Page 2 of My Pucking Enemy (The Milwaukee Frost #4)
Luca
I don’t trust her.
“Well,” Coach Vic says, his eyebrows shooting up, his gaze swinging between Wren Beaumont and me. “I…don’t see why not. As long as it doesn’t interfere with your performance on the ice.”
Vic can’t resist a social experiment, and he also knows that I’ve been instrumental in building this team.
The guys would follow me to the ends of the earth—that’s what it means to be team captain.
I look out for them. I’m the connection between admin and players, and I’m very good at my job.
I pick up on things and see the dangers where others—including Coach Vic—might not.
Which includes the woman sitting across the table from me now, looking at me like she wants to take out my batteries.
To anyone else, she might look perfectly professional in a sleek, black, paneled dress that hugs her curves but covers her chest. Shoulder-length, strawberry blonde hair and a spattering of freckles over her nose.
She manages to appear both competent and non-threatening at once, a camp counselor, bank teller, doctor.
Slim nose, high cheekbones. She’s attractive, wearing tasteful silver jewelry, a bracelet and a chain around her neck. Makeup so subtle most men wouldn’t think she was wearing any.
But I know better.
The moment I saw Coach Vic’s short-notice email about hiring her as a performance strategist—a job I’ve never even heard of before—I started digging, trying to find her online.
And the results were concerning.
Aside from a single, mostly blank LinkedIn page, there was next to nothing on Wren Beaumont online. No news clips from a high school track team. No friends or even friends-of-friends on social media mentioning her in a post. An eerily quiet online presence that made me instantly on-guard.
If you were asking the internet for proof that she existed, she would be practically invisible.
And something about that bugs me. I’ve known guys who hire and meet with elite athlete coaches.
Teams hire strategists all the time—but they have online platforms. They have testimonials from other clients to show that they’re effective.
Wren Beaumont has none of that.
When something did come up—a headline reading 16-year-old Detained in Relation to Sports Betting Fraud Also Suspected Fine Art Forgery Scheme, Other Unsolved Cases—I tapped on it right away.
Only for 505: Page Not Found to stare back at me. And when I tapped back out to the original search, the listing was completely gone, like it had never existed in the first place.
Did I see it right? Something about sports betting, art fraud?
At first, I wasn’t sure. But now, looking at her, I’m convinced it wasn’t a fluke. She looks like the kind of woman who could forge something very close to the real thing.
“With all due respect,” Wren says, her voice cool and melodic, sending a shudder up the length of my spine. “I prefer to work alone.”
I can feel the tension coiling through my body like a serpent. Where the hell did Vic even find her? How did he convince the VP and other hiring managers to bring her on board?
“Now, wait a second. I think this could be good,” Vic says, reaching out and touching the table in front of her. His eyes bounce between the two of us. “Luca knows more about this team than anyone.”
Because I’ve spent the past four years of my life building this team from nothing. I’ve brought in the guys, created the community, and earned every single fan that tunes in to watch our games.
And I’m not about to let some grifter come in here, mess with my strategy, and send us off course. Not when this is the year—this is finally the year that we’re going to win the Stanley Cup.
We’re going to break the record for fastest championship after team inception—a mark on the history of this sport that nobody will be able to take from us.
Throughout the rest of the meeting, Wren gives me cool, calculating looks, but I pointedly keep from catching her eyes again. I’m not going to give her the satisfaction. Plus, I don’t want her to realize that I’m onto her.
Coach Vic means well, but his consistent experimentation with the team can sometimes be to its detriment.
Mandatory goat yoga. Spiritual release therapy.
Each player memorizing his own poem as a way to “expand our minds and unlock our potential.” Hiring a strategist that doesn’t even have a solid portfolio is exactly something he would do.
Still, outside of the constant fad-chasing, he’s a genius. And we’re not getting anywhere close to the championship without him.
For the next hour, I sit across the table from her as she outlines her background, most of which sounds purposefully vague or straight-up vague.
Education in game theory. A history in sports.
