Page 2 of First Star I See Tonight (Chicago Stars 8)

Not gonna happen, baby boy.

Coop sped up. He wasn’t one of those asshole players who believed he’d won that Super Bowl ring by himself, but he also knew the Stars couldn’t have done it without him because, more than anything, Coop had to win.

There was the kid again. Pulling up. He was scrawny, with toothpick legs and arms too long for his body. Coop must have him by fifteen years, but he didn’t believe in making excuses, and he dug in. Anybody who said winning wasn’t everything was full of it. Winning was all that counted, and every loss he’d suffered had been toxic. But no matter how much he’d seethed inside, he was always the sportsman: self-deprecating, gallant in his praise of the opposition, never complaining about bad calls, inept teammates, or injuries. No matter how bitter his thoughts, how poisonous each word tasted in his mouth, he never let it show. Whining made losers into bigger losers. But, goddam, he hated to lose. And he wasn’t going to lose today.

The kid had a long, steady stride. Too long. Coop understood the science of running in a way the kid didn’t, and he reined in his tendency to overstride. He wasn’t stupid. Stupid runners got hurt.

Okay, he was stupid. A searing pain crucified his right shin, he was breathing too hard, and his bad hip throbbed. His brain told him he had nothing left to prove, but he couldn’t let the kid pass. He wasn’t made that way.

The run turned into a sprint. He’d played through pain his whole career, and he wouldn’t cave in to it now. Not in the first September of his retirement, while his former teammates were busting their asses running drills to get ready for another Sunday. Not like other retired players content to get fat and lazy living off their money.

Five miles. Lincoln Park. They were side by side again. His lungs burned, his hip screamed, and his shins were on fire. Medial tibial stress syndrome. Ordinary shin splints, but there was nothing ordinary about this kind of pain.

The kid fell back and caught up. Fell back. Caught up again. He was saying something. Coop ignored it. Blocked out the pain as he always did. Focused on his pumping legs, on g

rasping whatever molecule of air his lungs could suck in. Focused on winning.

“Coop! Mr. Graham!”

What the hell?

“Could I . . . have a . . . selfie . . . with you?” the kid gasped. “For . . . my dad?”

All he wanted was a selfie? Sweat dripped from every pore of Coop’s body. His lungs were an inferno. He slowed, and so did the kid, until they both came to a stop. Coop wanted to drop to the ground and curl up, but the kid was still upright, and Coop would rather shoot himself in the head.

A drop of sweat trickled down the little shithead’s neck. “I guess I shouldn’t . . . interrupt your workout . . . but . . . it’d mean a lot . . . to my dad.”

The kid wasn’t breathing nearly as hard as Coop, but with the discipline of fifteen years in the NFL, Coop mustered a smile. “Sure. Be happy to.”

The kid pulled out a cell and fussed with it, talking the whole time about how he and his dad were Coop’s biggest fans. Coop struggled to keep his lungs working. The kid turned out to be a Division I sprinter, which made Coop feel a little better. Sure, he’d have to keep his hip iced for the next couple of days, but so what? Being a champion was his birthright.

All in all, it was still a good day to be Cooper Graham.

Except for one pesky woman.

He spotted her on the Museum Campus right after he’d cabbed it back to get his car. There she was, sitting on a bench, pretending to read a book.

Yesterday, she’d been dressed like a homeless person with scraggly gray hair. Today her black shorts, leggings, and long T-shirt made her look like a student at the Art Institute. He couldn’t see her car, but he had no doubt it was parked somewhere close. If he hadn’t happened to notice a dark green Hyundai Sonata with a broken taillight parked near him one too many times in the last four days, he might not have realized he was being followed. He’d had enough of it.

But as he headed toward her, a city bus pulled up. Maybe she had ESP, because she jumped on, and he missed his chance. That didn’t bother him much, since he was fairly certain he’d see her again.

And he did. Two nights later.

***

Piper crossed the street to the entrance of Spiral, the nightclub Cooper Graham had opened in July, six months after his retirement from the Chicago Stars. The light September breeze feathered her bare legs and blew up under the skirt of her short black sleeveless dress. Beneath it, she wore her next-to-last pair of clean underwear. Sooner or later, she’d have to do laundry, but for now, all she cared about was recording Cooper Graham’s every move.

Her scalp itched from where she’d tucked her short, chopped hair under the long brunette wig she’d picked up at a resale shop. She prayed the hair, along with the scoop-neck dress, cat’s-eye liner, scarlet lipstick, and push-up bra would finally get her past the primitive life-form who passed for Spiral’s door manager, an obstacle she hadn’t been able to overcome on her past two attempts.

The same doorman was on duty tonight. He was shaped like a nineteenth-century torpedo: fat warhead, thick tank, feet splayed like fins. The first time, he’d grunted his dismissal of her at the same time that he waved a pair of swishy-haired blondes through the club’s brass double doors. She, of course, had challenged him. “What do you mean, you’re full? You’re letting them in.”

He’d taken in her cropped dark hair, best white blouse, and jeans with his squinty little eyes. “Just what I said.”

That had been last Saturday night. Piper couldn’t do her job unless she was inside Spiral, but since the club was open only four nights a week, she hadn’t been able to make her next attempt until yesterday. Even though she’d combed her hair and put on a skirt and blouse, he hadn’t been impressed, and that meant upping her game. She’d picked up this dress at H&M, traded in her comfortable boots for a torturous pair of strappy stilettos, and borrowed an evening clutch from her friend Jen. The clutch wasn’t big enough to hold more than her cell, fake ID, and a couple of twenty-dollar bills. The rest—everything that correctly identified her as Piper Dove—was stashed in the trunk of her car: laptop computer; a duffel containing the hats, sunglasses, jackets, and scarves she used as disguises; and a semiobscene-looking device called a Tinkle Belle.

Spiral, named after Cooper Graham’s long and deadly accurate spiral passes, was Chicago’s hottest club, and a line had predictably formed at the velvet rope. As she approached Torpedo Head, she held her breath and drew her shoulders back to push up her breasts. “You’re busy tonight, gov,” she sort of cooed in the fake British accent she’d been practicing.

Torpedo Head noticed her breasts, then her face, then dropped his chin to take in her legs. The man was a pig. Good. She cocked her head and gave him a smile that revealed the straight white teeth her father had spent thousands of dollars on when she’d been twelve, even though she’d begged him to use the money to buy her a horse. Now that she was thirty-three, the horse still struck her as the better deal.

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