The two of them exchanged smiles and nods. She reached out to touch the net again, and a barrage of flashes nearly blinded her. Kate hoped the cameras captured every morsel of Mike’s sincerity. Her agent was most likely recording the press conference, but Kate wanted to be sure they had a good record of the depth of his gratitude. Those things were easy to forget once contract negotiations began.
“Thank you, Director Samlin.”
Squashing the rising tide of nervousness building inside her, she scanned the crowd, looking for a friendly face to focus on while she gave her statement. She didn’t need to look any farther than the front row.
Jim Davenport from the Sentinel held his micro recorder pointed directly at her. She stifled a smirk when she noted the grim expression on his face. It seemed out of place. Jim was Wolcott’s hometown sports reporter and a die-hard basketball junkie. You’d think that would make him the friendliest face of all, but no. He frowned every bit as fiercely as he glared at the other reporters, clearly peeved by the additional media coverage. Why hadn’t he been out on the court?
A hot flash of annoyance fired in her gut. Jim ought to be happy. He was the guy with the inside track after all. He should have been the first clamoring for a quote. Pushing through her irritation, she ignored Jim’s snit and scanned the room until she landed on the familiar face of Steve Bishop from one of the Nashville news affiliates. When their gazes locked, she turned on her brightest smile and dredged up a little of the drawl she’d never quite shed.
“And thanks, y’all. My, I never imagined a turnout like this. I thought I’d just let y’all catch a couple of pictures of the new hardware and then hop on the bus.”
Her comment was met with a low rumble of chuckles. Though she’d been dealing with the press for years, it still took her some time to get her feet under her at media events. She zoomed in on Jim for a moment, allowing herself to dally in her comfort zone before making eye contact with the bigger sharks in the tank.
“I appreciate Director Samlin’s praise, and trust me, I’ll be playing that sound bite over and over on my DVR,” she added, flashing her boss a cheeky grin. “But I’m not the one who won the game, am I?”
Lifting a challenging eyebrow, she turned her attention to Greg Chambers. She hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing the National Sports Network’s lead basketball commentator since she’d been in the WNBA and he’d been hanging around the sidelines hoping for a quote. Well, she had one for him now.
“Most of y’all didn’t expect much out of us this year, and I want to thank you personally for giving these twelve phenomenal young women the kick in the long baggies they needed to get the job done. Just imagine: if we’d believed our own press, we could have been watchin’ the game from home.”
The press corps gave another appreciative chuckle, and she plowed ahead, confidence growing. “Then again, if we were watching from home, we would have had snacks.” She pressed a hand to her stomach and grinned at the assemblage. “I don’t suppose anyone thought to bring us any Ro-Tel dip? Maybe one of those six-foot sub sandwiches?”
That earned her a heartier round of laughter, but it was laced with discomfort she couldn’t quite identify.
“Of course, it’s also nice to be able to wrap this one up so close to home. The Music City has been awful good to us, but I hope that the good people of Nashville won’t be offended when I say I think we all look forward to sleeping in our own beds tonight.”
She went on to praise a few individual players for outstanding performances and heaped the usual load of “I couldn’t do it without you” on her assistant coach, but still an undercurrent of impatience hummed through the room. Reporters tapped pens and repositioned equipment. Onlookers gathered along the walls shifted their weight from foot to foot. Her words came slower, but her mind raced.
Was she missing something? Forgetting to thank someone critical to the process? Was her blouse buttoned correctly? Or maybe she was committing the kind of unwitting gaffe that would turn her into an internet GIF before the evening was out?
Watching the crowd warily, she wound down with a self-deprecating chuckle. “I guess that’s all I have to say.”
She glanced at Mike and found the athletic director sitting rigid in his seat, his eyes fixed on someone at the very back of the room. She squinted, but like ninety percent of the guys in the room, the object of Mike’s attention was dressed in the off-duty jock uniform of khakis and a knit polo shirt. He wore a ball cap pulled low over his eyes, but it didn’t bear the Wolcott Warrior logo or the logo of any media outlet. No, his hat had what looked like a coiled snake appliquéd just above the bill.
A jolt of unease fired through her belly as every reporter’s hand shot up, but she kept her smile firmly in place. Director Samlin gave his head the tiniest shake, but she wasn’t about to be waved off. They’d won. This was her night, and damn it, she could alley-oop any question the jackals threw at her. Her team had played strong and clean. She had nothing to hide.
So she went straight to the biggest jackal of them all. “Yes, Greg?” she said, giving NSN their due by nodding to Chambers first.
To her surprise, he didn’t direct his question to her but spoke to the man sitting next to her.
“Director Samlin, at five forty-three this evening, a private plane owned by Richard Donner, one of Wolcott University’s biggest boosters, touched down at Nashville International. Witnesses at
