said.

"Humor me," Elias said.

"Already on it."

I understood. Elias thought the break-in was internal, someone who had been in the building before last night.

***

Skipping the optional skate would have felt like hiding. I didn't.

Half the roster was on the ice by eleven, and none of it looked like work. The morning after a game, an optional runs itself. There are no whistles and no drills. The coaches lean on the boards with their coffee, letting us find our own way back into our legs. The older guys who'd played twenty minutes the night before moved slow, and the kids went hard because the kids always go hard.

Jamie was out early, snapping pucks at the same top corner he'd hit in Game One, over and over, like he was trying to convince the net it hadn't been an accident. By the time I'd done a slow lap, he'd talked Brick into a game with three other guys: five shots each, top shelf only, the loser buys the room's coffee for a week. Brick was a thirty-five-year-old defenseman who'd scored eleven goals in seven hundred games.

"You're giving a defenseman top-shelf-only," I said, skating past. "He hasn't lifted a puck since Taylor Swift was in high school."

"I'm generous," Jamie said.

Brick's first one went in off the crossbar with a sound like a rifle. He didn't celebrate. He looked at Jamie, then at me, and skated slowly to the back of the line.

"That's one," he said.

The kid buried four out of five. Brick got the one lucky bar-down and missed the rest by a foot. He agreed to pay up without a word.

I felt Elias before I saw him.

He'd peeled off when we arrived at the arena, but now he was up in the tunnel by the Zamboni gate, out of the way, with a lanyard around his neck Doyle's people had given him. He wasn't scanning exits. Instead, he was watching me.

I skate cleanly: economical crossovers and turns leading with the right side. It was a compromise with my hip that others couldn't see.

Elias saw it.

I left the ice for water and he walked down the tunnel to meet me at the bench gate.

"You skate differently when you think no one's watching," he said.

"I skate the same as always."

"You skate beautifully on your own. It's not the same as in a game, and you know it isn't."

I knew. "You're supposed to be watching the exits," I said.

"The exits won't go anywhere."

I turned toward the far end and caught Brick at the near circle, not shooting, with one glove off, pretending to fix a lace. He'd had plenty of time for that, but he was busy watching Elias and me. When he saw me pick up on it, he didn't look away. He held my gaze for a beat, flipped a puck up onto his stick, and went back to losing to a rookie.

The locker room afterward smelled wrong, and it took me a second to place it. Someone was wearing cologne. It was expensive, and there was a lot.

Misha wore it.

"You smell like the perfume counter at Nordstrom," Wes said, dressing two stalls down.

"Is Kazimira." Misha didn't look up from his skates. Everyone waited for more, but there was nothing else.

"His sister," Jamie said. "He told me. She sent it before the Final as victory cologne. He has to wear it, or she knows."