Sawyer (Carolina Reapers 2)

Her face softened. “You do a great job balancing it all. We just selfishly want more of you.”

“I’ll think about it,” I promised her.

“You do that. And it’s not like we don’t know that you’re spending all your free time with a certain bartender that we happen to love. She could come around more often, too.” She gave me a playful smile.

Bar-owner, I thought silently. That’s right. My girl had seen a way to make her dream come true, and she’d done it. She’d made the best of an impossible load of grief and now had a place she could be proud of. A place I somehow knew her father would love. Not bad for a twenty-three, almost twenty-four-year-old.

“So, you said you needed to see me,” Axel led in, his tone mellow.

I glanced at Langley, and her eyes widened slightly in understanding. “You know,” she said as she scooped up a jet black cat. “Slytherin and I have a whole lot that we can get done in the office, don’t we?” She finished off speaking to the cat and slipped away up the stairs.

“That bad?” Axel asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Yeah,” I managed.

“Well, let’s grab a drink and some sunshine. We’re not due at the rink for another few hours.” He patted me on the back and led the way.

A few minutes later, we sat on his deck, and I told him exactly what I’d seen when Thurston’s door had opened.

“Shit,” he muttered. “That’s a steroid.” He leaned back in his chair and stared up at the sky.

“Anabolic,” I confirmed. “And I don’t know why, but all I keep thinking about is how fucking stupid he is not just to be taking them, but to keep the bottle in his damned car.”

Axel nodded and rubbed the skin between his eyebrows.

“Look. I didn’t want to say anything.”

His eyes flew open and locked on mine.

“I didn’t,” I repeated, shaking my head. “I know he’s in pain. I know the knee is just fucking killing him, and I’m sure he sees Zimmerman lying in wait, and he panicked.” I put my hand up to stop Axel from interrupting when he so clearly wanted to. “But the truth is that it’s wrong, and it’s illegal, and if he gets caught…”

Axel took a deep breath. “They’ll take back our wins.”

I nodded. “And I wouldn’t even be here, fucking telling on him like we’re in grade school, except he’s the one starting tonight.”

The conference championships. If we won the best of these seven games, we moved on to the Stanley Cup finals.

“Fuck,” Axel muttered.

“Right. I didn’t just want to bust into Coach’s office and lay Thurston’s shit bare, but I can’t let him put the entire team at risk. The only playoff game he’s been in net for was one we lost, but tonight…” I shook my head, then chugged water, hoping to quench the parched feeling that had been riding my tongue since I’d been told I could rest up and not suit out tonight.

“We have to tell Gage,” Axel said slowly. “We can’t let Thurston on the ice.”

“That’s what I figured.” Not that I was ever going to call Coach McPherson by his first name, but Axel had known him a shit ton longer than I had.

“I don’t want to, either,” Axel admitted. “Thurston’s grumpy, but I like the asshole. And I really appreciate you keeping this quiet and coming to me. I know you want to protect him, but we just can’t. Not with the Cup on the line. Do you think the kid saw?”

“Zimmerman?”

Axel nodded.

“I don’t know. He acted like he may have seen, but I grabbed it so quickly, and he hasn’t said anything since.”

“Let’s hope. All it takes is him going to the media, or running his mouth to the wrong person, and we’re fucked.”

I followed Axel’s Rover in my truck, and we headed to the rink, knowing Coach McPherson would already be there.

The players’ lot wasn’t empty, but I hadn’t hung out in the parking lot long enough to recognize whose cars were whose. We both parked, showed our badges to the guards—like we actually needed them—and headed up through the maze of hallways that made up Reaper Arena. Coach McPherson’s office looked out over the practice ice, so we managed to avoid most of the staff readying for tonight’s game.

Axel knocked on the thick wooden door, then swore when he glanced through the window.

“We’re too late,” he said quickly before twisting the handle on the door. I followed him in, then stood by his side in utter shock.

Coach McPherson sat at the head of a small conference table that sat perpendicular to his desk. Coach Hartman sat at his side while Asher Silas sat to his right. Zimmerman held down one of the seats on the side, and Thurston sat at the end, staring into space.