Chapter 10: Photograph

By the time I made it downstairs, the photo had been in the team chat for twenty minutes.

Hallie met me at the elevator, white-faced, with her phone in both hands.

"Forty-one people have seen it," she said. "Melina, I'm so sorry."

"Who sent it?"

"Unknown number. But Zara is in the breakfast room, and she's smiling like she won the lottery."

Rhett came out of the elevator behind me in yesterday's jersey with the bandage stuck on his eyebrow.

He had only needed one look at my phone.

"Penalty," he said quietly. "Say the word and we go back up."

"No."

"They'll be looking."

"Good."

The hotel breakfast room was long and bright, full of waffle machines and hockey players.

Every single head turned when we walked in.

Jase sat at the far table with Coach and two assistants, a plate untouched in front of him.

Zara sat beside him in her white coat.

Her phone lay face up on the table with the photo glowing on it.

I walked straight to her.

The room went silent, one table at a time.

"Morning," I said.

"Melina." She lifted her coffee. "We were just talking about you."

"I saw. Forty-one people got the picture."

"I didn't send anything."

"Then somebody was standing in the hallway at midnight with a camera and a grudge."

"Maybe somebody was concerned."

I was shaking so hard I had to lock my knees.

I set my phone on the table beside hers, with the photo zoomed to one corner.

"Look at the edge of the picture," I said. "There's a strip of light on the carpet."

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