Page 114 of Hell Bent

“Oh.” Harlan considered. “Huh.”

“Right,” I said. “Passports. They’re at home. Portland.” Wait. Alix had put hers in her purse last weekend, hadn’t she? Was it at my place, or the trailer?

Harlan said, “So you need a jet to take you all back to Portland, then …” He snapped his fingers. “Got somebody who can bring your passports to the airport?”

This was moving too fast, and my brain was moving too slow. “Dogsitter, yeah,” I said, then remembered Alix’s passport and where it might be. “How do I do all that? Arrange it?”

Harlan said, “Leave it to me. Right now, call Alix.”

Alix

Ben and I were lined up for the chartered bus that would take us back to the hotel when my phone rang. I pulled it out and told Ben, “It’s Sebastian.”

“Cool,” he said. “Put it on speaker, OK?”

I smiled and hit the buttons, and Ben yelled, “That was awesome!”

Sebastian said, “Ben?”

“And me,” I said. “You’re on speaker.”

“Oh.” A pause, and we were climbing onto the bus, a cacophony of noise around us. “Take me off speaker.”

I looked at Ben, and he looked at me, because there wassomething wrong with Sebastian’s voice. I sank into the first available seat and said, “OK. You’re off.”

“Solange is dying,” he said. “I mean, soon.”

“Oh.” I glanced at Ben again, and he looked back, worry all over his young face as if he knew. Or as if he’d experienced too many thunderclaps. “It’s happening now?”

A sigh. “Yeah. Look. Get your stuff and get to the airport. I’ll text you where to go once I know.”

“OK,” I said. “Do you want me to look up flights? Or—hey. If you need to go back with the team, I could take Ben straight there. I’ll bet we could get there faster if we flew to New York first, because it’s late in the day to get all the way west from Pittsburgh. We could meet you in Van—” I stopped. “Oh, wait. Passports. Mine’s at your place. Shoot.”

Ben said, “What’s going on?”

I told Sebastian, “Hang on.” And told Ben, as calmly as I could manage, “Your mom’s condition has changed, and it looks like it’ll be very soon.”

His face went blank. That’s the only way I can describe it. He opened his mouth, and nothing came out. I put the phone to my ear again and told Sebastian, “Talk to Ben. Tell him everything you know. Tell him now.” And handed over the phone.

You’re here,I told myself.And now you know why, because this is where you’re meant to be. And this is where the rubber meets the road.

Time to step up.

45

EVERYONE BEHAVES BADLY

Sebastian

A half hour later, I was on the team bus, crawling through the postgame traffic, Owen beside me and Harlan turned around from the seat ahead, and I was arguing.

“What do you mean, ‘It’s done?’” I asked Harlan. “You can’t pay for this.”

“Except I already did,” he said. “Booked it as soon as you told me, so you could get out of here. The plane’ll be spooled up to go in about an hour and a half, but you’ll make up the extra time in the air, like I said. They said three and a half hours’ flight time to Portland, and that’s pretty quick. Get in the air again with those passports, and you’ll be about ready to come down in Vancouver. I told them dinner, by the way, so don’t worry about that.”

“You told them what?” I was still distracted. How much did a fast private jet from Pittsburgh to Vancouver via Portland even cost? It didn’t matter, because I’d pay it, but it wasn’t exactly rescue-dog, practical-car territory. This was Premier-League-level spending, and there was no way I was going to let somebody else cover it for me.

“Dinner,” Harlan repeated. “I said ‘NFL dinner’ to make sure there’d be enough. If you’re going to recover your own kicks, you could need a steak, and Ben’s a teenager, right? I couldn’t get enough to eat when I was that age. I said fish too, though. Alix could be a fish girl.”