Page 18 of Slap Shot (Charm City Chill #3)

H eather

Except Kai beat her to the puck.

"CHILL SALARY DATA LEAKED: Backup Goalie Earns More Than Starter"

"Team in Turmoil: Secret Bonuses Revealed in Massive Data Breach"

"Kovalchuk Under Fire: Did Female Coach Play Favorites?"

“Fuck,” Heather muttered, rubbing sleep out of her eyes as her phone alerts got her out of bed. The headlines blazed across her laptop screen like digital fire, each notification another nail in her professional coffin. She logged into the Chill’s network to check the damage.

That bastard.

She was going to make him eat his computer.

Her phone exploded with incoming calls. Jack Westlake's name flashed urgent red, followed immediately by Stephanie, then Oliver. Text messages flooded in faster than she could read them, a cascade of crisis management and damage control that made her stomach lurch.

She answered Oliver's call while stumbling toward her closet, the phone wedged between her shoulder and ear.

"How bad is it?" His voice was tight, controlled, but she could hear the underlying panic.

"Complete salary breakdown for every player, coach, and staff member." Heather yanked a blazer off its hanger, her free hand pulling up news sites on her laptop. "Performance bonuses, injury clauses, signing incentives, everything that could possibly cause friction between teammates."

"Shit. The team's going to implode."

"That's the idea." She kicked off her sleep shorts, hopping into work pants while scrolling through the leaked data.

"Sven earning nearly five thousand more than Liam makes.

Your performance bonuses showing management values you way above your line placement, even Coach Vicky's salary negotiations tied to metrics that make her look like she's playing politics. "

"This is exactly what Kai wanted. Turn us against each other."

"It's not just the salaries," she said, scrolling over increasingly vicious comments.

"People are questioning every decision Vicky's made.

Why Sven gets backup money when he never plays.

Why Ethan has performance clauses when Mateo doesn't. They're painting your coach as either incompetent or corrupt. "

Oliver's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "She had nothing to do with those contracts. Front office handles salary negotiations."

"Try explaining that to Twitter."

Heather's phone buzzed with another incoming call—Jack Westlake again. "I have to go. Jack's been calling nonstop, and I'm guessing it's not to congratulate me on my cybersecurity skills."

"Good luck with that."

"I'm going to need it." Her phone was ringing again—Stephanie this time. "I'll call you after I know how much trouble we're in."

She hung up and decided to put off Jack as long as she could. She answered Stephanie's call while grabbing her laptop bag and coffee.

"Please tell me you have a plan," Stephanie said without preamble. "Because the media is having a field day with this, and I'm running out of ways to spin 'our cybersecurity expert couldn't keep our salary data secure.'"

"Working on it," Heather said, already out the door and heading for her car. "How's the team handling it?"

"About as well as you'd expect. Liam's not speaking to Sven, half the guys are questioning why Oliver gets performance bonuses they don't, and Coach Vicky's facing a media firing squad about contract decisions she had nothing to do with."

Heather's stomach dropped as she started her car. "It's going to get worse before it gets better."

"How much worse?"

"That depends on whether Jack fires me before I can catch the guy doing this."

As if summoned by her words, her phone rang again. Jack Westlake, for the fourth time in ten minutes.

"I have to take this," she told Stephanie. "Crisis meeting in an hour?"

"Already scheduled. Good luck."

Heather switched calls, bracing herself for the verbal assault she knew was coming.

"Dr. Quincy." Jack's voice could have frozen hell. "I assume you've seen the news."

"Yes, sir. I'm on my way in now to—"

"My office. Immediately. We need to discuss whether you're still the right person for this job."

The line went dead, leaving Heather alone in her car with the sick certainty that her career was about to join Coach Vicky's on the chopping block.

THE CHILL HEADQUARTERS felt like a war zone. Players clustered in small groups, voices low but tense. Heather caught fragments of conversation as they passed—"can't believe Sven makes more than..." and "management's been lying to us about..." and "if this is what they're hiding..."

In the main conference room, Coach Vicky stood at the head table, her usual commanding presence diminished by the weight of circumstance. Her auburn hair was pulled back severely, and the scar along her jawline seemed more prominent in the harsh fluorescent lighting.

