Page 1 of Wyatt

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Usually Wyatt, goalie for the Minnesota Blue Ox NHL team, could shrug off his mistakes. Ignore the horn blaring behind his ears, block out the cheering—and occasionally the gloating of the opposing players.

Not today.

Wyatt Marshall hadn’t come all the way to Russia only to fail.

He glanced at the clock overhead, ignoring the sweat coating his body despite the cool breath of the arena, the slap of the puck at the other end of the rink.

Because if he failed, his entire life could be over in twelve minutes and thirty-two seconds.

He might be a little melodramatic, but it felt that way.

Lives were at stake.

No.Onelife.

The life of the woman he couldn’t get out of his head.

Especially since he’d made promises. To himself. And had, in fact, blurted out to his entire family that he would rescue Coco Stanley.I promise.

He wasn’t going home without her.

As long as he kept the Polish team from scoring, he bought himself more time in the Far Eastern town of Khabarovsk, where this international tournament was being held, to track down Coco and rescue her from a country trying to kill her.

Maybe that was overstated. Not all of Russia was trying to kill Coco. And in fact, it might be only one very determined assassin by the name of Damien Gustov.

EventhatWyatt wasn’t sure of.

Just that the woman he loved had been shot.

Left in Siberia.

Hadn’t been heard from since.

She’d even been absent from their messaging forum, the Paulies, an online club just for fans of the Minnesota Blue Ox. He knew thatKittycat1was Coco, even if she never responded to his private messages. But she occasionally said something about his life before he joined the Blue Ox—something only Coco Stanley from Montana would know. At least she hadn’t complete deleted him from her life after the fiasco in Moscow two years ago. The one he’d like to rewrite. No, erase completely and start over.

But first he had to get Coco out of the former Communist—now mafia-ridden—country. Which was why he’d finagled a way to get his team into Russia for this international tournament. Every game they won gave him one more day to search for her.

He was close.Veryclose.

Now, going into the third period, one score up, he had exactly twelve minutes and—oops, fourteen seconds—before he won this game and headed back to his hotel to meet a man named York.

An American. A spy, according to his CIA-analyst sister.

More importantly, York knew how to find Coco.

Wyatt banged the pipes of the goal with his stick and settled down as the puck dropped at center ice.

Now.Stay in the now.

He settled himself in the center of the crease, eyes on the movement of the first line. He knew these guys so well, he could have almost predicted that after the drop, right wing Deke Stoner would get out of traffic and their center, Crawford, would shoot the puck out to him in the slot, where Deke would take it down for a quick shot on goal.

The Polish goalie—Warkowski—had kicked it out, and one of their defensemen shot it down the ice.

A wing on the Polish team—Lutz—wrangled it over the blue line, and now Wyatt stared him down, eyes on the puck.

The key was to center himself on the puck, to stay loose and let his reflexes kick in. He’d practically lived in the crease since he was thirteen. It was his own private island, his eight-by-six-foot cage.

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