Thread of Hope

THIRTY-ONE

My first inclination was to find Jon Jordan, throw him out in the street and drive over him a couple of times.

But aside from making me feel better, I wasn’t sure what that would accomplish. It would ultimately take Meredith to straighten everything out. I was better off going to her. My main goal was to get Chuck off the hook and I didn’t want to lose sight of that.

I found the hotel’s business center and went to work on the Internet, checking out Jordan.

What I found left me frustrated.

Jordan, by all accounts, was a model citizen. Not only was he richer than rich, but the man gave a lot of money away to multiple charitable organizations. He also gave his time, serving as a board member for several of those groups. The irony that both he and his wife served as board chairs for a local battered women’s shelter did not escape me. But there wasn’t anything that made me think less of Jordan. If anything, it muddled even further who he was.

After two hours of finding nothing incriminating, I gave up and, after changing into gym shorts, headed to Coronado for basketball practice.

The team was already in the gym when I got there. I spotted Meredith shooting with Megan at the far end of the gym as I walked in. Meredith glanced in my direction, said something to Megan, then went back to dribbling the ball.

“You made it,” Kelly Rundles said, coming up the sideline to meet me.

“We had a deal.”

She nodded. “Yes, we did.”

“To be fair, though, you should know you may take some heat for having me here.”

She didn’t appear surprised by that. “I’ll be fine, but thanks for the warning. I've got some paperwork I'll need you to fill out after practice. Just background check stuff. You ready?”

I eyed Meredith at the opposite end as she spun to the basket. “Sure.”

Kelly followed my eyes to Meredith. “You wanna talk to her afterward, that’s fine. But not during practice. Clear?”

“Crystal.”

She blew the whistle and the girls hustled to the middle of the floor. She gave them some preliminary instructions and then the girls broke into lines at the far end of the floor.

“Can you run this?” she asked, referring to the drill they were about to start.

“Yeah.”

“Good. Get in line and run with them.”

I thought she meant run as in supervise, not run as in run, but I jogged down to the end of the floor, aware of the girls giggling and whispering as I took my place at the end of the middle line. Meredith avoided my eyes, bending down and messing with her shoelaces.

The drill required a player in each of the three lines to sprint to the other end where two other players waited as defenders. The shooter from the original three then backpedaled on defense, facing the two defenders as they came back down and attempted to score. It simulated the fast break and having to get back on defense. A fantastic drill.

If you’re in shape to run it.

After five minutes, I was gassed and covered in sweat. I’d clanked a ten-footer and been beaten badly back on defense twice.

As I panted, trying to get my breathing under control, I marveled again at how well the girls on the team played together. They communicated constantly, yelling at one another at every opportunity. They moved the ball with ease and always seemed to know where their teammates were supposed to be.

I was up again, a girl named Theresa on my left and Kristin, the girl whose footwork I’d corrected the day before, on my right. Meredith and Megan waited for us on the other end on defense.

Theresa broke hard for the basket and I bounced the ball to her beneath Meredith’s hands. Theresa whipped the ball over Megan’s head to Kristin. Meredith rotated down quickly to guard Kristin, so she fired the ball back to me at the top. I buried the jumper and sprinted back to the other end.

Meredith had the ball on the right and Megan flared out to my left as they pushed forward. Smart. Spread the floor, attack from both sides and make me choose. It was a subtle thing, but that kind of movement usually separated the better players from the rest.

Meredith’s eyes were impassive as she approached, the ball bouncing rhythmically beneath her left hand as she came down. She quickened her pace and came right at me. I stepped up to meet her. She flicked her eyes to her left, looking for Megan. I took another step up and shaded that way to see if I could deflect the pass I thought was coming.

But there was no pass.

Meredith switched the ball to her right hand and accelerated past me before I could recover. She laid the ball up off the backboard and it dropped softly through the net.

Kelly blew the whistle and yelled “Stations!” and the girls sprinted in groups of three to the side baskets.

I stayed on the baseline, my hands clasped behind my head, waiting for my breath to come back.

“You alright?” Kelly asked, coming up by my side, her eyes scanning the floor.

“No,” I said. “I’m about to die.”

“You’ll be fine.” Then she laughed. “Meredith destroyed you on that last play.”

I nodded. “She’s good.”

“You just wait,” she said. “That was nothing.”

And Kelly was right. Over the next two hours, Meredith dominated the practice. If a shot needed to be made, she made it. If the defense needed to make a stop, she found a way to the ball. She out-shined all of her teammates in every drill, in every way, and when they scrimmaged for the last ten minutes, she demonstrated how superior she was to every other girl in the gym by scoring at will, and anticipating everything the opposing five wanted to do.

And she did it all with ease and with an expression that gave away nothing.

Kelly adjourned the practice and cornered me as the girls trickled off the floor. She handed me a piece of paper. It was the background check she'd told me about.

“Get that back to me tomorrow,” she said. “You have a sport coat?”

“Excuse me?”

“A coat. You’ll have to wear a coat on the bench tomorrow night for the game,” she explained.

“You want me on the bench?”

“You’re a coach, aren’t you?”

I didn’t know what I was. “You gonna clear that with Stricker?”

Subtle contempt settled on her face. “I’ll handle Stricker.”

I took a deep breath and my heart settled down to a manageable rhythm. “Then I’ll find a coat.”

She nodded and walked away.

I picked up my bag and walked out into the hallway between the gym and the lockers. Meredith came blazing out of the locker room and, like before, crashed into me.

She backed up, not looking me in the eye. “Sorry. Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I said, turning to block the door. “But we need to talk.”

“I can’t,” she said. “Not right now.”

The bruise on her face had faded to a pale yellow.

“Come on, Meredith,” I said. “My friend’s in the hospital, waiting to go to jail and he doesn’t deserve to be. Does he?”

She looked up from the floor. The steely gaze from the gym was gone, replaced by the expression of a scared teenage girl.

“I can’t,” she said. “I have to go.”

“Is it your dad?” I asked. “Is he the one that did this to you? And now you’re scared of him?”

Her expression shifted, somewhere closer to confusion, but I couldn’t tell if it was because I was right or wrong.

“I have to go,” she said and pushed past me.

I took a step after her, then stopped. Chasing her wasn’t the right thing to do. She was scared and I didn’t want to make it worse.

She shoved open the glass doors and disappeared outside.