"Gentlemen," she said as the last players filed in. "I assume you've all seen the news."

The room was silent, tension thick enough to cut with a skate blade.

Heather took a seat in the back, technically present for security briefing but mostly here to observe the damage Kai had wrought.

Stephanie sat next to her and looked mad enough to spit nails and sad enough to cry buckets, but she was holding it together. They all were.

"First," Coach Vicky continued, "let me be clear. I had no involvement in contract negotiations. Those decisions were made by management before I was hired. My job is to coach the team we have, not to second-guess front office decisions."

Liam sat in the front row, his usual easy demeanor replaced by something harder. Beside him, Sven hunched in his chair, looking like he wanted to disappear entirely.

"That said," Vicky's voice carried an edge, "we need to address the elephant in the room.

Some of you are going to have questions about salary disparities, bonus structures, performance clauses.

Those are conversations for you to have with management and your agents—not with each other, and certainly not with the media. "

Kane raised his hand. "Coach, the reporters are already asking if this affects team dynamics. If guys are resentful about contract differences."

"And what did you tell them?"

"That our focus is on winning hockey games, not counting each other's money." Kane's response was textbook, but Heather could see the strain around his eyes.

"Good answer." Vicky's gaze swept the room. "Because that's exactly what our focus needs to be. We have a season to play, and I will not let outside noise derail what we're building here."

Ethan shifted in his seat, his young face uncertain. "What if the media keeps pushing? Some of the stuff they're saying about you..."

"Let Stephanie worry about the media," Vicky said. "Our job is to show up, work hard, and play hockey. Everything else is a distraction."

But even as she said it, Heather could see the cracks forming.

Jax kept glancing at Liam, probably calculating how much more his buddy was earning than the team's starting goalie.

Dmitri was studying his teammates' faces, his usual exuberance dampened by the awkward atmosphere.

Even Oliver looked uncomfortable, clearly aware that his own contract revelations had contributed to the team's discomfort.

After the meeting, players dispersed quickly, the usual post-meeting banter notably absent. Heather watched Sven approach Liam, clearly wanting to address the salary issue directly.

"Liam, I need you to know, I had no idea about the difference. My agent handled everything, and I never asked—"

"Don't." Liam's voice was flat, controlled. "Just don't, okay?"

"But—"

"I said don't." Liam walked away, leaving Sven standing alone with hurt confusion written across his features.

Heather left the meeting room and sagged against the stairwell wall. She sank down on the concrete steps and put her head in her hands. She needed a few minutes to process everything from the team falling apart to Jack's fury before facing the next crisis.

The meeting with Jack had been brutal. Twenty minutes of barely controlled anger about ownership concerns and media coverage that painted the organization as incompetent. Jack's ultimatum echoed in her ears: One week to stop these attacks, or we'll find someone who can.

The worst part was that he was right to be frustrated.

Yes, they'd identified Kai Moreno as their hacker.

Yes, they'd reported him to federal authorities for parole violations.

Yes, there was an active manhunt to find him and revoke his early release.

But none of that had stopped the salary leak or prevented the media firestorm currently destroying Coach Vicky's reputation and fracturing team chemistry.

She'd tried to explain that catching Kai was now a federal matter, that they were cooperating fully with law enforcement, that these things took time.

But Jack didn't want explanations about bureaucratic processes.

He wanted results and Kai and anyone else locked out of their networks.

The media was painting the organization as either incompetent or negligent, and the ownership group was asking serious questions about their cybersecurity investments.

Fair enough, she thought, finally standing up and shouldering her bag.

Jack's anger was justified, even if his timeline was unrealistic.

She'd been hired to do a job, and so far she'd failed spectacularly.

The salary leak was just the latest in a series of breaches that had happened on her watch, and the fact that she understood Kai's motivations didn't change the damage he'd done.

One week. Seven days to catch a hacker who'd spent years planning his revenge, who knew their systems better than she did, who had resources and skills that rivaled anything she'd encountered. It should have felt impossible.

Instead, it was clarifying. Kai wanted a war? She'd give him one.