Page 71 of Game On

“You got Molly, Aunt Carly?” C.J. interrupted Shane’s thoughts. “Dad said I couldn’t leave her without handing her off to you directly. I need to get inside and start checking the gear.”

Yeah, inside the locker room. That’s where Shane needed to be, too. He started backing up in that direction.

“I got her,” Carly said to C.J. “I’ll take her to the family lounge after the game.”

“Shane, can I go with them to get dinner?” Troy asked.

“You just ate at the hotel!” Molly said.

Carly laughed. “Teenage boys have to be fed every twenty minutes, Mols. Or else they get cranky.”

“Someone should tell C.J. that because he’s always cranky,” Molly said.

Placing an arm around both kids’ shoulders, Carly smiled up at Shane, her delicate eyebrow lifted in question.

One look at her face and Shane couldn’t remember what the kid wanted. “Huh?” he asked like the idiot he was.

“Can I go with Carly?” Hell, Shane wanted to go with Carly. He wanted to touch her, to kiss her, to bury himself inside of her. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “I need to get inside and start warming up.” As if he wasn’t warm enough already.

“Congratulations, by the way,” she said as Shane turned toward the locker room door. “Asia told me you got the starting job. I’m glad it all worked out the way you wanted it to.” She bit her bottom lip gently before giving him one of her fake smiles. The kind that didn’t wipe away the sadness he saw in her eyes. For a moment he stood there staring at her as she walked away with Troy and Molly. “I’ll send Troy back down with one of the coaches from the spotter’s box,” she called over her shoulder. The team’s second bus arrived and players and coaches hustled past him into the locker room. But Shane just stood there, trying to shake off the tightness in his chest.

He didn’t remember finally making his way to his locker. Mechanically undressing, he pulled on his gray gym shorts and sneakers to warm up in, all the while trying to get his mind off Carly. His body burned for her. Not just sexually, though. He ached to feel her body snuggled up next to his. To hear her laughter. To smell her hair. He needed to get his head focused on tonight’s game plan. He’d worked too hard to get the starting job in the first place. Carly was a distraction he couldn’t afford right now.

But that look in her eyes still haunted him. She’d fallen in love with him, he knew that. Not to brag, but so had a lot of other women before her. Only, he hadn’t felt anything when he’d let them down. Not like the feeling of numbness taking over his body right now. Since the moment he’d laid eyes on Carly March, she’d been like an intoxicating drug he couldn’t wean himself from. Groupies threw themselves at him all throughout the past month’s training camp. Just yesterday, at Troy’s new school, a mother of one his classmates propositioned Shane. Yet not a single one stirred his blood like Carly had—and obviously still could.

“Get your head in the game, Devlin,” he muttered to himself whipping a Blaze T-shirt out of his locker.

“You always talk to yourself before a game?”

As Shane’s head emerged out of the shirt, he looked over at Donovan standing beside him, a wide-eyed grin on his face. Dressed in his corporate security uniform of suit and tie, he looked like a fish out of water in the locker room of half-dressed men, not that he seemed to mind. “Man, I am in an NFL locker room on game day,” he said, his voice laced with a childlike glee.

His exuberance was contagious, allowing Shane to finally relax, taking in his surroundings for the first time that evening. “After a while, they all look the same,” he said to his friend. “The real fun is out on the field before the game starts. Come on.” Shane slapped Donovan on the back as they both made their way to the tunnel leading out to the playing field. Before they exited the locker room, however, a breathless C.J. stopped them in their tracks.

“Good. Found you.” He bent at the waist, gasping for air. “Can’t. Find. Carly.”

“She took Molly and Troy to dinner,” Shane said. But something in the boy’s eyes forced a shiver down Shane’s spine. Donovan must have seen it, too, because his demeanor sobered at once.

“No,” C.J. said, shaking his head violently, still trying to force air into his lungs. “Asia said they never came up there. They’re not answering their cell phones, either.”

Shane’s whole body tensed as the boy continued to huff. “C.J., what’s the matter?” he asked quietly.

“Joel Thompkins,” he said. His breath was coming more normally now, but his face was ashen and his hands shook slightly. “I saw him near the tunnel.”

“You sure?” Donovan asked, his tone all business.

“Yeah.” C.J. swallowed. “It was him. He had on that ratty Florida Gator’s ball cap he always wears. He walked away real quickly when he saw I’d spotted him.”

Donovan and Shane didn’t hesitate before heading for the door, C.J. at their heels.

“Guys!” C.J. called. “He’s wearing a blue windbreaker. And he’s got a gun. I saw it.”

Shane glanced at the boy’s face. It was contorted with a mixture of fear and rage. The three of them charged down the hallway, Donovan shouting orders into a walkie-talkie, as a multitude of nightmares flashed in and out of Shane’s head.

TWENTY-THREE

Carly shivered involuntarily. The sweltering heat from the hot August day had not diminished with the onset of evening, but she felt cold to her core. Struggling to keep her breathing even, she shoved trembling hands into the pockets of her jacket. She tried to think over the loud hum of the huge generators necessary to run the stadium. Unfortunately, she couldn’t come up with one rational thought—not since she’d felt the cold metal gun barrel pressed to her side minutes earlier.

It seemed like hours ago when she, Troy, and Molly went walking arm in arm through the stadium concourse. Both kids were trying to talk over one another as they recounted their exploits in the hotel pool earlier in the day. The next thing Carly knew, Joel Thompkins was behind her, his warm, sticky breath wafting on the back of her neck making her flesh crawl in warning. Before she could react, he grabbed her arm with one hand, shoving the pistol nearly into her kidney with the other. He hauled her into a utility elevator at the end of an empty hall way. Since she still had her arm linked with Molly’s, she and Troy were dragged along, too.

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