Page 57 of Thin Ice

The name landed. He reached up and rubbed one eye. I kept going, sharing the facts.

"The league's office flagged his calls. When he died two days after telling his daughter out loud about trying to reach a player, they flagged the death. His daughter accepted the cancer, but she doesn't believe the death certificate. Neither does the Commissioner's office. They retained my firm to find out what Halloran knew, quietly, and to protect the player he'd been trying to reach."

I let a beat of silence pass. "That's my assignment. The protection is real, but there's another piece Doyle and the team don't know. That's what you just found out."

"Dates," Nolan said.

"They assigned me the job two days before I flew in and met you."

"The medical thing with the donors and the boring calls. What is that about?"

"The symposium was related to my old work, a movement studies geek's little slice of paradise. Michael found the Tarn name in Hawkins's medical file. He flagged it as unusual. They combed the file, made it unnaturally clean and pretty."

I kept my voice calm. "Now I know that the clinic four blocks from this building is a facility Tarn keeps private. They don't mention it on their website."

"What do you know about the break-in?"

"I think it's part of the picture we're trying to piece together. We can't prove the connections, but I know they are there." I paused and delivered the latest piece. "There's a living witness, Nolan. He's a technician who ran the protocol in Carolina when you were there. I've spoken to him twice. He'll tell me more after the Final."

"The protocol." Nolan's voice dropped to just above a whisper. "What do you know about it?"

"It was a pain-and-damage suppression program. They weren't giving you performance enhancing supplements. The chemicals were designed to mask the body's warning signals so athletes could play through physical injury." I watched him. "Hawkins was subject one. He got the active doses while the rest of you took placebos. Whatever the certificate said thirteen years ago, the league doesn't believe his heart stopped on its own anymore. Neither do I."

Nolan looked away from me. He focused on the distance beyond me, about ten feet in front of him, and his breathing changed, quickened. He reached out for the back of the recliner to steady himself.

"He called," Nolan said slowly. "A dying man called me. No, not just a dying man. I remember him. Halloran called me, and I was—what? Playing hockey? Signing jerseys?" He looked at me. "How many voicemails did he leave?"

"Nine."

He moved the bag and charger and sat down in the recliner, then leaned forward and put his head in his hands. His elbows rested on his knees.

"I want to make sure I've got the story right," he said.

I took three steps closer but continued to leave him space.

"I believe you," he said. "It all makes sense now. I've been lied to at least a little by people who wanted something for most of my life. I know what that tastes like. This isn't that."

"Nolan—"

"The heating pad," he said. "You knew about it before you'd ever been in my bedroom. I lay awake on it that night, deciding it only meant you were good at your job." He rubbed one hand over his knee. "The handshake. You figured out the hip from my handshake, you told me so, I thought it was the most interesting thing anyone had said to me in years."

He exhaled.

"I let you all the way into my life. You got to see everything, and the whole time, every piece of it was going into a file labeled subject."

"That's not everything. The nights—"

"You don't get to tell me how to understand all of this. You lost that tonight." He still didn't raise his voice. "Here's my question. Are you collecting all of this somewhere to use later? I've watched you work a room, Elias. Vern's wake. The card game. Ask, listen, ask. Give them nothing while they think they got everything. I stood in Eileen's kitchen and watched you do it to three old men, and I thought, he's me. I thought it made us the same kind of animal." He looked directly at me. "It does. That's the problem here."

My skin prickled at the realization.

"We're both always sincere, but neither of us has truly let the other inside. That piece of paper confirms it."

"But Nolan—"

"Does Mac know about us?"

"No—not yet."