Page 30 of Wyatt

“No problem,” he said now and flashed her his best smile. “I’m glad to answer any questions.”

She glanced up at him and raised an eyebrow.

Oh, that might be too much cooperation, maybe. They wouldn’t believe him from the start. Which might mean bright lights, toothpicks, maybe even waterboarding.

He liked his water frozen, thank you.

He stopped smiling. “I’ve already given my statement—”

“Just a few questions.”

Her English was good. British, with an accent.

“Why was this man in your room?”

Oh, he got to start with the big lie, huh? What was it that Ford said once—or maybe it was Tate. Lie with the truth attached. “He was there to steal something, probably.”

“And what could that be?”

Wyatt lifted a shoulder. “Money? My credit cards? I don’t know. This isn’t the first time I’ve had someone break into my hotel room. Once, in BC Canada, I found an entire fan club sitting in my suite, wearing only—”

Oh. Maybe notthatstory. “I asked them to leave. Because I’m not that kind of guy.” He slowed his words down. “I know it sort of looks like that—my publicist is big on getting me cover gigs—and then there was this ad for the sleep number bed and they put me in the bed with this woman I didn’t know, but she wanted to know me, if you know what I mean, and that got super awkward because like I said, I’m really not that guy. I haven’t even had a girlfriend. Ever. In college I sorta dated this one girl from my econ class, but that was because she was smart, and yeah, I guess I might have used the fact she liked hockey to get some help, but Ididn’t cheat—I draw the line there. It was all studying. And I scored a C in that class, which was actually amazing, because I hate numbers and—”

“Stoy!”

He recoiled. “Sorry.”

She pressed her hand to the table. He stared at it. Fat fingers.

“So, you don’t know why this man broke into your room.”

His voice caught in his throat. Uh.

“Calm down. We are just trying to find your attacker.”

He must have looked afraid. Which was very, very close to the truth here, so he let out a breath. Swallowed. And dodged the question. Which was a legitimate technique his publicist taught him about talking with the press. “I…I just walked in and there he was. And he jumped me, and I fought back. He went over the balcony, and that’s the last I saw of him.” There. All truth.

She stared at him. Pursed her lips.

A knock came at the door. “Minutichkoo!”

Oh, that didn’t sound calm at all.

Another knock, and he offered an apologetic smile. “I have this sort of pregame routine where I listen to music while I warm up. I have to stretch out, a lot, and I get in this sort of zone, away from the other players—and really, I have to because being a goalie is sort of your own island. You can’t hide out there. So, I just get in this place, you know, where I’m listening toHere Comes the Boom, or yeah, I do sometimes zone out toAll I Do Is Win, but that’s a crazy song, so that’s not my go-to, but I have a whole playlist, and I just get down into the zone, visualizing my saves. Over and over, sinking them into my head and just forcing my body to feel it. Because you can’t think when you’re out there on the ice, you just have to know—”

“Oy,” she said and got up.

He closed his mouth as she opened the door. Said something in Russian, glanced at him, and left.

Huh.

He sat there on the chair, shoulders hurting, trying not to think about the second tier of interrogators, and really, what did it feel like to be waterboarded? And no, he actually didn’t want to find out, and probably he couldn’t hold out any longer, and—

And Coco was out there, and the man who’d taken the USB drive was after her and…

He was getting out of here and finding her, no matter what it took.

The door opened and a man walked in. Tawny brown hair, built—clearly gym honed—but he had the gait of someone who knew his body, knew how to hurt someone.

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