Rook, two seats over, said nothing.
"Pull them up," Varga told Lindqvist, one of the coaching assistants.
I watched Markel. He was silent for precisely six seconds, then clicked to the next clip.
"When he arrives, we'll integrate on the ice."
Cross, from the back row: "What system does he run?"
Markel looked at him. "Tampa." The room went quiet. We all understood what that meant.
Tampa ran a different defensive structure. On the surface, it was similar, but the mechanical differences would be obvious under pressure. Our new defenseman would have Tampainstincts, built somewhere other than Chicago. That likely meant temporarily exacerbating the weaknesses on the left side.
Poole's timing was correctable, but with him gone and Holt in his place, we had to fix more than timing. I'd have to wait to watch Holt in action before I could make my own adjustments.
Two days.
We returned our attention to the screen. Cross sat in the back with his arms folded. Heath asked one question about transitions. Coach ended the session, set the remote down, and walked out. We followed him into the corridor.
Kieran fell into step beside me about twenty feet from the video room door. He matched my pace and stayed there. We walked the length of the corridor without talking.
"Coverage held today," he finally said.
It was an observation from someone who had watched the drill with the same attention I had. He reached the same conclusion by a different route. I didn't respond. That meant I'd heard.
We reached a split in the tunnel. Kieran angled left without breaking stride, toward the lot where Heath's car was already idling behind the garage door glass.
I veered right.
Two days.
My condo was exactly as I'd left it. The counter was clear and the temperature where I kept it. I hung my bag on its hook, changed, and sat down with my laptop and a legal pad. I opened the Detroit clip.
The lane opened at the same point it always did. Poole was late by the same half-second. The shot came from the same location. I noted the timestamp and backed up to the beginning before running it again.
Music started to play on the other side of my living room wall.
Bass-forward, with the melody thinned by the drywall, I heard the shape of it more than the sound. It was a low pulse that settled into the room.
I listened long enough to try to sort it. The rhythm held steady under the bass, and the vocal came in a beat late against it. It was familiar, but not enough to place. I ran it through again in my head, adjusted the timing, and placed it.
More Fleetwood Mac—"The Chain."
When Sully had guests, it was usually disco. On his own, he mostly listened to Fleetwood Mac.
I ran the video clip a third time. Nothing changed. The clip had given me all the information on the first pass. The second and third were verifications. I put my legal pad aside.
The wine bottle was still on the counter.
Nine days, and it was still exactly where I'd put it the night Sully handed it to me at the door. It sat just left of center.
In my condo, everything had a place, except for the bottle. I'd set it down and abandoned it. I looked at it.
Sully called it a good wine when he handed it to me, but I hadn't opened it. I didn't manufacture occasions for quality drinks. Instead, I walked past it every day.
The music through the wall shifted. It was slower now, Jefferson Starship's "Miracles?" I was listening more closely than necessary.
An hour later, I heard two quick knocks.
