Big Leagues (29 page)

Cat moved into his space, and he met her
halfway, his lips pressing hungrily into hers. Her eyes fluttered
closed and a small moan escaped her lips. The whimper of pleasure
was the report of a starter pistol. There was no turning back. His
hands graced her every curve; hers toyed with the muscles hidden
under the soft cotton t-shirt. They stumbled down to the hallway,
where she laid her body onto his. His back hit a wall and he pulled
her closer.

When they broke apart for a panting breath, Cat
took his hand and led him to the moonlit bedroom. She pushed him
onto the fluffy comforter. Benji needed no further encouragement,
and he lured her down with a soft tug on her arm. She straddled his
lap and gently traced her fingers along his face, studying the way
the moonlight glowed on his chiseled jaw. She lowered her head to
his, the jolt sending her hair forward and enveloping them in its
strawberry scent. Brushing back her hair, Benji brought his lips
back to hers and ran his fingers up the back of her shirt. His
touch sent a warm tingle along every nerve of her body.

While he watched, Cat pulled out of his embrace
and reached behind her back to work the zipper on her dress. His
eyes caressed her body as she rose up on her knees and pulled her
dress over her head. She tossed the fabric aside and wrapped
herself around him again.

Benji ran his fingers up her bare thighs, now
wrapped around his waist. His lips met hers once more, this time
with greater urgency, then traveled south. She gasped as he trailed
down her neck with his lips, following the path down to the hollow
of her throat and across the top of her breasts. Cat stirred and
tugged at his t-shirt. They broke apart from each other’s embrace
just long enough to pull the soft cotton over his head.

Now that they were both naked, he took control.
He wrapped his arms around her waist and flipped their bodies
around. Her laugh rang out in the quiet apartment. Benji tossed his
hair back and they shared a smile in the moonlight, each lost in
the other’s eyes.

Cat was used to waking up in beds that weren’t
hers, but this one had a warm familiarity that the hotel rooms did
not. Memories of the night before flooded through her and her head
sank into the feather-filled pillow. Rolling over gently, she saw
that Benji was still asleep. The green sheet concealed the long
limbs that had wrapped around her all night long. Tendrils of thick
black hair curled fetchingly into his face. She wanted to rip off
the sheet and feel his smooth, warm body beneath her once more—to
wake his full, parted lips with hers. Instead she slid out from
under the tangled pile of cotton.

Tippy-toeing across the room, Cat searched for
the clothing that had been discarded so carelessly only a few hours
earlier. She slipped the dress over her shoulders and, leaving the
zipper undone, searched all over the room and under the bed for her
missing bra. Finally she concluded that it must have eloped with
one of Benji’s lost socks. Creeping out of the hallway, she found
the same notepad on his counter he’d used the day before and wrote,
in a similar vein:

Early game day. You’re a pretty cute sleeper.
Maybe one of these mornings we can actually wake up next to each
other.

She smiled and set the pen down.

Stopping halfway to the door, she returned to
add a smiley face to the bottom of the letter.

Cat stood in her shower, hypnotized by the
stream. She closed her eyes as the hot water glided over every inch
of her body, a welcome reminder of Benji’s lips the night before.
The memory brought a coy smile to her face. He’d surprised her.
Since the hot July afternoon when she’d returned his comic book,
Cat had indulged in several fantasies about an evening with Benji,
but each scenario had included a Princess Leia costume and kinky
roleplaying. Instead, there had been no roles, just play. Only Cat
and Benji, two neighbors exploring each other’s bodies and souls.
The hot water began to cool. She shut off the faucet and tried to
let the memories of last night do the same. First pitch was at
twelve o’clock, and that meant she needed to be at the park in
forty-five minutes, looking like a woman whose passion was baseball
and not a sexy biology teacher.

Two hours earlier, the Chips had chalked up
their fourth loss of the last five games.

If not for yesterday’s extra innings and a
negligent catcher, it’d be five out of a miserable five.

