Page 192 of Gamebreaker

I felt the switch happen. I found myself at the elbow with a guard four inches shorter than me, and I knew the shot was good before I took it.

I looked up.

Harper was leaning forward in her seat with both hands clasped in front of her mouth, completely still.

I shot.

Elbow in. Follow through. And then the silence between release and result. The silence that had marked every important moment of my career. Twelve years of understanding it in exact physical terms: arc, rotation, and trajectory. All skill, all practice, all math.

It went in.

The building came apart.

Up four. Thirty-eight seconds.

"No fouls!" I shouted. Up four, the last mistake we could afford was putting them on the line or giving their shooters a three-and-one.

I was guarding their best shooter, and they ran her off a double screen along the baseline. I fought through it, rose up, arm extended, and the tips of my fingers missed the ball by inches. Her foot was on the line. Two points. It rattled high off the back iron and dropped.

Up two. Twenty-seven seconds. The clock stopped on the make.

"Ball in, ball in!" I yelled, running toward the baseline, because I knew what was coming. They couldn't let the clock run. They had to foul. And I was the last person on this team they wanted to send to the line.

I shot ninety-three percent from the stripe.

I caught the inbound pass, and the Seattle forward wrapped both arms around me before I could take a dribble. Whistle. Twenty-six seconds.

I shrugged out of it, tossed the ball to the referee, and walked to the free throw line, the one on Harper's end of the floor.

I took the ball. I bounced it once. Twice. Three times.

Three taps. Like your free throws.

I glanced at the hair tie on my wrist, felt its warmth on me. I bent my knees, elbow in, and rose.

Perfect rotation. Nothing but net.

The second one was a copy of the first. Swish.

Up four. Twenty-six seconds.

"No fouls," I said again, to everyone, and to myself. "No fouls. Make them beat us clean."

They tried the double screen again. This time, I didn't get caught in it. I read it before it formed, slipped around the second screener, and stepped into the passing lane before the ball was even out of the guard's hands. I picked it off at the top of the key with eight seconds left.

I had a clear lane to the other end.

I didn't take it. There was no reason to run up the score on a team that had played us that hard. I dribbled across half court and let the clock run, and I watched the numbers on the board fall. Four. Three. Two. One.

The horn sounded.

Fangs win by four. Up one game to none in the WNBA Finals.

My team found me in about a second. Destiny's arm around my shoulders, Morgan screaming directly into my ear, Trish just grinning at me with her whole face. The crowd noise was a wall of sound so complete it became physical, a full-body pressure I'd felt hundreds of times in this building and had never once felt quite like this.

I was standing in the middle of everything I had built.

And I turned away from it.