Chapter one
Pratt
Donna Summer sang "MacArthur Park" next door. It wasn't low background. It was impossible to ignore.
Loud enough that the bass carried through the wall and into my kitchen while I lined up three glasses on the counter and checked the spacing twice.
My neighbor had at least four people over. Maybe more. Voices layered over the music, stepping on each other. One laugh kept cutting through the rest, sharp and unfiltered. It didn't stop when the others did.
I adjusted the middle glass a quarter inch to the left. It didn’t help.
The laugh cut through again.
It was four days after the Christmas break. The Chicago Ironhawks had endured a shootout loss in Detroit that Varga namedThe Tire Fire on I-94. He repeated it to every media outlet he could find, wanting it to stick.
Practice didn't run long. Coach offered no corrections that required us to stay past the scheduled end. I cleared thePerformance Center at 5:22. Elevator at 5:28. Inside my condo at 5:34.
I'd only been in the new place for three weeks. My landlord wanted my apartment back on a month's notice. It was just enough time to find something better. This time I bought my home. No takebacks.
The layout was workable. Open concept, with sightlines clear from the entry to the windows. Standing at the kitchen counter, I could see both the door and the windows without turning my head.
I'd set the furniture once and left it. Surfaces stayed clear. Some unpacking remained: books stacked but not shelved, and a lamp still in its box near the far wall.
I hung my keys on a hook by the door and set my bag beneath it.
The bass thumped harder.
Kieran had said six. He was coming with Heath to watch the rush sequence we'd flagged in film. It was a weak-side coverage gap that had opened twice against Detroit and once in Columbus before that.
It was better to address it here, without the rest of the team, and without Coach deciding it required a full practice correction. I had forty minutes to get ready.
I went to the kitchen.
No full meal. There wasn't time, and this wasn't that kind of session. I sliced a block of cheddar into even pieces and laid them flat on the cutting board, edges aligned.
Crackers went beside them in three stacks on the right side. I washed and dried fruit—grapes and apple slices—and placed the bowl on the left side of the counter.
Kieran always reached left. He'd done it the first time I'd had him over and every time after. I noticed it the second time. By the third, I put the bowl where his hand would go.
Heath would eat whatever was in front of him. Like he did in front of the net, he absorbed whatever came at him and made use of it.
My front door swung open.
I'd left it unlocked for Kieran and Heath. The man who appeared was neither of them.
He came through the door with a vending machine bag of pretzels in one hand, already open. Lean with wavy hair. Eating as he walked without hesitation.
His phone was in his other hand, screen lit as his thumb hovered. He made it a few steps inside before he looked up.
His attention moved from the counter to me and held. Long enough to realize something was off.
"Okay," he said. "This isn't my place."
"No, it's not."
He looked around again. I saw no alarm in his expression. "My door and your door are more similar than I gave them credit for." He looked at the counter again. "Very clean kitchen for someone with a lamp still in the box."
"I've only been here three weeks."
