"No." The word snaps out of me. Too fast. Too hard. I do not care. "Don't send him up. Tell him I'm not available. Don't give him any information. Not my schedule, not my hours, not whether I'm in the building. Tell him nothing."
A beat passes, and Rachel's breathing changes near the receiver.
"Okay," she says, quieter now. "I'll let him know."
The phone disconnects. The office keeps moving.
Keys clack. Someone laughs near the copy desk. A chair squeals against the floor. The whole fucking world keeps moving while I sit there with my pulse trying to climb out through my throat.
No one looks up.
Zoë notices.
She's across the room, pinning fabric swatches to a board, and her eyes find mine with the precision of a woman who notices every pulled thread. She doesn't cross the room. She doesn't make a scene. She holds the look for three seconds, maybe four, and I give the smallest shake of my head.
Her mouth tightens. Then she nods and goes back to the fabric.
I save my document. Close my laptop. Pick up my bag with the letter, the dead name, and the knowledge that the man downstairs has now been to my apartment, my campus, and the lobby of my workplace with a business card and a polite smile and the patience he referenced in his letter.
I have patience. I've always had patience when it comes to you.
The line crawls under my skin as I walk out of the office. I take the stairs instead of the elevator. My hand stays on the railing. My breath stays even because I count it into obedience.
I use the back exit, the fire door that opens onto the alley behind the building, the exit I mapped my first week at the Chronicle because mapping exits is what I do. What I've always done.
I don't go to the front lobby.
I don't see him.
The back exit opens into the alley. From there, I cut to the sidewalk and cross campus toward the rink.
I'm walking toward a hockey rink. Toward two men. Across a campus in broad daylight, heading for the building where the two people I trust are running drills on ice.
The rink during afternoon practice is a different planet. I flash my press credentials at the facility entrance, and the security guard waves me through. The stairs to the press viewing area feel longer than they should. By the time the ice opens below me, the cold hits my face hard enough to sting.
Twenty-three men in practice jerseys carve across the white surface. Blades cut. Sticks crack. A puck slams off the boards with a gunshot snap that makes my shoulders lock before I can stop them. The regional final banner from last year hangs from the rafters. Tomorrow's game will decide if they add another. The coaching staff is running tournament formations, the intensity sharper than a regular practice, every drill pointed at Friday.
I find them.
Both of them.
Always both of them.
My eyes find their numbers before they find anything else.
Dante is on the far side, explosive and precise, his slap shot cracking through the rink like a rifle. Cole is at center, fluid and fast, winning a face-off with a grin visible from the press box.
I'm standing above them with a letter in my bag and a dead girl's name on the envelope while they run tournament drills for the biggest game of their college careers.
Tonight, the fight follows them off the ice.
Practice ends at 3 PM.
I wait in the corridor outside the locker room, my bag strap cutting a line into my shoulder, my body angled toward the nearest exit because some habits do not give a shit about logic.
Cole sees me first.
Of course Cole sees me first.
