Page 96 of Home Ice

Tired defensemen protect the middle first. It’s an old hockey truism. That meant the wall was mine. 44 came across to seal it, committing everything, and I felt the whole rink lean with him.

I cut back inside. East, then north.

His second turn died like Coach Markel said it would. I showed him the cutback and didn’t take it. He froze between his first turn and his second one, a big man stuck between two plays with his skates committed to neither. I went straight past his outside shoulder, and I was alone coming down the wing with the noise climbing row by row.

I shot toward the goalie’s far pad, and it went in the net off the far post.

Varga hit me so hard that we nearly went down together. Heath arrived yelling. 2–1, with seven minutes and change left.

Their waves kept coming, and we held on. Rook blocked another shot. Trier took a faceoff with fifty seconds left he had no business winning.

After they pulled their goalie with a minute left, their point man came charging at me. I banked the puck off the glass to Heath, who skated it to center and took a shot that couldn’t miss. The crowd buried us in noise, and Varga grabbed my helmet in both gloves. He shouted in English that I was the best winger he’d ever played with.

The scrum was still double its normal size. A reporter I didn’t recognize stepped forward. “This is the second time in a month you’ve passed up a hat trick. Is it a policy now?”

“It’s not a policy. Their guy was closing.”

Deckert, wearing his gray parka, worked his way to the front. “Rafe. This isn’t about the game. With everything going on, how are you?”

Everyone around him fell silent.

“I’m good,” I said. And then, because Deckert had asked it respectfully, I gave him one more sentence than Varga’s system called for. “It was a hard month, but the important people were good to me. That’s all I’ve got.”

“That’s plenty,” Deckert said.

Then I saw him. Beyond the scrum, toward where the tunnel gives way to the hallway to the parking garage.

Niko. He was in the building. He’d watched the game in person.

He smiled.

Chapter twenty-four

Niko

The section the website called value seating had one real value for me. Nobody up there cared who I was. For two periods I sat twelve rows from the roof between a man keeping score on paper and a family of four in matching jerseys.

From that height, hockey stopped being bodies and turned into geometric designs that changed and shifted like a kaleidoscope. Minnesota sent two men into every corner all night, arriving before the puck did. And every few shifts, number 19 in white and red took a pass along the wall, leaned one direction, and then went the other.

When he scored in the third, everyone leaped to their feet to cheer. The man with the scorecard pounded my shoulder like we’d known each other for years. Rafe was a hero, and three weeks ago half of them had booed him every time he touched the puck.

Halfway through the game, I decided I didn’t want to remain in the rafters. With two minutes on the clock, I got up and worked my way down the empty concourse stairs. I had a number that could get me where I wanted to go.

Mark, a PR man with the Ironhawks, had shaken Ma’s hand at the Palmer House and given her his number. She shared it with me. Now I was ready to call in a favor.

He picked up on the second ring.

“Mark Corley.”

“It’s Niko Gregory. I’m in the building.”

He paused for a half-second. “Where?”

“Section 318. Top of the stairs.”

“Stay there.”

The horn sounded while I waited, and I felt the cheers through the concrete. Mark arrived in less than five minutes, wearing a suit with a lanyard and no tie.