Page 22 of Blind Luck

“Not like that, man. This whole surveillance thing is harder than I thought, and I met a pair of PIs who said they’d help in exchange for room and board.”

“Room and board?” Another laugh. “Yeah, right.”

“I’m not looking for a hookup.”

“If they’re really PIs, I bet you a hundred bucks they know you signed a seven-million-dollar-a-year contract with the Commanders.”

“I didn’t even tell them I played hockey.”

“You realise people watch TV, right?”

“So far, I’ve lost Kelsey four times, and I have no ideawho she met with last night. Do you want to stop Silas from making a huge mistake, or don’t you?”

Rusty and Mav had met at the University of Minnesota, where they’d played for the Gophers along with Dax Rushton and Nathan Hart. Dax and Nathan had joined the Richmond Raiders after they graduated, and it was the two of them who’d had the idea to send him on this fool’s errand in Las Vegas. Rusty barely even knew Silas Armstrong.

“I want Dax and Nathan to stop whining,” Mav said.

“So is it a ‘yes’ on the PIs? The one in charge said she could provide a reference. Some sportsbook guy here in Vegas—she does work for him. And the other one says she’s Kai Kealoha’s sister.”

“The surfer?”

Mav had moved from Norway to Huntington Beach when he was three years old, and he’d been brought up on a diet of sunshine and surfing until he developed a crush on a figure skater at the grand old age of eleven. He’d talked his mom into taking him to the rink, and the rest was history, although he still visited the beach every chance he got.

“Yeah, the surfer.”

“Give her the room. Give her whatever she wants.”

“Huh?”

“She saved Zach Torres’s life last year.”

Really? The same Erin who’d gotten into a fight with a bunch of social media influencers and ended up in the hospital?

“Again: huh?”

“She ran into the ocean like a lunatic and punched a guy on live TV.”

Strangely, that did make more sense. Erin was one of those “act first, think later” chicks.

“You know what? Having her help out with surveillance might not be the best idea.”

“Wait, wait, I’ll send you the video. It’s on YouTube.”

Rusty’s phone pinged as the link arrived, and he hit “play” with some trepidation. He should have been home in Kittson County right now, helping out on the family farm, although he’d missed planting season and it wasn’t time to harvest yet. Most of the folks on his team thought he was bananas for heading home in the offseason rather than flying to Antigua, or Hawaii, or Europe. But the old saying was true—you could take the boy out of Minnesota, but you couldn’t take Minnesota out of the boy.

At least, that had been true until March of this year.

The split with Florence had been painful, but he hadn’t truly believed it was over until he heard the rumours about her and Kirk Steiner. Rusty’s own sisters had confirmed the stories were true. Savigny—pronounced Sa-vig-nee, not the French way—was a small town. Sooner or later, he’d bump into the woman he’d loved since elementary school and her new fiancé. But that was yet another item for the “tomorrow’s problem” list. Today, he had the Kelsey Dorrias mystery to solve.

On-screen, a shorter-haired Erin ran toward a guy on a jet ski, splashing through the waves as she stumbled along, and slugged him in the face. When he fell into the water, she stole the jet ski and zoomed off.

Mav was still laughing. “Feisty, right?”

“More like crazy. Why would she even do something like that?”

“That guy was up to some nasty shit, so the story goes. Get me her number?”

Crazy or not, Erin didn’t deserve to be hit on by Mav Johansen.

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