by Leslie North
“Hey man, no hard feelings.” Eggert reached for him, a handshake, a casual bro-greeting, something.
Marcus looked at Eggert’s hand as if he had just wiped his ass with it.
“Remember that when I make you look like a schoolyard nothing on his daddy’s team this week in practice.” Marcus continued walking. “Man.”
Claire told Colin she was ill. She packed up her things and made her way to her car. The plan was drawn blinds, a soft pillow, and an endless box of tissues. But as Claire was fast learning, even the most solid plans go awry.
Beside her parked car, a limousine and driver awaited.
“Miss Wynifred.” He gestured an invitation to climb inside the open back door.
“What is this?”
“I’m not at liberty to say, Miss.”
The limo could only mean one thing. Sterling had alluded to this the night before. She couldn’t do this. Not today.
“I’m afraid there’s been a mistake.”
“No mistake, Miss. Please.”
Claire glanced around for a hint of what was to come. The lot offered no clue. If she refused, it might compromise the gain on all she had lost. Reluctantly, she climbed in.
Too upset to enjoy the luxury surrounding her, she repaired the damage to her eye makeup as best she could then stared out the window at another gray Portland morning. The seemingly endless weather pattern of the city in winter had never bothered her before. Then again, it had never so precisely captured her mood.
The limo traveled into the city’s heart. At the most exclusive hotel in the city, the driver pulled through the semi-circular drop off. The partition between them slid away. He handed her a piece of paper. Scrawled across it in blue ink: P4.
“Penthouse level. The concierge will escort you to a private elevator.”
“Thank you,” she said, though she couldn’t say for what, exactly.
He rounded the vehicle and opened her door. “I’ll be here. You may leave your equipment. Notify the desk when you’re ready.”
In the mirrored elevator’s reflection, she caught sight of her drab clothes. She might as well have been wearing knee-high wool socks in July. Jo was right—Claire shouldn’t leave the apartment without wardrobe approval.
The elevator ascended in record time and did a number on her taxed stomach. At the P4 level, the doors breezed open and the attendant informed her the suite entry was unlocked. He then rode the lift back down, leaving her alone in the hallway beneath a breathtaking chandelier to gather her thoughts.
Claire took a deep breath and donned her best professional face, ready to charge into negotiation battle with powerful men and women who make powerful military decisions.
For Clay, for Clay, for Clay.
Inside the penthouse, her heels made a hollow knocking sound across the black marble floor. Well-lit wood panels provided the framework for original art—stallions, cowboys with leathery hands and eyes, warriors—all masculine in subject and tone. As the hallway opened to a great room, an entire city block of windows greeted her.
She wasn’t alone.
Three soldiers in dress blues rose from their chairs in greeting. One in civilian clothes repositioned his wheelchair and inclined his head toward her. None of them were old enough or had enough bars on their uniform to make decisions regarding military tech.
“I don’t understand.” She surprised herself by saying it aloud.
“Claire?” said the man still seated. He had kind eyes and an easy smile. She tried not to allow her gaze to slip lower, where his right leg should have been.
“Yes?”
“This is Second Lieutenant Hernandez, Staff Sargent Fletcher, and Army Specialist Benoit. I’m Nathan Calloway. We served with Clay. I wrote to your father.”
“I don’t understand.” She hated that she repeated herself, but her mind was blank.
“You must have some very powerful friends, Claire. Two of us received special permission from our higher ups to return stateside so we could be here. You wanted the truth about what happened to Clay. We were there with him, when he took his last breath. We’re here to answer your questions.”
She had only ever spoken about her desire for clarity about Clay’s death with her parents and Jo. And Marcus. Only one had the clout to make this happen. Her gratitude swelled and bruised on the knowledge that he must have arranged it earlier, when she hadn’t yet hurt him.
Her knees gave a bit.
Nathan wheeled toward her, hand extended. “Maybe we should sit.”
They moved to a leather seating area with a stellar view of Mt. Hood. Fletcher brought her a glass of ice water and settled near the others.
“It sounds so empty, even from us,” said Hernandez, “but we’re sorry for your loss. Clay was a great guy. Always laughing, keeping morale up, fiercely loyal. I can only imagine the caliber of brother he was.”
“I can’t believe you’re all here. For me.” She laughed self-consciously at the absurdity of her statement and glanced around. “I can’t even believe I’m here. Who…?”
“From what we understand, this is a private suite owned by Ogdon Sterling, owner of the Portland Rogues,” said Hernandez. “We received invitations to a special recognition ceremony at next week’s halftime. They’re flying our families out for the occasion.”
“Thank you for coming.”
“Our pleasure, Miss.”
“Please, call me Claire.”
“We understand you’ve created wearable technology to incorporate into our Army combat uniforms,” said Nathan. “Clay was so proud of you. Always going on about how smart you are.”
“And pretty,” added Benoit. “His picture of you both at your college graduation had half the squadron wanting to propose marriage. Course, Clay didn’t like that much.”
