Page 70 of Hard Pass

And that possibility doesn’t shake.

Not when I head to the locker room.

Not when I step in the shower.

And sure as shit not when I throw back my first beer in the back room of O’Dell’s Tavern where they’ve put us so the chaos surrounding me doesn’t affect their other guests.

But the second and third beers feel so fucking good that I order a fourth. It’s exactly the help I need to forget for a bit.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Dublin

Rain batters the café window.

It falls relentlessly, one sheet after another, turning the outside world into a blur of gray accented with red taillights.

But the café is loud enough to drown out most of the conversations around me, which truth be told, is the main reason I chose this place.

No one cares who the woman is, sitting in the booth in the far corner, framed by windows, with work spread out across the table and a cup of coffee partially gone and growing colder by the second.

No one’s here watching me as I watch him, wondering what I see.

Anonymity is a wonderful thing.

My laptop glows in front of me with spreadsheets layered across the screen in a way that would make most people’s eyes cross. Mine don’t.

They narrow and look for patterns, starting over again with the timestamps because I know deep down, that’s where the truth is.

Not the headlines. Not the online commentary. Not the speculation.

The timestamps don’t lie and considering the fact that earlier today our forensic accountant deemed Cole’s bank and investment accounts as squeaky clean, I need to start chasing other avenues.

Then again, squeaky clean doesn’t necessarily mean he doesn’t have an account or two under someone else’s name where he can place bets from. Hell, it wouldn’t be the first time an athlete I’ve investigated did that, so it’s still a loose end I need to tie up.

But in the meantime, I’m focusing on timestamps. I drag my finger down the column on my screen, tracking each play with each bet with each time. Every game for the past two seasons. I have half a mind to look back at his college days as well—patterns, after all—but am remaining focused on his time with the Rebels.

Bet placement.

Line movement.

Play execution.

Again and again in a way that’s too clean to be a coincidence and too consistent to be luck. And yet . . . I tap my pen against the table, the rhythm uneven as I struggle with one of the most frustrating elements of my job—uncertainty.

I like black. I like white. I like right. I like wrong. I like a concrete stance regardless of what side of it you’re on, and yet I wade in uncertainty every day trying to find those solid truths.

And achieving that goal is far from simple. If it were, I would have Cole’s situation figured out already.

The bets being made are precise, calculated, almost like . . . I stop myself before the thought fully forms.

What am I missing?

I lean back in my chair, exhaling slowly as I drag my gaze from the screen to the rain-streaked glass and the cars passing by, heading home, after a long day of work.

Think.

The answer has to be somewhere in all of this. Where else should I look? Where do I need to double-check?