“Soupy,” she said under her breath as she scanned dozens of photos of Soupy and his Devils teammates. For once, hockey wasn’t the main focus. Pictures of the boys at dinner, or on the beach, or at the golf course, or playing a game of soccer, or dressed in suits and ties and with their arms around their beautiful girlfriends, or grilling out in their lavish backyards with bottles of beer in hand.
In every picture, they looked so happy, almost always hamming it up for the camera with too-huge smiles and goofy expressions. Those Devils looked like a real family.
Austen stared into the photographs, searching for some clue to explain where things had gone wrong, why so many of those players had left the team.
And then there was an unexpected presence, a touch at Austen’s back, and a gravelly voice that said, “Hey—”
With a bloodcurdling scream, Austen jumped a foot into the air and spun around to see a freshly showered DeHardt.
He’d plugged his ears too late. “Ow.Damn, girl.”
She laid a hand over her racing heart. “You scared the absolute shit out of me!”
“Didn’t mean to,” he said with a careless shrug. He wore a raglan t-shirt that accentuated his broad shoulders and a black ball cap that darkened his devilish good looks. “But can I ask what the hell you’re doing in here?”
“I’m—” She paused.Looking for answers?“I was looking for the front door, but I got lost, and I, um, ended up here. I know how this looks, but I swear I didn’t mean to go snooping on you.”
“And yet, here you are. Guess I’m not so paranoid after all, eh?” DeHardt wiped his hand through the air, resetting the mood. “Whatever, though. Believe it or not, you won’t find anything in here that I won’t already tell you. I’m an open book. It’syouguys with something to hide.”
“What do you mean, ‘you guys?’ ” Austen asked, her eyes turning to slits.
“In the media, obviously.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean? What exactly are we hiding?”
“You can start with him.” DeHardt tapped the display case glass, his thick finger pointing at his dead teammate. Then he pointed at Hathaway. “And him, too.”
The resulting silence was awkward, but Austen wasn’t supposed to ask about those two. She feared if she let that genie out of the bottle now, she’d never get it back in.
But DeHardt spoke anyway. “No one knows what happened the night Soupy died. Not the fans, not me, and not anyone else in that locker room. No one in the media’s even bothered to ask. All anyone is willing to say is that he was in a car accident. That’s it, that’s all we know.”
Austen didn’t speak.
“And why’d Hathaway disappear just a few days after Soupy died? He didn’t even go to Soupy’s funeral, and left the NHL behind entirely. Kinda strange, don’t you think? For all we know, Hath could be dead, too.”
Austen’s eyes widened.Is he implying that foul play was involved?
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m … I’m actually not allowed to ask you about that situation.” She knew how hypocritical that sounded, but what choice did she have?
DeHardt chuckled. “See what I mean? Jesus. You people, man.”
“It’s not like it’s my choice, Dane.” She pulled the interview questions from her bag and passed it to DeHardt. “We’ve actually prepared a list of approved questions. You might want to take a second to look it over, because some of your answers are already written—”
“I don’t do scripts.” DeHardt tossed the packet into the trash without even opening it.
“I know. I know it must hurt. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to lose a teammate like that.” She tried to touch his hand, but he jerked his arm away.
“Not just a teammate, not even a best friend. He was more like a brother. To all of us. Hathaway, too. And whenever we ask you guys in the media for answers, all you do is gawk at us like a deer in the headlights.”
“Have you tried contacting a journalist at ESPN or TSN or another sports outfit like that? Someone whodoesn’thave official ties to the team?” She knew that suggestion alone could land her in hot water with Thayer.
“That’s the firstthing I tried, yes. I might be a pro athlete, but I’m not an idiot.”
“So, what happened? No one was interested in the story?”
“Oh, no—plenty of people wereveryinterested in the story, all the way up until they were supposed to go to press.Mysteriously, though, the story never ran. And all these jokers can do is stare at their shoelaces and mutter some half-assed apology about how it’s out of their control. And this didn’t just happen once or twice. It’s happened every single time.”
“That’s … weird.”
