Power Play

Chapter Nine: The Video

The text sat between them on the table like something radioactive, and for a long moment neither of them touched their phones again, as if not moving might somehow undo the sentence already glowing on the screen.

Tanner's not who you think he is. Ask him about the video from Saturday's game. Ask him what he was really filming.

"That doesn't make sense," Rae said finally. "If Tanner's the one sending these texts, why would he tell us to investigate himself?"

"He wouldn't." Beckett was already standing, pacing the narrow kitchen with the restless energy she'd come to recognize as his thinking mode, the same coiled focus he brought to a tied game in the final minute. "Which means either this is a different person entirely, using Tanner as bait to throw us off — or someone else knows what Tanner's been doing and is trying to get us to find it without exposing themselves."

"A third player."

"Maybe." He stopped pacing, raked a hand through his hair. "Or someone protecting Tanner while pointing us at him at the same time, which doesn't track unless—" He stopped himself, jaw tight.

"Unless what?"

"Unless there's more than one person involved in this." He said it slowly, like the shape of it was only now assembling itself in his head. "Someone sending the threats. Someone with the actual footage. Not necessarily the same person."

Rae felt something cold settle in her stomach. "That's worse."

"Yeah." He sat back down across from her, all the earlier certainty in his face replaced with something more careful. "We need to talk to Tanner. Tonight, if we can. Before whoever sent this decides to escalate on their own timeline instead of ours."

They found him at the rec center gym two blocks from campus, alone at ten p.m. on a Sunday, working through a shooting drill with the specific, joyless discipline of a player trying to prove something to no one but himself. Tanner Reid was smaller than Beckett, wiry where Beckett was built like a wall, with the kind of face that had probably been called nice his whole life and had learned, somewhere along the way, to resent it.

He saw them coming and didn't stop shooting, though his shoulders went rigid the moment he registered who it was.

"Vance. Callahan." He didn't look at either of them directly. "Odd hour for a captain's visit."

"We need to talk to you," Beckett said. "About Saturday's game."

Something flickered across Tanner's face — fast, gone almost before it registered, but Rae had spent two years learning to read the exact texture of a lie forming behind someone's eyes, and she caught it clean.

"What about it?"

"Someone said you were filming something," Rae said. "Something you weren't supposed to be filming."

Tanner's jaw worked, the puck rolling off his stick and skidding into the boards, forgotten. "Who told you that?"

"Doesn't matter who told us," Beckett said. "Matters whether it's true."

The silence stretched long enough that Rae started to think he wouldn't answer at all, that he'd simply pick up his gear and walk out and leave them exactly where they'd started. Then his shoulders dropped, some tension going out of him all at once, replaced by something that looked, unexpectedly, like relief.

"I wasn't filming you two," he said. "I don't care what's going on between you. That's your business, not mine, whatever half the guys on this team think about it." He met Beckett's eyes for the first time. "I was filming the ice."

"The ice."

"During warmups. Before the game." Tanner set his stick down against the boards, pulled out his phone with hands that weren't quite steady, and turned the screen toward them. "Look."

The video was shaky, taken at ice level from the players' bench, clearly shot on a phone held low and half-hidden. It showed the Zamboni pass, the usual pre-game ritual, except — Rae leaned closer, squinting — except there was something wrong with the ice near the far blue line, a discoloration in the surface that the Zamboni's pass hadn't fully smoothed over.

"That's a bad freeze," Beckett said slowly, understanding arriving in his voice before it arrived in Rae's. "A weak patch."

"Right where the defensive zone faceoff circle is," Tanner said. "I noticed it during morning skate. Told the equipment manager. He said he'd flag it to maintenance." His jaw tightened. "He didn't flag anything. I checked after the game. No work order. Nothing."

"You think someone deliberately left a bad patch on the ice."

"I think," Tanner said carefully, "that a bad patch of ice, right where our defensemen take faceoffs, on a night this program has three scouts in the building and a program-wide fraternization scandal one photo away from breaking — I think that's either the worst luck in the world or somebody wanted an injury to happen where cameras would catch it."