Then, her time with the FBI, delivered with a cheeky, “But, as you know, I can’t divulge much of the details when it comes to that. ”
“Of course,” the VP says, nodding, though he shouldn’t be. He should be pressing for more details than this. Does she have a degree? Has she ever worked on something like this before? How is it that these guys are eating out of her hand? “We understand.”
Realizing I’m not going to get anywhere protesting this during the meeting—I catch Coach Vic and stop him before he heads into the hallway.
“Coach,” I start, but he cuts me off.
“We’re all on board, McKenzie,” he says, glancing up at me through his bushy eyebrows.
“You’re letting in a total stranger,” I argue, crossing my arms. “What if she—I don’t know—influences our strategy, then feeds that information to another team to double her income?”
Something flickers over Vic’s face, and he clears his throat before shaking his head and tucking a few papers into a folder under his arm. “This will be good for the team. That girl is a genius, and she’s just what we need. Just trust me.”
“I trust you—”
“She’s also signed an NDA,” he interjects, “just like you did. Just like we all did.”
I bite my tongue, glancing out into the hallway and catching a glimpse of Wren disappearing around the corner. I could stay here and argue with him, or I could follow her and confront her about her intentions.
“Alright.” I clap Vic on the shoulder and turn, letting him sit in his surprise that I haven’t decided to press the issue.
I’m halfway down the hallway when I hear Wren’s voice, low and sharp. I stop in my tracks, flattening myself to the wall. In the elevator doors, I can see the form of her, slightly warped in the metal, staring at her phone, then bringing it to her ear.
“What do you want?” she snaps, her voice hushed. Curiosity rises inside me. Who answers the phone like that? A normal professional, or someone with enemies?
A beat passes, then she lets out a sharp laugh. “Oh, is that so?”
I hold my breath, glancing in the other direction to make sure nobody is going to come this way and see me very clearly eavesdropping on her conversation.
“Of course I know about the opportunity.” Wren’s voice drops even lower, and I struggle to hear the rest of what she says, but it sounds like, “Do you remember the details of my parole?”
I catch my breath and back away. The details of her parole. In the conference room, she was busy telling everyone that she worked with the FBI—which I’m not even sure is true. Being on parole sure makes a lot more sense to me.
Why would the team hire someone with a criminal record? Isn’t there some sort of background system in play? When we were hiring Maverick Hawkins—a defenseman with a few fights on his record—back to the team, his previous court cases came up right away
Her voice drops further and I can’t make out what she’s saying anymore, so I decide to back off before she realizes I followed her. And I’ve only taken a few steps when my phone starts to buzz in my pocket, a few rapid-fire notifications.
Without looking, I know what it is.
The email from my attorney, finalizing my divorce. A quiet, pitiful end to nearly four years of marriage.
I pull the email up and scan through it, reading through everything we already talked about in person earlier. Earlier, when I sat in the lawyer’s office with my soon-to-be-ex-wife Amanda and calmly discussed the details of our split.
At the very bottom of the email is a direct reference to Amanda’s NDA, and I read through the line again and again, letting it soothe my raucous nerves.
…remember that any public discussions regarding the details of this divorce would be a violation of the primary contract and subsequent NDA, and would disqualify the client from any funds gained during divorce proceedings.
What it means plainly is this: Amanda keeps my secret, or she won’t get a cent from me. I already made it clear to her that I will sue her to within an inch of her life if she so much as breathes in the direction of a reporter.
“Excuse me.”
Embarrassingly, the sound of the crystal-clear voice makes me jump, and Wren passes me by, throwing me a look over her shoulder that feels too direct.
Like she’s cut right through the pretenses and into the heart of me.
Like, despite the fact that I was eavesdropping on her, she has somehow managed to get the upper-hand.
Like she knows exactly what email I was just reading.
“Luca McKenzie,” she says, stopping and pivoting, throwing her hand out to me, a serene smile on her face as she waits for me to shake it. “I cannot wait to work with you.”
I take her hand and ignore the feeling it invokes up my arm—the hairs raising, the awareness of a threat.
“Likewise,” I say.
What I really mean is, You won’t last a month, Wren Beaumont.