Cole POV
I turned the alerts on the night before, sitting in my truck two blocks from her building with the engine off and my hands still on the wheel.
Ryder's PR piece had dropped that afternoon — clean, calculated, the kind of media move that leaves no fingerprints. I read it once in the locker room after practice and said nothing. I didn't need to say anything. I knew exactly what it was and exactly what it was designed to do, and the only question that mattered was what came next.
The Gazette ran Titans coverage. It ran local sports politics. It ran anything touching Thornvale's hockey world, which meant it would run whatever response Ryder's piece was angling toward — whenever it came, from wherever it came. Rourke sent digests. That was not going to be fast enough.
I opened my s
