Page 64 of Thin Ice

The horn blew, and the building fell silent.

The team dogpiled Jamie at the far boards, and I got there last. I put my gloves on top of the pile. Under the noise, the kid was yelling something over and over.

Finally, I made it out: "Misha! Misha, I lied with my eyes!"

We'd tied the series. There would be a Game Seven at home.

I came off the handshake line and found the pillar past the camera well. Elias was looking at me. We held each other's gaze for three beats, and then I looked away.

***

The team brass decided to get us home the same night to sleep in our own beds. We landed at Lambert a little before three in the morning, and St. Louis was still awake.

Nobody published the time of our arrival, but they were there anyway. Maybe somebody had a cousin who drove a fuel truck. By the time we taxied in there were maybe two hundred people strung along the perimeter fence in the dark.

When the first of us came down the stairs, a roar went up, applause and voices and somebody pounding the chain-link like a drum, all the way until the buses pulled out.

Jamie pressed his face against the window and watched. "They waited up," he said.

"Get used to it," Brick said from two rows back. "Score the winner tomorrow and they'll rename a highway after you."

The bus dropped us at the arena lot, and Elias drove us home through a city pulling an all-nighter. Lights were on in kitchen windows at three-fifteen. A bar on Euclid had its doors propped open, and a crowd watched a replay of the game from the sidewalk.

***

Elias turned both locks behind us, and I thought we were done for the evening, until he stopped at the island instead of saying goodnight.

"Michael closed the loop on the lease here in the building while we were in the air," he said. "Seven-A. Four floors down."

I turned to face him.

"Gone. They broke it yesterday while we were in Boston—movers in and out in one morning, dissolution filed in Delaware the day after. Manager says the place was barely lived in. It didn't look like they hired a cleanup service. It just looked undisturbed."

"Coincidence?" I asked.

It was the first thing I'd said to him since the discussion of the lie that was more than "yes" or "okay." It came out flat.

"I don't know. They couldn't see up here from there, but that might not have been the point. If they were watching, they'd still be here."

Elias checked the locks and windows before going to bed. "Try to sleep," he said.

"Try to sleep," he said. Not get some rest. Not the client line. Just that.

The guestroom door closed, and I went to bed. I looked at the clock—3:52. I turned off the alarm on my phone and turned it off for the first time in months.

I slept—not much and not well. When I woke, the clock read 6:08. I did a half-hearted version of my stretching and headed for the kitchen.

Elias was up. He was at the island and watched me lacing my sneakers.

"Nolan—"

"I'm walking. Don't."

"After Tierney, I'm not sure—"

"It's the only thing that fixes the hip." I stood. "I'll be gone for less than two hours. Somebody was looking for what Tierney knew. I don't know what he knew. It's the same walk I've done two hundred times. I'll have the phone."

He stared at me, and I kept talking. "Your firm has a policy. You told me the first week you were proud of it—protection without captivity. People get to keep living their lives, and you make it survivable instead of building a cage around them."