Page 88 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
“Beckett Benson?”
The voice comes from behind me. Loud. Professional. Projected with the specific volume of a person accustomed to being heard in chaos.
I turn.
A woman. Blonde. Heavy wool coat. Microphone. Behind her, a cameraman already filming. Behind him, another crew. And another. The parking lot is filling with satellite-topped vans—every news outlet in the Twin Cities.
Of course the media is here. A fire in an abandoned mall, four arrests, a professional hockey player, a gambling investigation—this is the kind of story news directors dream about.
“Mr. Benson? Karen Lindstrom, WCCO News. We’re getting reports of a hostage situation involving the Blue Ox?—”
From the left: “Mr. Benson, Channel Five—were you trapped overnight?—”
Another: “Can you comment on the arrests?—”
Microphones converging from multiple directions, descending on both of us. Camera lights switching on—bright, harsh, merciless. Capturing the foil blanket. The cracked glasses. The soaked hair. The deer-in-the-headlights blank stare of a woman who’s been awake twenty-four hours and running for her life for half of them, a.k.a. me.
I look at Beckett across the microphones, across the invasion of the public into the private.
And right then, he changes. Retreats behind his own blue line to safety, the defenseman, ready to defend his privacy.
I look at him and silently try to say This isn’t over. The media can have the facts. They can’t have this.
But he looks away and steps up to the microphones. And I recognize the man there.
It’s Jake, from my story. The hero I don’t know.
Can we talk?
Yes.
Except I’m not sure if it’s too late.
Or…if there will be a later.
The reporters close in. The cameras roll. The sky is golden, spilling over the Northwoods Mall. The building stands—damaged, flooded, smoking slightly from the west end, but standing. And somewhere in the wreckage of the rink where two lonely kids grew up to save each other in the dark, a new chapter was started.
Turns out, knowing what comes next doesn’t mean it’s any easier to accept. I don’t know if the conversation will happen or if life will swallow us.
If this has, in fact, been fiction all along.
BECKETT
My phone is alive.
This is the first small surprise of the morning—the small, mundane surprise that arrives after twelve hours of large, existential ones. The moment we stepped through the open arena doors, the moment the cell towers shook off the storm, my phone received twelve hours of missed communications simultaneously and vibrated with the sustained, aggressive urgency of a device that has a lot to say and has been saving it.
Seven missed calls. A dozen texts. The screen scrolls like a stock ticker during a crash—fragments of a world I forgot existed.
Oh, and the seven calls? Yes, all from the same number. Rick Castellano. My agent. The man who negotiated my rookie contract and has spent six months managing the doping narrative.
Rick, who doesn’t panic.
Rick, who has called seven times in ten minutes.
Rick is panicking.
Call eight comes in. I gesture to the reporters—I gotta take this—and step away. I pick up the phone.
