Page 65 of Mongrels United
Grady could feel her lips trying to part with surprise. She held them together. Like Kailash, there was only one person she had told.
Nash.
Feeling dazed, Grady congratulated Kailash and suggested he should get back to the tank before he was kicked off the team for slacking and let him disconnect with a happy grin.
She sat back, staring at nothing.
Luus said diffidently, “The Mongrels have got themselves an angel investor, then?”
“It seems so,” Grady replied. She couldn’t tell Luus that the owner of the Dreamhawks had just set the Mongrels up with a professional coach, one paid for results only. It was Nash’s secret to tell, if he wanted to.
But she had a feeling that the one person he would want to tell, he had just indirectly informed.
She had no idea what it meant, but she spent the rest of the day trying to smother the silly, and very unprofessional grin which kept trying to form.
Two days later, the Mongrels won their next game in a jaw-dropping seven-two result against the Deadly Spanners, a Capitol team that routinely crushed the opposition. The Spanners were a physical, heavyweight team, and were not happy at all about their humiliating loss.
For the first time, the question was raised in the Forum about who, exactly, were the Mongrels, and what were their allegiances? And should the Tankball Association let in just anyone to play in a game that was supposed to be the epitome of professional athleticism?
“Sour grapes,” Grady’s father told her, in one of their quick catch-up calls. “Now your Mongrels are starting to look like serious contenders, those who don’t want them to win will look for anything to take them down, whether it’s in the tank, or beyond it.”
“They’ll hamstring them with politics, if they can’t beat them in tank,” Grady interpreted. “It sucks.”
“A profoundly appropriate word for this situation,” her father agreed, with a smile.
The next day, her father published a short essay about the history of tank ball, and finished with a thundering ovation for the Mongrels and their all-inclusive attitude. “They represent no one, which means they represent everyone,” her father had concluded. “Every time they win, weallwin, right alongside them. For they are the true representatives of theEnduranceand we can all learn from them.”
While the hubbub about the Mongrels continued, Nash returned to his solo interviews. He flatly refused to let Grady accompany him. “I’m drawing a target on myself. I don’t want you standing anywhere near me, while I do it.”
“But it’s more dangerous for you if I’m not there to make it official,” Grady protested.
But Nash stubbornly refused to even discuss it. He said flatly, “I agreed to you coming with me before I knew my father was a murderer, and associated with people who think murder is a tool they can wield to make life more convenient for themselves.” He smiled grimly. “Besides, I can take care of myself.”
“In a ring with another bare-knuckle fighter!” Grady cried. “This is completely different.”
He kissed her roughly, more to silence her than from any great passion, but it worked. She become breathless and flustered and pulled her shirt back into place after he released her, wishing she could order her thoughts just as easily.
It also halted the conversation.
Grady moved through her days, carrying an unformed, low-grade worry that didn’t dissipate until she arrived at Nash’s apartment in the evening and saw for herself that he was still whole and sound.
The topic of going out together, of being seen together, seemed to have been tabled. Grady didn’t have the courage to raise it, not with Nash’s mood as dark and brooding as it now was. She suspected she already knew what his answer would be, and that she wouldn’t like it.
But the damage had already been done, which she discovered five days later, when Captain Carpenter asked her to step into his office and shut the door.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Despite knowing that Siran Carpenter would learn of her association with Nash Hyson sooner or later and would not be pleased about it, Grady was still unready when she shut the door.
Carita Pemberton, Siran’s PR aide, was not to hand today.
Siran got to his feet. “You’ll note that Carita is not here.”
“I had noticed,” Grady said, keeping her voice even and low.
“I wanted this to be just between you and me, first,” Siran said.
She nodded and waited, even though she knew what Siran was about to say. It had to be about Nash. There was nothing else in her life that would warrant Siran wanting a private word with her.
