“Fuck off, McMurphy,” Grims growled. “I don’t like hanging with you on a good day. I’m sure as hell not going to hole up with you.” Grims was no one to fuck with, especially since he’d been placed indefinitely on the IR and he and his girlfriend had broken up during training camp. Guy was like a wounded bear. Big, mean, and thoroughly pissed off. All. The. Time. Which was great when they were battling another team on the ice, but in the locker room or during social time? Not so much. Not that Grims participated in social time anymore—not since he’d been busted doping. Quinn and his teammates weren’t supposed to know. The violations hadn’t gotten back to the league, and management had kept a lid on it, but Grims’s girlfriend had blabbed to the Blizzard SOs for some damn reason, which meant everyone knew. Despite the guy’s troubles, Quinn liked and respected his captain, so he gave him a wide berth.
Quinn had turned back to his packing when Coach LeBrun ambled in. “We’re holding a press conference. I want some of your pretty faces in there to help field questions.” He looked around and pointed. “Shanstrom, Nelson.” He stopped and eyed Grims. Grims took a step forward, obviously anticipating the call to duty as team captain. But then Coach pivoted toward Quinn, gave him a chin lift, and jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. “And Hadley. You guys are up.”
Damn it!
Quinn gaped at Grims. Anger flared in the captain’s eyes before he hooded them and turned back to cleaning out his space. Quinn didn’t miss how Grims clenched his fists before he started shoving shit into his bag.
Picking Shanny and Nelsy made sense—they were the alternate captains. But why bone Grims? Coach had looked right at him, then dismissed him deliberately.
Someone slapped Quinn’s back, and he wheeled to face Shanny, who grinned at him. “Let’s go, lover boy.”
Quinn followed Shanny and Nelsy down the hall to the press room, which was filled with eager, annoying sports journalists who’d somehow been anointed the “experts” in a game they’d never played. Self-serving bastards. And bastardettes.
Reporters began firing questions at them as soon as they joined their coach on a platform that held a podium loaded with mics. Quinn never caught the first volley. But as they settled into the Q&A and he heard the absurdity in everything they uttered, his irritation climbed. These people actually get paid to ask these stupid ass questions? Yeah, he already knew the answer to that one.
One particularly eager beaver fired a particularly aggravating query at Quinn. “What do you make of all of this, Hads?”
Hads? This little prick didn’t get to call him “Hads.” Only his teammates did.
He could practically hear the snapping going off inside him, and he cleared his throat to hold it back. “I don’t pretend to understand what’s going on here. Obviously, people with pay grades way above mine are calling the shots, based on information the rest of us don’t have.”
The reporter smirked. “I’m sure they don’t get paid nearly as well as you do, Hads.”
“Whatever. All I’m saying is I’m not in charge, so I’m not the one making the decisions.”
“Are you saying you don’t agree with their decisions so far?” the reporter goaded.
Quinn drilled the guy with a steely look. “I’m not gonna pretend I could do a better job. That would be ridiculous. Now do I think some people might be overreacting? Of course. But we’re in uncharted territory here, and who’s to say what’s too little and what’s overkill?”
“Maybe you oughta just stick to hockey there, sport,” the little weasel said. The room chuckled. Well, the reporters chuckled. No one connected with the team did.
Quinn wasn’t normally a hothead, but God, he hated it when people who didn’t know him talked down to him like he was a dumb jock. “You’re looking at a bunch of guys”—he waved his hand toward his teammates—“who work their asses off every night, and now they’re told they can’t play—probably won’t get paid. That includes coaches, trainers, equipment staff.” He paused a beat as another thought struck him. “And what about the other people who depend on the game for theirlivelihood? People who work concession stands, who clean up the arena after a game, who maintain the ice, to name just a few. How do they pay their bills?”
“Maybe the president oughta tap you for his task force, Hads. No doubt you could tell him a thing or two.”
Quinn tried to rein in his mad. He really did. “Look, I don’t know who the hell you are or why you’re sitting in this room, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to question if the kneejerk reaction of shutting everything down might be worse than the damn virus. All these measures have a cascading effect with far-reaching consequences, and I’m not convinced those consequences have been given enough due consideration.” He dragged a hand through his hair.
The buzzing room grew very, very quiet.
“Who says it’s a kneejerk reaction?” Weasel Prick challenged. “I mean, c’mon, man. You’re no scientist, though you might pass yourself off as an economist.”
A wave of nervous laughter swept through the room.
What possessed Quinn, he had no idea—maybe his inner surly teenager—but he reached out and smacked every mic on the podium. Wide eyes fastened on him as he stepped off the platform and, with the advantage of surprise, grabbed the iPad the pencil-neck reporter had been using to record the Q&A. Quinn breathed on it and shoved it back into the tweeze’s hands. “I might have it.”
People stood frozen, stunned into a stupor, and he repeated the action with a few other reporters. “Now we all have it,” he announced. The entire room seemed to shuffle.
Behind him, Coach hissed, “Hadley! Get back up here!”
Ignoring his coach, Quinn pointed at the audience he’d commandeered. “We’re one small group in one private room, yet we have the power to do exponential damage merely by breathing on
