I walked over to the food spread in the locker room. The others followed right behind me. “One of these cookies?” I picked one up and sniffed it. Then I took a bite to confirm it.
“I can barely taste it, but there’s definitely peanut butter in this.”
The assistant coach scowled. “Let me get the caterer in here.”
The woman who was eventually escorted into the locker room by a security guard looked confused and scared. I couldn’t blame her. This was potentially a life-threatening mistake.
She took one look at the cookies and vigorously shook her head. “These did not come from us. Our signature chocolate chip cookies are flatter and more consistently baked. These are different sizes. Probably homemade.”
“So someone switched them out?” the medic asked.
All of us were silent for a few moments.
“Is this related to the bomb threat?” I wondered out loud.
“First Rhett Lawson, now Cole Thibault,” the assistant coach said. “Are there any common denominators between those two players?”
Cole glanced at me, then quickly looked away.
What was going on?
The head of security reviewed the arena surveillance footage, and in the next hour, we had our answer. A plate of cookies was found in one of the employee hallways between the locker room and the loading dock where deliveries were made. While the caterer’s tray was waiting to be transported to the locker room, someone in a black Reapers hoodie walked up and switched out the cookies.
But even after reviewing all the other camera footage, they couldn’t figure out who did it—or where they had gone after making the switch.
“It’s a big arena,” the security guy explained. “We can’t cover everything. There are blind spots all over the place.”
Without Cole, the Reapers lost the game against the Dallas Stars, 2-1. Cole was understandably upset about everything, and went home without saying goodbye. My heart went out to the captain, and I sent him a text letting him know I was thinking about him, but all he did was heart the message without responding.
Rhett came back to my place later that night. We started fooling around on the couch, but neither of us were in the mood.
“Sorry,” he said when we stopped. “My heart’s not in it. I can’t stop thinking about Cole.”
“It’s okay to have bisexual thoughts about your male friends,” I teased.
He gave me a look.
“Sorry. Just trying to lighten the mood. I’ve been thinking about it for the past few hours, too. Who would poison Cole?”
“It’s got to be related to the letter I got,” Rhett insisted. “Who would want to hurt both meandCole? You don’t have a crazy ex-boyfriend, do you?”
“None that live anywhere near here,” I replied. “Maybe it’s someone who wants the team to fail?”
“This job is tough enough without having to worry about this shit,” Rhett said. “Can I crash here tonight? I don’t really want to go back to my place.”
I snuggled up closer to him on the couch. “I’ll protect you, Rhett.”
He snorted. “My hero.”
Two days later, we had a long road trip to Canada, with games in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. Even though Coach Jay told us that we shouldn’t spread gossip about the catering incident, the entire team knew about it by then. Everyone nervously glanced over their shoulders and inspected their drinks and food on the plane.
It continued when we had the team dinner at the hotel restaurant in Ottawa. The players around me stirred their food with their forks while looking around at everyone else. Nobody wanted to be the first one to take a bite.
“For fuck’s sake,” I said loudly, shoveling pasta into my mouth.
The last thing the team needed was this kind of distraction. Especially Cole and Rhett, who had been specifically targeted.
I couldn’t make the rest of the team relax, butmaybeI could do something about those two.