Cat and the rest of her colleagues tucked their
tails between their legs and retreated to the fourth floor. She’d
spent the rest of the afternoon drafting her latest addition to the
website—an article about why the fans should not panic—when she had
started to panic. However, Cat’s pulse wasn’t hammering about the
team’s currently downward spiral but something much worse:
Yastrzemski was missing.

Ryno, Gehrig, Banks, Yastrzemski, Robinson and
Clemente. If the traveling demands of her chosen profession didn’t
preclude Cat from having pets, the names of her favorite baseball
legends would have been honored by giving them to a mutt, two
tabbies and a few goldfish, instead of six plastic hunks of
imported wires. Of those six digital recorders, the red one, more
commonly known as the aforementioned Yastrzemski, had strayed from
the pack. She rifled through the stack of papers, hoping the
recorder was hiding under the weak stat sheet or dismal
scorecard.

“Hey, you, everything okay?”

Cat looked up at Kiara, who was watching her
from the doorway.

“Uh, no, Key, it’s really not. Have you seen my
red recorder?”

“Nope. I’ll help you find it. Don’t worry.
Where’d you last have it?”

Cat flipped up the various folders on her desk
and threw them aside. “If I knew that, why would—never mind.” She
pulled open her desk drawer and saw the other five safely in
place.

Kiara peered over the desk. “Why do you have so
many?”

“What?” Cat looked up and frowned, exasperated.
“Oh. They help me be in six places at once in the clubhouse.
Sometimes there’s more than one interview going on at a time. So I
just drop one off, hit record and
voilà
, digital
ears.”

“Well, how come you can’t use one of the other
ones then?”

“I don’t need to use one. I need to find this
specific recorder because it’s got Ron Bouv—” Cat stopped and
smiled at the intern. “You, my dear, are a genius. I put the damn
thing by Ron’s desk after the game and I must have forgotten to
pick it up when I left.”

Kiara clapped her hands together and grinned.
“Yay! You want me to run down and get it for you?”

“Oh no, I’ll go. Maybe I can wring a bit more
out of somebody. They weren’t real chatty earlier, as you can
imagine.”

Kiara nodded knowingly. The game had been a
painful loss, a common theme for the Las Vegas Chips as of late.
Today was also the first day the clubhouse had been open to the
media since Jamal’s death. The reporters had all but thrown punches
to get to the miserable closer, who’d blown his first save of the
season thus far. Cat had been eager to flee both the journalistic
swarm and the room’s petulance, and she must have left behind Yaz
in her rush to escape.

Cat entered the clubhouse and stepped over the
remnants of a broken folding chair that she suspected was a victim
of the closer’s anguish.

Ah, now I get it. Must have been the chair’s
fault you kept lobbing fastballs right over the middle of the
plate.

“Hello again, Ms. McDaniel.”

She turned to the long bench and saw Dr.
Goodall sitting with a couple of players.

“Oh hey, guys. I was looking for Yaz—er, my
recorder. I think I left it down here …” She saw the red rectangle
sitting on a card table. “Hey, hey. There he is.”

She skipped over to the table, shoved the
recorder in her pocket and walked toward the bench. She pointed to
the doctor’s black medical bag. “What’s going on here?”

Dr. Goodall pushed his glasses up on his
bulbous nose. “Nothing newsworthy, I assure you.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s off the
record.”

Brett Hable piped up, full of cheer after going
three for three on the day, despite his team’s loss. “Just Vitamin
B shots.”

“Vitamin shots? Are you feeling sick, Brett?”
She scanned his face for any telltale signs.

“Well no, but all the players do them. Every
week.” Brett looked at the doctor and then back to her. “Why?
Doesn’t every …”

“Cobalamin, B-12. Nothing unusual, Ms.
McDaniel.” Dr. Goodall cleared his throat as he removed the needle
from the other player’s arm. She watched as he threw the used
syringe in the Sharps disposal bin.

