Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Claimed by the Rival Hockey God novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Ironclads

Annette breaks down the Harbormen power play on the Ironclads' board in ninety seconds and wins a bench seat, then learns she is staying in Cillian's penthouse.

The Ironclads' analytics room smelled like burnt coffee and wet carpet, and I loved it on sight.

I had slept two hours on a plane and none in the terminal, and I still had the card in my coat pocket.

"You're the arrows," said a red-haired woman, and she held out her hand.

"I'm Annette."

"Fiona Cahill. I run this room, and I'm the captain's sister, so if he's rude you can complain to me."

She shook my hand hard.

"He told me last night he was bringing someone. He didn't say you'd look like you'd been hit by a bus."

"I walked out of a gala in the rain," I said.

"Good," said Fiona. "That's the right kind of tired."

She pushed a coffee into my hand and a laminated badge into the other one.

It said ANNETTE COOLIDGE, VIDEO ANALYST, and the ink was still a little wet.

Something in my chest went tight.

Nobody had made me a badge in advance in ten years.

Dario's staff pass had been printed on the day I started and had never once spelled my name right.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

Then it buzzed again.

I took it out and looked at the screen.

Dario: "Nettie, pick up."

Dario: "It was a bit. You know it was a bit."

Dario: "Where are you? Ma is crying."

I turned the phone over on the desk and left it face down.

"Come on," Fiona said. "He's already in the film room, and he doesn't wait."

The film room had a screen the size of a garage door.

Cillian Cahill stood at the front of it in a gray team shirt with his arms folded, and he did not turn around when we came in.

Behind him sat eight coaches and assistants in a half circle.

The head coach, a man with a gray crew cut and a toothpick, looked me over from my shoes to my glasses.

"Cahill tells me this is a Harbormen analyst," he said. "Last I checked that's the other team."

"It was," I said.

"And you're going to tell us how to beat them."

"No," I said. "I'm going to tell you what they're going to do."

Somebody in the back snorted.

Cillian turned around then.

His eyes were gray and he was looking only at me.

"Ninety seconds," he said. "Show them."

I took the marker from the tray.

The board was covered in somebody's guesses about the Harbormen power play.

I wiped it clean with my sleeve.

"The Harbormen run one power play," I said. "It looks like four, but it's one."

I drew five circles and a line.

"First pass goes back to the left defenseman. He holds it for a moment, because that's when the weak-side winger gets set."

I drew a second arrow.

"Then the puck goes up the wall to the center, who fakes a shot. Dario cuts to the back post on the third pass, every time, because I drew it for him and he's never changed it."

The coach's toothpick stopped moving.

"Your penalty kill steps up on the fake," I said. "That's the mistake. If you stay back and take away the cut, the whole thing dies. Dario will look for the pass and it won't be there, and then he'll panic and shoot high from the circle."

I capped the marker.

"That's eleven goals this season. Next week it's zero."

The room was quiet enough that I could hear the projector fan.

One of the assistants flipped through his notes.

"The back post," he said slowly. "Every power play. I never saw that."

"You weren't supposed to," I said. "I spent ten years making sure he made it look easy."

The coach spat his toothpick into a trash can and looked at Cillian.

"Put her on the bench Friday," he said.

Cillian didn't smile, but something in his jaw eased.

"She's on it," he said.

My shoulders came down for the first time since Boston.

Then Fiona touched my elbow in the hallway and said, quietly, "One thing. The team apartment we booked for you had a burst pipe this morning. The whole floor's under three inches of water."

"I can find a hotel."

"It's a game week. They're all full. You're staying with us."

"With who?"

"Cillian has the east wing of a penthouse," she said. "I have the west one. There's a guest room in the middle."

I opened my mouth to say no.

"I know," said Cillian, right behind me.

He had come up without a sound, and his shadow covered half the wall.

"I know it's a lot," he said. "The room has a lock. I'll give you the key myself."

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