Page 55 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
I’ve come up with a lot of terrible ideas in my lifetime—many of them enshrined in paper as a harsh reminder of how difficult it is to write strategic genius without actually being a strategic genius.
This takes the cake for bad ideas.
Because this is the only one that could wind up getting me killed.
“You’re sure you’re okay to do this?” Beckett asks, one foot on the Zamboni. He looks about as sure as I feel—exactly zero percent.
“I’m good,” I say, taking hold of the manual chain release for the Zamboni garage door.
Beckett nods, his gaze intense, and I suddenly know what it feels like to be on his team. He’s the Blue Line, and there’s nothing getting past him.
He flicks off his flashlight. The plan is a go.
I start pulling the garage door chains, arm over arm, the door lifting a foot at a time. The Zamboni engine rumbles and the lights flood the bay, gleaming off the steel door. Beckett doesn’t wait for it to be fully opened. He ducks his head and fires the engine. The Zamboni rolls onto the ice.
I keep going until the door is well over my head, and then I take my place just on the other side, outside the bay.
And now I wait.
The Zamboni rolls to the center of the ice, headlights pouring over the arena. The familiar hum of the engine rumbles in the air. Beckett turns to look back at me, just once, and my heart stumbles over its next beat.
Shoot, when did he turn sexy?
He turns back and kills the lights, plunging us into darkness again. I barely hear him climb off the machine over the hum of the engine—the soft crunch of his boots on ice—and then nothing. He’s crouched behind it. Waiting, just like me. Except he’s in the middle of a dark rink with a utility knife and a plan that depends entirely on timing.
Moments pass as we hold our breaths. And then…
Shouting erupts from somewhere above us, in the stands. A flashlight beam swings across the rafters, then drops toward the ice.
“Someone moved the Zamboni. Get down there. Now.”
My heart jumps into overdrive, thundering in my ears. This is it.
Boots echo down the risers. Two sets, hitting the ice, both immediately wrong-footed, grabbing the boards.
Still silence from Beckett’s direction, the Zamboni engine ticking as it cools on the ice, him crouched behind it, invisible, letting them come.
Then a sharp crack. The utility knife finding the ice-making water-supply hose. A quick slice and a hundred and fifty gallons of warm water pour out across the ice. Lord, please let him have been right about this.
For a moment, I hold my breath. And then fog lifts, a white wall billowing up across the rink in every direction. It swallows the flashlight beams whole.
“What’s—”
“Can’t see anything!”
They sound close—scary close.
From somewhere inside the white lifts Beckett’s voice. “Hey!”
One word. It’s enough.
The flashlight beams lurch toward the sound. Both of them. Boots scrambling on ice, losing purchase, finding it, moving fast toward the garage opening, toward the bay—toward where they think he is.
Beckett’s shape materializes out of the fog. He doesn’t look at me. He looks back once—confirming they’re behind him—then ducks through the garage opening into the bay.
The footsteps don’t slow down.
A clang against the doors—intentional, loud. Good. Now get out of there!