“Of course. I’m familiar with the practice, but
I thought players only received B-12 shots when they were sick.”
She watched as the doctor prepared another syringe. “You know, like
coming down with a cold or something.”

Dr. Goodall’s head snapped up without
hesitation. “How do you think we avoid the flu bug in this enormous
sandbox of a tourist trap?”

“Oh. That makes sense.” She took another
glimpse at the open medical bag. “Well, guys, needles give me the
heebie jeebies, so I’ll just leave you and the pointies alone
now.”

Brett lifted up his sleeve and plopped down in
front of the doctor, giving her a flirty grin. “Sure you don’t need
one, too, Cat? Can’t have you getting sick, either.”

“I think I’ll stick with an apple a day,
slugger.” She gave him a wink and waved goodbye on her way out of
the room. She stepped into the elevator, a thought coming to mind
as she whooshed past each floor.

Mr. König:

I’m sorry to bother you while you’re on a
business trip, but an issue has arisen here I need to notify you
about. The other night, I caught Dustin Carlyle “spiking” a cup of
coffee intended for me. When I questioned him, he admitted he has
been doing this almost daily since my arrival. While the drug is a
non-lethal medication (a laxative, to be specific) this behavior is
worrisome to say the least. I haven’t shared this information with
any other staff members. I will wait for your response before I
take further action.

Cat deleted the message and closed the lid on
her laptop. She knew there was no way she could send the e-mail.
She had no choice but to wait until Mr. König came back from the
Dominican Republic and have that unpleasant conversation face to
face. It would almost be a shame. Dustin had come into work today
looking like a poster child for Contrition. He’d had the pregame
notes ready on her desk, helped her set up in the press box,
completed the stats before the Chips left the field and prepared
for tomorrow’s matchups before he left. Most importantly, he hadn’t
brought her any coffee. She almost felt guilty about drafting the
letter. The e-mail had served another purpose, anyway. Drafting it
had killed time while she waited for the building to
empty.

It was difficult to gauge the exact time Dr.
Goodall clocked in and out at Hohenschwangau Stadium every day. His
office light was always on first thing in the morning, and he’d
been there to perform her patch job after the late night mugging.
The game had ended hours ago, and Cat hoped the doctor had followed
his players out the door shortly thereafter. Hope was not enough,
though. She had to make sure.

Being the last employee left on the fourth
floor, she wasted no time strolling out to the cubicles. Taking a
quick look around, she slid behind Dustin’s desk and dialed Dr.
Goodall’s three-digit extension. Four rings and straight to voice
mail.

Good sign.

She carefully placed the phone back on Dustin’s
desk and wiped her fingerprint smudges off its plastic. Her
coworker’s desk emitted the same Arctic chill as its owner. There
wasn’t a paper out of place and not even a scribble on the desk
calendar. His phone, stapler and digital recorder were spaced an
equal two inches apart. Unlike everyone else in the office, he had
no memorabilia, not even a baseball cap sitting on his monitor, nor
a treasured ball next to his keyboard.

Creepy.

His desktop didn’t appear to be cluttered with
pictures of family or friends, either.

Adds credence to my newest theory: Dustin is
the result of an experimental laboratory and a Petri
dish.

She placed a hand on his file
cabinet.

I should probably check for a voodoo doll with
auburn hair and really cute shoes.

Cat hesitated and removed her hand.

No time. His days are numbered,
anyway.

She went back to her office and packed her
laptop in the tartan Burberry case, throwing the strap over her
shoulder and taking a deep breath.

Here goes nothing.

Cat expected reason to kick in on the ride down
to the clubhouse. Reason had departed at five o’clock along with
the rest of the front office staff. She was left with reason’s ugly
cousin, lunacy. The elevator doors opened with a chime, and she
took a step toward the soon-to-be crime scene. She grimaced when
she saw the lights were still on. Usually the clubhouse manager was
the last to leave, and he always shut the lights off on his way
out. Hoping the wasted electricity was an oversight, she carried
on. She poked her head through the doorway and batted her eyes with
mock innocence.