“How you felt about her.”
“She didn’t want anyone to know,” Jamie said, remembering the chip on Charlie’s shoulder, remembering how nothing mattered to her, not him being cop’s son, a contributor on the basketball team, popular, smart, good-looking, a good guy. The only thing that mattered to her was basketball, and a scholarship. She said the word like a prayer or a mantra, like she’d studied it carefully, broken the concept down like she broke down plays, understood what it meant. Tuition, room, board. “Tuition” meant an education. “Room” meant a place to sleep. “Board” meant food to eat. It meant that rarest of rarities, a chance to lift herself out of poverty.
“That’s not what I said,” Ian said carefully. “I wasn’t talking about keeping your thing together a secret. I was talking about you.”
“I had to keep it a secret,” Jamie said. “If I couldn’t tell anyone we were … fuck. We weren’t doing anything except playing ball and kissing. You put it into words and it’s nothing. But yeah. Inside, it was everything to me.”
“But not to her?”
He thought about the way Charlie kissed him, the way she fought on the court, her fierce, humiliated fury the night after his dad arrested her mom for shoplifting, again. “Her mom was a petty shoplifter. She wasn’t going to end up like that.”
“And she didn’t end up like her mom,” Ian said. “The question isn’t whether everyone knows she’s not like her mom. The question is whether she knows she’s not.”
“That’s what I have to find out.”
“Go get ’em,” Ian said. “Let’s get these boxes downstairs. You stink, I stink, and I want lunch.”
“You’re buying,” Jamie reminded him.
They stacked the boxes neatly and headed out to Ian’s truck. Ian drove with a cop’s confidence, heading down the hill and across the tracks to the barbecue joint the state health department would close down if it wasn’t the best ribs in town. They ordered the rib basket, five-alarm-fire hot, and a side of wings, then sat down at the picnic tables in the shade.
Ian looked around, then lowered his voice. “Since you’re going to be around for a while, I could use your help on a professional level at the banquet.”
“I’m not going to shoot DeMarco Jones for dumping honey in your shoes junior year,” Jamie said, shaking pepper onto his fries.
“Something big is about to go down. I need somewhere safe to get things rolling with the informant, and for a number of reasons, the banquet is the perfect opportunity. But if I use cops, it’s going to look suspicious. I can’t have anything tracking back to her.”
“Her?” Jamie said, pausing with a rib halfway to his mouth.
“Her.” Ian licked sauce from the side of his wrist. “She’s smack in the middle of what could be a multistate drug trafficking ring.”
“Okay,” Jamie said. “If you want backup, I can get you two more former SEALs. They’ll be at the banquet, so no one will wonder why they’re there.”
“Hell yes, I want them. Thanks,” Ian said, then nodded at the ribs. “Are they as good as you remember?”
Jamie nodded, the sweet sting on his tongue reminding him of Charlie. When they finished their meal, they drove home, past the court, empty in the middle of the day. The passion was still there. All he had to do now was convince her it was worth risking her heart.
Chapter Two
She was restless. Not that this was news. Charlotte Stannard was always restless. But she’d learned to identify her emotions, to think through appropriate responses.
Charlie stood in the open screen door of her little house and let the sounds of a Lancaster spring night wash over her. Crickets, evening birds darting against the darkening sky, no wind, not even a breeze. Only a few stars beginning to twinkle in the twilight. The air was losing the sun’s heat of the day and taking on the chill of spring. It was the perfect evening for sitting in her tiny screened-in porch, catching up on all the relaxing she didn’t do during the basketball season. The months between October and March were beyond hectic, with tryouts and regular-season games. This year the Lady Knights made the state tournament for the first time since Charlie’s senior season, when they won state, losing to the St. Paul Gamecocks in the semis. Next year they were coming home from the tournament with a trophy and nets cut from the hoops, and that meant Charlie, as their head coach, needed to think about summer workouts and designing plays to maximize the talent she had.