Claire relished the funny stories. They told her tales about basic training, pranks that got Clay into the most trouble with their commanding officer, how he was the first to approach Afghani children and give them every provision he had, even if they hadn’t eaten a decent meal in forever. Though the stories were new, they were as detailed as if she were remembering the events herself. Every nuance fit Clay’s personality. As she had at the armory the night of the gala, Claire felt Clay in the room, laughing right along with the guys, watching over her.
The conversation progressed to the days leading up to his last. With each story, her bones turned more leaden. Nathan, clearly the soldier who had grown closest to Clay during deployment, detailed his final hours.
“Something felt off that day. You could sense it in the air, nothing at all do to with the sandstorm. There was a disconnect between reports we’d gotten and what we saw in the city. Nothing matched up. We swept city blocks, clearing the area of possible insurgents because we got wind of civilians trapped, being held as pawns. We reached a bakery—or what had been a bakery before it was bombed to hell. We heard a kid crying in an upstairs living space. I warned Clay it could be a trap. We had orders to wait for more warm bodies before we went in, but the crying grew more insistent. Clay didn’t want to wait because the storm was coming. He took the lead position.”
Claire rotated the ring on her finger and sank into the plush cushions, bracing herself for knowledge she was no longer certain she wanted.
“By then, visibility was next to nothing. We kept in verbal contact, but sound bounced off everything and the building was complex. You couldn’t tell where one room ended and the next began, it was so badly damaged. We took different turns and became separated. I reached a third floor landing and the floor gave way. He backtracked and hauled me out into a protected area between buildings then radioed for help. I thought I’d broken my back. All that time, the crying got worse. I told him not to go. Said he’d be back before the Humvee came to pick me up.”
“And he went anyway.” Claire knew. She’d had a dream once she dismissed as too many late night movies, too many news reels, wondering when he was coming home. But as Nathan described it
, she knew. It’s a trap, Clay. Get out. Oh god, she couldn’t breathe.
“I don’t remember much after that. The IED took out most everything on the block, including my leg. They never found the remains of a child. Just a voice recorder blown out the window into the street.”
Claire stood and paced to the window, mostly to conceal her horror. That Clay was killed because he loved children was the most unjust reason for a human life to end. She wanted what happened to be reduced to math and science. She wanted to distill it into a formula or a line of code so she could turn his death into something tangible, to save lives, to attach meaning and purpose.
But she couldn’t.
Clay had died because of pure, selfless love. And no amount of data or high-tech gear could surpass the instinct of a soldier to lay down his life for another. Marcus had tried to convince her that instinct was the one thing science could never capture—on the playing field, on the battlefield, in life. She hadn’t listened.
They gave her the breath and the space to come to terms with her brother’s death. Benoit gave her a photo of Clay she had never seen—full-gear, sparkling eyes, smiling at the camera as if he was right where he wanted to be. They talked about football, how it was a lifeline to the troops, a slice of home that helped ease the horrible things they’d witnessed, and they encouraged her to keep moving forward with her tech.
“We need smart, dedicated people like you, Claire,” said Fletcher. “Anything that can help us do our job and get home to our families makes the sacrifices easier.”
By the time she bid them good-bye and hauled herself to the lobby to call her ride, Claire was emotionally bankrupt. She tried calling Marcus from the limo to thank him.
He didn’t answer, and she didn’t leave a message.
Claire saw the guys again just before game time the next Sunday when security escorted them up to the stadium box crowded with coaches and staff. The Rogues had home-field advantage over the Seahawks, but the spread was tight. Sterling wanted real-time data fed to him, though it was anyone’s guess where he was. There was confusion in the box regarding the roster. Marcus’s name entered the conversation, but Clay’s fellow soldiers were telling her about the amazing afternoon they’d had, courtesy of the team, and she wanted to hear every single detail. She gave them all hugs and wished them good luck at halftime.
With twenty minutes until kick off, Claire settled in front of her laptop and ran program checks. She had never paid much attention to the noise of a pre-game NFL show. Her brain vaguely registered things like Hall of Fame presentations and singing and Seahawks player introductions. Mostly, she tried to figure out why her screen displayed two sets of feedback.
Then she heard his name.
Piped through the audio in the box: Marcus Kingston.
Three windows down, an open panel ushered in a deafening roar. On the field, number eleven emerged through a veil of smoke and sparkers, suited-up, white home jersey, leading the remainder of his team out on the field.
Claire glanced at her numbers. Heart rate spike, oxygen levels increasing. She glanced up, trying to pinpoint Eggert. She found him back a bit, crushed in the onslaught of players not announced as starters.
“Since when is Kingston starting?” she asked the play-call coach.
“Bana made the call yesterday. Worries about Eggert’s composure in a playoff game. Good call. Kid attacked the pre-game food cart like it was all-you-can-eat restaurant. Found him puking his guts out an hour ago.”
Claire bit her lip to stifle a smile. Her gaze again found number eleven, and her body did crazy things. Her pulse raced to match Marcus’s numbers coming in, her arteries pumped a triple-shot of adrenaline through her body, injected by the crowd noise, and she felt warm. Everywhere.
She changed Marcus’s data from gray to active red, and caught a close-up image of him on the two-story stadium screen. Each of his eye blacks had the word Clay written in white ink.
Claire gasped.
