Thread of Hope (The Joe Tyler Series, #1) (16 page)

Kelly followed my eyes to Meredith.  “You wanna talk to her afterward, that’s fine.  But not during practice.  Clear?”

“Crystal.”

She blew the whistle and the girls hustled to the middle of the floor.  She gave them some preliminary instructions and then the girls broke into lines at the far end of the floor.

“Can you run this?” she asked, referring to the drill they were about to start.

“Yeah.”

“Good.  Get in line and run with them.”

I thought she meant
run
as in supervise, not
run
as in run, but I jogged down to the end of the floor, aware of the girls giggling and whispering as I took my place at the end of the middle line.  Meredith avoided my eyes, bending down and messing with her shoelaces. 

The drill required a player in each of the three lines to sprint to the other end where two other players waited as defenders. The shooter from the original three then backpedaled on defense, facing the two defenders as they came back down and attempted to score.  It simulated the fast break and having to get back on defense.  A fantastic drill.

If you’re in shape to run it.

After five minutes, I was gassed and covered in sweat.  I’d clanked a ten-footer and been beaten badly back on defense twice. 

As I panted, trying to get my breathing under control, I marveled again at how well the girls on the team played together.  They communicated constantly, yelling at one another at every opportunity.  They moved the ball with ease and always seemed to know where their teammates were supposed to be.

I was up again, a girl named Theresa on my left and Kristin, the girl whose footwork I’d corrected the day before, on my right.  Meredith and Megan waited for us on the other end on defense.

Theresa broke hard for the basket and I bounced the ball to her beneath Meredith’s hands.  Theresa whipped the ball over Megan’s head to Kristin.  Meredith rotated down quickly to guard Kristin, so she fired the ball back to me at the top.  I buried the jumper and sprinted back to the other end.

Meredith had the ball on the right and Megan flared out to my left as they pushed forward.  Smart.  Spread the floor, attack from both sides and make me choose.  It was a subtle thing, but that kind of movement usually separated the better players from the rest.

Meredith’s eyes were impassive as she approached, the ball bouncing rhythmically beneath her left hand as she came down.  She quickened her pace and came right at me.  I stepped up to meet her.  She flicked her eyes to her left, looking for Megan.  I took another step up and shaded that way to see if I could deflect the pass I thought was coming.

But there was no pass.

Meredith switched the ball to her right hand and accelerated past me before I could recover.  She laid the ball up off the backboard and it dropped softly through the net.

Kelly blew the whistle and yelled “Stations!” and the girls sprinted in groups of three to the side baskets. 

I stayed on the baseline, my hands clasped behind my head, waiting for my breath to come back.

“You alright?” Kelly asked, coming up by my side, her eyes scanning the floor.

“No,” I said.  “I’m about to die.”

“You’ll be fine.”  Then she laughed.  “Meredith destroyed you on that last play.”

I nodded.  “She’s good.”

“You just wait,” she said. “That was nothing.”

And Kelly was right.  Over the next two hours, Meredith dominated the practice.  If a shot needed to be made, she made it.  If the defense needed to make a stop, she found a way to the ball.  She out-shined all of her teammates in every drill, in every way, and when they scrimmaged for the last ten minutes, she demonstrated how superior she was to every other girl in the gym by scoring at will, and anticipating everything the opposing five wanted to do.

And she did it all with ease and with an expression that gave away nothing.

Kelly adjourned the practice and cornered me as the girls trickled off the floor.  She handed me a piece of paper.  It was the background check she'd told me about.

“Get that back to me tomorrow,” she said.  “You have a sport coat?”

“Excuse me?”

“A coat.  You’ll have to wear a coat on the bench tomorrow night for the game,” she explained.

“You want me on the bench?”

“You’re a coach, aren’t you?”

I didn’t know what I was.  “You gonna clear that with Stricker?”

Subtle contempt settled on her face.  “I’ll handle Stricker.”

I took a deep breath and my heart settled down to a manageable rhythm.  “Then I’ll find a coat.”

She nodded and walked away.

I picked up my bag and walked out into the hallway between the gym and the lockers.  Meredith came blazing out of the locker room and, like before, crashed into me.

She backed up, not looking me in the eye.  “Sorry.  Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I said, turning to block the door.  “But we need to talk.”

“I can’t,” she said.  “Not right now.”

The bruise on her face had faded to a pale yellow.

“Come on, Meredith,” I said.  “My friend’s in the hospital, waiting to go to jail and he doesn’t deserve to be.  Does he?”

She looked up from the floor.  The steely gaze from the gym was gone, replaced by the expression of a scared teenage girl. 

“I can’t,” she said.  “I have to go.”

