Page 86 of Blade

“Yes,” she says. “I didn’t see my skates in here when I came to look.”

“And then they had that fight. And Emile ...”

“Died.”

She’s detached again when she says this, and I understand. This is where her mind needs to go to say these words and be in this place where it happened.

“But I have to tell you something else.”

“Okay . . .”

“When I ran outside, there were four cars in the lot that I recognized.”

Suddenly there’s a clanging of metal. A door opening down by the ice. Grace looks at me, terrified.

“Someone’s coming!” she says. And then she moves to the back of the closet, not into the office. She reaches the end of the shelves. They almost touch the wall, but there’s a small gap.

“This way!” she says, and then she slips into the gap and disappears.

I try to follow, but the space is too narrow. The shelves don’t move, even when I lean my body into them. They’re flush against the front wall and bolted in place.

I shine the light into the gap, press my back against the wall, and turn my head and see another door that’s behind the shelves, in the gap. Grace has managed to open it enough to get through.

“Grace!” I whisper, but she’s already gone, and I try to piece together the layout of the room and the hallway outside and where this escape has taken her.

Because I can’t get through. And then I hear another door open. And a voice.

“Ana? Grace? Are you in here?”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Excerpt from Testimony of Bobby Stark

Ada Olson: After Indy was suspended from competition for the Olympic year, did you worry about her emotional state?

Bobby Stark: Yes. I was there at the competition when it happened. I couldn’t believe it. I called Patrice the next day and told her I would take Indy back. No questions asked. I knew this had to be some kind of mistake, and if it wasn’t, she had a good reason for using the drugs. And it turned out, I was right.

Ada Olson: What did she say?

Bobby Stark: What she always said when Indy asked to come home.

Ada Olson: Which was what?

Bobby Stark: Over her dead body.

Ada Olson: And why was that?

Bobby Stark: I don’t know.

Ada Olson: Was it the rivalry with Dawn Sumner?

Bobby Stark: Maybe. That’s what Indy thought. Did you know that Dawn let her fall on that jump—knowing what was wrong with the takeoff? Indy told me how she learned to fix it. She said she told Dawn to her face when they were alone in her office—she told her that she was a shitty coach, and she was right.

Ada Olson: That might explain why Dawn did what she did—but I was asking you about Patrice. Indy’s own mother. Why didn’t she let her come home? It wasn’t a decades-old rivalry, was it?

Bobby Stark: No.

Ada Olson: So—what was the reason Patrice wouldn’t let Indy train with you?