Page 78 of Thin Ice

It was a sixty-ish woman wearing a yellow staff coat. She didn't look at me when she spoke. She looked at the ice.

"The second time he saw me here, he asked how long I'd worked in the building. I told him since before he was born." She smiled without turning. "Every game he's at since, it's 'Evening, Carol.' Nobody tells them to do that. You can tell the ones who mean it." She finally glanced at me, took in the lanyard, and filed me as harmless. "We waited forty years for a night like this one. I was standing about here in 'eighty-six. I kept telling everyone I'd live to see it again." She shrugged. "Here we are."

The horn ended the warm-up. The players peeled off toward their tunnels, and the Zambonis came out to lay down clean ice.

When the anthem ended, the applause shook the building's foundation. It would be possible to read the game by listening to the crowd.

Doyle's people murmured in my ear at intervals. They identified and solved mundane problems in the crowd.

I walked the lower concourse during the intermission between the first two periods. It was normal. I had time for the players' tunnel and the route to the buses before the players returned to the ice. Nothing unusual there.

While the second period unfolded, I walked down a service corridor toward the northeast quadrant, past a door propped for the caterers. It was near the ice plant that gave the building its identity. The machinery's hum was louder, a deep continuous grind that swallowed the sound of the crowd.

A man came out of a cross-corridor twenty feet ahead. He wore a yellow staff coat. He didn't turn to look at me, and that felt wrong. Everyone in a sealed building looks at the people wearing lanyards at least once.

Above me the crowd erupted, cutting through the grind of the ice plant. The man turned down my corridor. I opened my mouth to say something friendly as he approached. I didn't make it to the words.

He came at me with a knife.

I saw it late. It was a short blade, held low and back. I got my forearm up before it reached my throat. The knife sliced open my sleeve and left a gash in my arm underneath. I didn't feel pain. I felt the warm trail of blood down my arm.

He plowed his shoulder into my chest, knocking me back against the wall. He was fast, trained for hand-to-hand combat. There was no wasted motion.

I got both hands on his knife wrist and pushed it wide. We hit the wall together, hard, with a loud thud.

He brought a knee up into my groin, and my legs buckled. I crumpled down to the floor.

The last clear thought in my head wasn't fear. It was the realization that there was one man in the building who would know I was gone before anyone else raised the alarm. He was standing on the ice in front of twenty thousand people, distracted by the biggest game of his life.

The crowd roared again over my head, and the floor shook.

Chapter twenty

Nolan

Before the game, my teammates surrounded me with private rituals, each performed to perfection.

Misha set his carved bears on the top ledge of his stall. Then he kissed the head of the second bear from the left.

Wes went man to man, one sentence each, working the room alphabetically. Anderson came first.

Brick was eating a sandwich: sardines and mustard. He swore it was non-negotiable on days that mattered most, and with his mouth full, he offered me a bite. I declined; the smell of fish blended with the ever-present locker room funk.

Jamie was in the next stall, re-taping a stick. I sat on the bench beside him.

"How do you feel, kid?"

"Good." He stared at the blade. "I feel ready. This is what we dream about, right?" He smiled. "I'm excited to get out there."

Elias stood at the doorway, lanyard on, watching. He caught my eye and tipped his head toward the ice—go win a hockey game. I tipped mine back—go be a bodyguard. Neither of us said it out loud. We didn't have to.

The noise was there as soon as we stepped onto the ice, and it never let up. There was a hush during the anthem, but as soon as it ended, the sustained roar began again.

Boston came out heavy, and their big winger dialed in by the ten-minute mark. He started finishing a half-second late and low, driving against my hip on purpose, testing whether I'd fold.

I was re-tying my skate laces and didn't see the first goal go in. Boston was a good team, and good teams score. Their goal quieted our crowd for the first time in the game.

In the room between periods one and two, the strips over my temple began to itch. That instantly brought it all back—wet grass, gravel, and the fall. Then the buzzer sounded, and I put it all away and skated onto the ice.