Hot Puck (Rough Riders Hockey 2)

Adrenaline gushed through Beckett’s system, and he used it to catch up with his teammates. He traded the puck a few times with Saber and Donovan as they jockeyed for an opening between the Ducks’ pipes. Decker intercepted a pass between Hendrix and Donovan and ran the puck toward the opposite end of the rink. The fans howled in disappointment.

“No fucking way,” Beckett said under his breath.

He sprinted across the ice as Decker set up for a play. Beckett saw three moves ahead, the way a chess master spied a checkmate in the near future with perfect accuracy. He pushed every ounce of strength available into his legs. In his peripheral vision, Beckett saw Donovan come up on his left. Savage on his right. Perfect positioning to grab the puck and go.

He braced himself and hit Decker hard, driving them both into the boards. Their bodies slammed with thundering impact, drowning out their curses and the cheering crowd. The puck was long gone, swept down the ice by Beckett’s teammates.

Decker’s frustration finally exploded. Instead of heading back into play, the Duck twisted and hammered a right hook at Beckett’s face. He dodged the punch, and the momentum swung Decker ninety degrees. His skate blade caught on Beckett’s, and before he could untangle himself, Beckett went down hard, hitting the ice on his ass. The impact nailed his tailbone, driving a steel shaft of pain straight up his spine. Every molecule of air in his lungs froze. Beckett hadn’t even reclaimed his breath before Decker shoved him backward. Beckett’s helmet cracked against the ice.

Hard.

So hard, a burst of black filled his vision, immediately followed by blinding white light and s

tabbing pain.

Beckett tried to push Decker off, but his arms wouldn’t move. He ordered his body to twist and roll. Still, he didn’t move.

His brain hurt. Bad.

His head felt wobbly. And light. Like it was floating off his neck.

Overhead, the goal siren echoed through the arena. The dome erupted in earsplitting applause. And even though the sounds came to him from a distance, like he had cotton stuffed in his ears, Beckett felt a sliver of gratification.

We’ve got the lead was his last thought before his mind went dark.

Eden Kennedy frowned at one of the dozens of EKG strips her boss had collected for her to study.

She sat cross-legged on the gurney pushed up against a cement wall in the lower level of the Verizon arena and laid the tape above her textbook, where she flipped through the pages dedicated to EKGs and the pathology found within the various strokes.

Her partner on the ambulance tonight, Gabe, a die-hard hockey fan, had his face all but pressed up against the glass that surrounded the rink. That left her free to focus on all these squiggly lines.

She rested her elbow on her knee and her forehead in her hand. “This is way too much like reading ink blots.”

Eden barely heard her own words over the noise rocking the stadium. She’d gotten pretty good at tuning out almost everything and everyone when she needed to focus on the job or her studies, but this noise was wearing on her concentration and her nerves. And as each hour of study time for tomorrow’s midterm dwindled away, her stress mounted. She was now at the tearing-her-eyelashes-out tension level.

“I think we’ve got something.” Gabe’s yell barely registered beneath the dense foam plugs she’d stuffed in her ears upon arriving at the stadium.

Eden lifted her gaze from the EKG strips to shoot a glare at Gabe, who stood ten feet away, but he was still focused on the rink. The only reason she’d agreed to work this extra shift was because he’d promised her nothing ever happened. He’d promised her she’d get all sorts of extra study time. But since he wasn’t looking at her, Eden followed suit and ignored him. It was going to take a hell of a lot more than that vague warning to get Eden to take him seriously.

The announcer’s voice rose over the noise and seemed to vibrate inside her body.

Eden cringed, squeezing her eyes shut and holding her head with both hands. “God, I hate hockey.”

Her words were once again sucked into the chaotic void beneath the metal dome.

“Eden,” Gabe said again, louder this time as he turned toward her. “I think we’re going in.”

“I doubt it,” she muttered.

The teams had physical therapists and team physicians. Gabe hadn’t hauled a guy in yet this season, and it was already November. Besides, these were professional hockey players. A notch above MMA fighters in her book only because at least they played a game in between fights that required some skill. Considering their brutal tendencies, Eden couldn’t fathom a reason to bring them in, barring a heart attack, stroke, broken bone sticking through the skin…

“Eden.”

“Jesus.” Eden slapped her textbook closed, pushed off the gurney, and wandered toward the mouth of the tunnel running beneath the stadium to meet Gabe. As she neared the rink, the cold wrapped around her, and she pulled her uniform jacket tighter.

The stadium had filled since she’d last looked, and a sea of royal blue created a thick tiered ring around the ice. “Damn. There are way too many people in our society who will pay to watch a fight.”

“They’re paying to watch hockey,” Gabe told her. “The fights come with the territory.”