“Is it your dad?” I asked.  “Is he the one that did this to you?  And now you’re scared of him?”

Her expression shifted, somewhere closer to confusion, but I couldn’t tell if it was because I was right or wrong.

“I have to go,” she said and pushed past me.

I took a step after her, then stopped.  Chasing her wasn’t the right thing to do.  She was scared and I didn’t want to make it worse.

She shoved open the glass doors and disappeared outside.

THIRTY-TWO

The next morning, I faxed the background check to the school and I walked over to Horton Plaza to find that sport coat.  I was thinking that I needed to call Lauren, too.  I thought maybe I’d been too harsh with her and that maybe talking some more about us and about Elizabeth might be good for both of us.  I still wasn’t sure about spending the night with her, but I was wrong in saying that I didn’t owe her anything.  I did owe her something. I just wasn’t sure what that was.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket as I walked, but couldn’t get myself to dial her number.  I’d been alone for a long time and I wasn’t used to sharing my thoughts with anyone.  Elizabeth was always on my mind, but I kept her to myself.  She wasn’t something I shared.  In hotel rooms and on long walks, I would talk to her.  But I rarely talked
about
her and the prospect of doing so, even with the one person who missed her as much as I did, wasn’t enticing.

I shoved the phone back in my pocket and kept walking.

Horton Plaza was much as I remembered it.  Downtown’s only shopping mall, with the avant-garde design, crowds  of shoppers and homeless people seemingly intermingling at the fringes of the complex.   

I found a sixty-dollar navy coat on a clearance rack in one of the department stores.  Because I hadn’t packed anything other than jean, shorts, and a couple of shirts, I found a pair of dress pants, a button-down shirt and some black dress shoes to complete my coaching ensemble.  I might not know what I was doing, but I’d look the part.

As I exited the store, I glanced at the reflection in the glass doors and picked up two guys following me.  Two guys I’d already met.

I stopped, turned, and looked directly at Trevor Boyle and James Hanley, Jordan’s men.

I held up the bag full of clothes.  “Sale.  Couldn’t turn it down.”

The friendly pretense they’d carried out before was gone.  Both wore decidedly unfriendly expressions on their faces.

“Let’s go,” Hanley said, nodding toward the walkway.

“I like it better here. And I'm not done shopping.”

“We could carry you out,” Boyle said.

I stared at him.  He was maybe six feet tall, on the south side of two-hundred pounds.  Not quite as big as me and not nearly as angry with the world.

“You could try,” I said.

Hanley pulled back his coat far enough so I could see the nine-millimeter tucked into his waistline.  “Let’s go.”

We started walking.  We were on the west side of the mall, near the parking structure, away from the crowds.  The sunlight was bright, almost blinding, after being inside in the artificial light. 

“Where is she?” Hanley asked.

“Who?”

Boyle moved and jabbed me in the kidney with a fist. 

I grunted and dropped my bag to the ground.  He moved again and I stepped to the side, grabbing his shirt collar.  I swung him around and sent him to the pavement.

Hanley’s hand moved toward his waist.  I stepped into him and grabbed his wrist, pushing it in against his body.  I swept my right leg behind his knees and knocked him off balance.  I threw my right elbow into the center of his chest.  The air whooshed out of him as he fell back.  I yanked the gun out of his pants as he fell toward the ground.

Boyle was crouching, ready to jump at me.  I pivoted and stuck the gun on his nose.  “Don’t.”

Boyle’s eyes narrowed to the gun.  I swung my foot forward and kicked him in the balls.  He fell back, clutching at his groin, his eyes rolling up in his head.

I turned back to Hanley who was now sitting up.  “Who?”

Hanley was rubbing his chest.  “What?”

“You said ‘Where is she?’  Who is ‘she?’?”

Hanley’s eyes dropped down to slits.  “Meredith Jordan, you asshole.”

Meredith’s name was like a hammer to my chest and it took me a moment to process it.  “Meredith?” 

“She didn’t come home last night,” Hanley said, still massaging his sternum.  “We need to find her.”

“And Jordan sent you after me?” I asked.

Hanley nodded.

“Did he report her missing?”

“I don’t know.  He just told us to find you.”

“Why didn’t he send Gina?” I asked.

He frowned.  “I have no clue, man.  We work for Mr. Jordan.  We don’t ask questions.  We do what he tells us.”

The color was coming back in Boyle’s face now, but his hands were still glued to his crotch.  He wasn’t in any condition to come at me.

“Jordan really thinks I took his daughter?” I asked, not believing even he was that stupid.

Hanley shrugged.  “I don’t know.  But he’s pretty crazy right now.  She didn’t come home from school and he can’t find her.”