“Clay? What the hell does that mean?” someone down the row said.
“That’s a fine come Monday morning,” said another.
Her heart swelled, pressing against her ribs, causing the most bittersweet pain she had ever known. She had once believed he pushed people away, put up barriers, but she had never been more wrong. Time and again, he had made himself available—to the young men enjoying football in the park, to the kids at his gym, to Clay’s comrades, to charities, coaches, even a rival who needed what he had to offer. And to her. He had done nothing but move closer, while she had distanced herself. This was Clay, making himself heard, giving her a swift kick, telling her to fight for it all—her goals, her happiness, and Marcus.
She had spent the week giving him his space. Keane told her Marcus was a man possessed in practice. His do what you’ve got to do mentality. She had sessions with Eggert and others who had details of their gameplay they wanted to boost before heading into the playoffs, and she made travel arrangements for D.C. Sterling had made it his mission to reward her. Her playoffs came tomorrow. No more sidelines. But there wasn’t one hour of the week she didn’t wish she could go back to that day in the darkened hallway, tell Marcus why Sterling had brought her here, tell him he was right—that instincts matter.
The kickoff team headed to the sidelines.
Marcus’s numbers came alive as the offense took the field.
12
The game clock read three minutes, eighteen seconds. Second quarter.
Hawks-10; Rogues-17.
Third down and twelve.
Marcus relayed the play from his earpiece then broke the huddle, his eyes immediately trained on the defense’s front seven. He licked his fingertips. A warning shot fired in his gut. A blitz. They knew. His mind raced with his audible options. The stadium was so loud, the fans’ collective noise pressed through his helmet and earpiece, straight to his eardrum.
He would just have to be louder.
“Set.”
His offensive line tucked down, a curtain of white descending simultaneously on the line of scrimmage.
Marcus took a deep breath and barked off his kill word three times—Ace, ace, ace!—to make sure his line heard him then amended the play. His gaze flashed to the play clock.
Five seconds, four seconds…
“White-80.”
Three seconds…
“Hut, Hut.”
Two seconds…
“Hut.”
The ball slid seamlessly into his hands. He squeezed the leather once, twice, did a five-step drop, maybe more. His stare penetrated the near-movement of his center, the facemasks of the defenders—the hungry whites of their eyes trained for blood. Seconds slipped away. His line wasn’t holding. He found Keane close left. Marcus reared back and fired the ball.
Right on his numbers, Keane caught it.
A brick wall collided with Marcus’s right side. Spit and sweat rained. Sky and field reversed. His feet caught air.
His passing shoulder hit earth first.
And something inside snapped.
Claire knew something was wrong.
Marcus popped up from the field, but the camera’s close-up shot couldn’t hide his twisted expression. His numbers climbed and climbed, higher and higher. Blood pressure. Heart rate, though it wasn’t as if he had just done a QB sneak for twenty yards. The Rogues had a first down, but at what price?
She glanced down the row. One word to the play call coach in Bana’s ear could elicit a time out, an evaluation of Marcus’s shoulder status. But the Rogues prided themselves on a rocket offense, little time for the defense to adjust. Marcus was one of the best in the league at reading defenses, play-calling on the fly. She knew he was trying to make the end zone before half. He wouldn’t let on that his body was shutting down from pain.
Instincts, Claire. Trust Marcus to do the right thing.
The next play was a hand-off left. Zero gain.
His gear’s feedback came unhinged. Eye movement sporadic, possibly at
tributed to light headedness. Crashing oxygen level, from holding his breath, maybe worse, like an impact to ribs or lungs. She knew he could see these things, too. They’d gone over what the warning signals inside his helmet meant a hundred times. Designed to signal him to call a time out, communicate with his coaches.
Marcus did none of that.
Claire knew him well enough to know the struggle in his head: take himself out, career over; stay in and take another hit, career over. He wanted to go out under his terms, his way.
She stood and paced away from her screen, away from the numbers. This was no longer about her data. This was about Marcus and his well-being, beyond the game. One more sack like that and his shoulder would sustain permanent, life-altering damage. Marcus had so much life to give beyond football. No game was worth that. The team had brought her here to access information above and beyond their current capabilities. That’s what she intended to do.
But the final play of the half was underway.
Touchdown. Marcus.
The moment Marcus reached the locker room, trainers and doctors ambushed him. They wanted to run tests, get images. He wouldn’t hear it. He accepted their ice packs, but he had a team to lead, to remind that complacency never won a game, to keep strong because they were up against a second-half, come-from-behind team. They needed his leadership. Thirty minutes left of play time. Just thirty minutes.
Though Marcus knew the playoffs were a marathon, not a sprint. There would be another game to win and another after that. He didn’t want to think about his shoulder’s longevity. No words could touch the sensation in his injured joint. A forked branding iron, glowing orange, maybe.
He told them his shoulder felt fine.
Bana did his talk then disappeared. Halftime shows during the playoffs always ran long. Some players sat and joked, some kept moving to keep muscles warm. Marcus wandered away from his spot in the locker room, a few paces away from the premature celebratory chit-chat. He needed a moment to let down, be with the pain without trying to mask it.