Rae felt the floor tilt slightly under the weight of what he was saying. "Who benefits from an injury during a scouted game?"

"Whoever wants this season derailed," Beckett said grimly. "Whoever wants Whitfield's job. Whoever wants the program's reputation in the toilet before the board renews his contract in the spring." He looked at Tanner with new appraisal, the suspicion from film session visibly dissolving into something more complicated. "Why didn't you report this?"

"I did report it. To the equipment manager. He blew me off." Tanner's mouth twisted, old resentment surfacing. "And then I figured, what's the point of pushing harder? Nobody on this staff's exactly rushing to listen to the guy who lost his spot to a headline story. Whitfield's got bigger fish. I'm fourth line. Nobody cares what I flag."

The bitterness in that last sentence landed heavier than Rae expected, an old wound she recognized from an angle she hadn't considered — not resentment of her specifically, but something more structural, a player who'd watched the program's attention narrow to exactly two storylines this season, neither of which was him.

"I'm sorry," she said, and meant it. "About the lineup. I know that wasn't personal, on my end, but I know it cost you something."

Tanner looked at her for a long moment, something shifting behind his eyes. "It's not your fault you're better than me right now," he said finally, gruff, clearly not comfortable with the admission. "I've been an a*s about it. Didn't send anyone threatening texts, though, if that's what you two actually came here to ask."

"It is," Beckett admitted. "I'm sorry. I had you wrong."

"Yeah, well." Tanner picked his stick back up, some of the old guardedness returning. "Wouldn't be the first time somebody assumed the worst about the guy who's mad about ice time. Doesn't mean I'm your guy for whatever's actually happening."

"Send me the video," Beckett said. "And send it to Whitfield too. If the ice was deliberately compromised, that's a safety issue that goes above whatever's happening with us."

Tanner hesitated, then nodded, already forwarding the file with the specific relief of someone glad to finally hand a problem to somebody with the authority to act on it.

They walked back to the apartment in a silence heavier than the one they'd left it in, the mystery deepening instead of resolving, one suspect cleared and no closer answer waiting to replace him.

"If it's not Tanner," Rae said finally, breaking the quiet three blocks from home, "then it's someone with real access. Someone who can get into the equipment closet corridor unnoticed. Someone who knew we'd moved in together fast enough to send a text the same night."

"Someone on staff," Beckett said slowly, thinking it through. "Or someone with a key."

"Who has keys to the equipment areas besides players?"

"Coaches. Trainers. Equipment manager." He stopped walking, something visibly clicking into place behind his eyes. "Athletic department administration."

Rae felt the cold settle deeper. "Halloran."

"I'm not saying it's her." He started walking again, faster now, urgency in his stride. "But she's the one person in that whole conversation today who had every reason to want us caught, and every access point required to make it happen. And a bad patch of ice sabotaged right before a scouted game — that's not a jealous player move. That's someone thinking about optics. About narratives. About exactly the kind of story an athletic director would want to control."

"Why would she want to sabotage her own program?"

"I don't know yet." His jaw was tight, the specific coldness he wore when working through a problem with real stakes attached. "But I intend to find out."

They reached the apartment in silence, and it wasn't until the door closed behind them, the specific privacy of their four hundred square feet settling around them again, that Rae let herself feel the full weight of the day — the photo, the threat, the false lead, the deepening sense that whatever was happening around them had roots far more complicated than a jealous teammate.

"Hey." Beckett's hand found her shoulder, gentle, grounding. "We're going to figure this out."

"I know." She leaned into him, letting herself, for one unguarded moment, simply rest against his chest. "I just didn't expect this season to come with a conspiracy attached."

"Neither did I." His arms came around her fully, and she felt him press a kiss to the top of her head, careful and slow, like he was trying to memorize the moment against whatever came next. "For what it's worth — whatever this turns into, I'm not going anywhere."

She wanted, badly, to believe that was a promise he could actually keep.