Page 265 of Cross Checked
“Leave.”
“Your tone wounds me.”
“Good.”
Ryan grabbed Briggs by the back of his jacket and hauled him away before Briggs could turn the moment into community theater. Their footsteps faded down the hall, followed by Briggs saying something about calling Bliss to report my technological vulnerability.
I stood alone in the locker room for three seconds longer than I should have.
Then I checked the locker.
Top shelf.
Bottom shelf.
Behind my shoes.
Inside my hoodie.
Nothing.
A cold thread pulled tight through my chest.
I did not lose things. Not important things. Not things that could put me out of reach when people I loved needed me.
People I loved.
The thought landed hard enough that I paused with one hand braced against the locker frame.
No.
Not now.
Not in the locker room while the arena emptied and Bliss waited outside with a family still bleeding from what one monster had done under their noses for years. I could have my emotional breakdown later. Preferably never. Preferably after Luke Dempsey was behind bars and Bliss slept without flinching and I could look at her father without seeing the haunted devastation of a man who had spent years feeding a predator at his table.
My hand curled around the edge of the metal locker, and I slammed the fucker harder than necessary, the clang echoing through the room. Maybe I’d left it near the interview backdrop. Maybe it slid under the bench when I changed. Maybe one of the guys grabbed it by mistake. Worst case, I’d have Bliss track it from her phone, because the second she realized my cell was missing, she’d say something sarcastic about me being a geriatric hockey captain with the object permanence of a toddler, and I would let her because hearing her talk shit meant she was safe enough to breathe.
I stepped out of the locker room and into the corridor.
The arena felt different now.
Not empty exactly. There were still distant voices, doors opening and closing, a muffled cheer rolling from somewhere near the concourse, but the team hallway itself had gone quiet in that concrete way arenas got after games. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. My dress shoes clicked against the floor. Somewhere behind me, the ice plant hummed low through the walls, steady and mechanical, like a heartbeat that belonged to the building instead of me.
Then I saw him.
Luke Dempsey stood at the end of the hall near the service exit, half in shadow, one shoulder against the concrete block wall like he had been waiting long enough to get comfortable.
Everything inside me went still.
Not calm. Never calm with this fucker.
Still.
Massive fucking difference.
He looked wrong under the fluorescent lights. Too pale. Too sharp around the eyes. His hair was damp near his temples, his jaw shadowed, his mouth sitting in that same fake, easy line I’d seen at the Bennett barbecue before he started showing everyone what lived underneath. One hand hung at his side. The other was tucked close near his jacket.
My attention dropped to the hand he kept too close to his jacket, fingers curled around something that didn’t belong there. The fluorescent light caught it when he shifted, a thin silver flash near his thigh, and the air in the hallway seemed to lose ten degrees all at once.
