It Had to Be You (46 page)

A gravelly male voice traveled through his headset. “I’ve got her Calebow. If you don’t want her hurt, you’ll listen real hard to what I’m saying.”

“Who is this?”

“The Stars lose today. Got me? Your fucking team loses or the lady dies.”

Dan heard the wheeze in the man’s voice and was gripped by a horrible suspicion. “Hardesty? It’s you, isn’t it, you crazy son of a bitch!”

“Your team isn’t going to win the championship without my boy.”

The fact that Hardesty made no attempt to deny his identity magnified Dan’s fear as nothing else could have. Only a man who didn’t care if he lived or died would be so careless.

He knew he didn’t have much time, and he spoke quickly, his voice commanding. “Listen to me. Ray wouldn’t want you to do this.”

“You were jealous of him. That’s why you cut him.”

“This is between you and me. Phoebe doesn’t have anything to do with it. Let her go.”

“Don’t call the police.” Hardesty coughed, a dry rattling sound. “I’m watching on TV, and if I see anything unusual going on, you’ll be sorry.”

“Think, Hardesty! You’ve got an innocent woman—”

“Any more points go on the scoreboard for the Stars, I’m gonna hurt your girlfriend.”

“Hardesty!”

The line went dead.

Dan stood there, stunned. He heard the cheers of the crowd and everything inside him went numb as he remembered the series of plays he had just called. He spun toward the field. Standing in mute horror, he watched as the ball arced through the air and sailed directly between the uprights for a Stars’ field goal.

The scoreboard flashed, and Dan Calebow felt a cold hand grip his heart.

In the subbasement of the dome, Ray cursed and slammed his foot into Phoebe’s chair. She let out a cry as it flew across the slippery floor and crashed into the end wall. Her shoulder caught the impact and shards of pain shot through her body. She tasted blood in her mouth where she bit her tongue.

Afraid of what he would do to her next, she fought against the pain and forced the chair back around so that she was facing him. But he wasn’t looking at her. Instead he was staring at the television and muttering to himself.

A close-up of Dan filled the small screen. He looked frantic, and since the score now favored the Stars 173, the commentators were making a joke about it. The sight of him made her feel as if she had been ripped open. She might die today. Was she going to be watching his face when it happened? The idea was unbearable and she forced her numb fingers to begin working at the knots that held her to the chair. As she bit back the pain her movements were causing her, she remembered their last conversation and the unshakable conviction in his voice when he had told her he would never throw a game.

I don’t do that, Phoebe. Not for anybody. Not even for you.

By the time he’d finished giving his instructions, Biederot’s eyes had narrowed into indignant slits above the black smudges that angled across his cheekbones. “Those are goddamn running plays! I’m hitting every receiver I look at.”

“Do what you’re told or you’ll sit!” Dan shot back.

Biederot gave him a glance of pure fury and stalked over to Charlie Cray, one of the assistants. Within seconds, he had grabbed Charlie’s headset and was shouting into it.

Dan knew Jim was speaking with Gary Hewitt, his offensive coordinator, who sat with Tully in the coaches’ box high in the dome. Before Hewitt could start giving him hell, too, he tried to swallow enough of his fear so he could sort out his thoughts.

Hardesty had said he was watching on television, which meant he’d be able to see any unusual movement on the sideline or in whatever part of the stadium was within camera range. As a consequence, Dan couldn’t risk notifying the police. Once they knew that Phoebe truly had been kidnapped, they’d be all over the place, including right here on the sideline asking him questions. Even worse, they might decide to call the game, a circumstance that could very well push Hardesty right over the edge.

He briefly debated using his headset to contact Ron, but he was afraid Hardesty might be listening in. Although Dan didn’t understand all the intricacies of the internal communications system, he knew Hardesty could only have accessed it from within the dome. That meant he might, even now, be eavesdropping on conversations between the sideline and the coaches’ box. It also mean that Phoebe was tucked away somewhere nearby.

He swiped at his forehead with his sleeve as he tried to figure out what to do about Ron. Since he couldn’t explain what had happened over the headset, he grabbed his clipboard and scribbled a quick note, making it cryptic enough so that it would be meaningless to anyone else who read it.

I spoke with the player we were discussing at halftime. Your negative assessment of the situation was correct. It is urgent that you take no further action. I’ll explain after the game.

He slipped the note to one of the equipment men to deliver and told himself that Phoebe would come out of this unharmed. Anything else was unthinkable.

For the first time, he let himself consider how his actions would affect her ownership of the Stars after all this was over and she was safe. Although there was no precedent for what was happening, he couldn’t imagine the NFL would let this game stand—not unless the Stars won despite his coaching, which he wouldn’t let happen. Once the NFL learned that he had deliberately thrown the game, ensuring a Stars’ loss, they would schedule a rematch and she would still have a chance to keep the team.

And then an ugly thought struck him. What if the police didn’t believe that she had been kidnapped? If Hardesty got away, there wouldn’t be any tangible proof other than her own testimony. Dan was the only one who could back up her story, and his personal involvement with her would make his word suspect. She could very well be accused of fabricating the kidnapping simply because the Stars had lost and she wanted another shot at retaining ownership. There was no way the NFL would let this game be replayed.

He forced himself to face the painful fact that his failure to notify the police was going to cost Phoebe the Stars. Still, he couldn’t do anything else. He wouldn’t take a chance with her life, not for the world.

Gary Hewitt’s voice crackled through his headset. “Dan, what the hell’s going on? Why did you tell Jim to keep it on the ground? That’s not our plan. He’s never passed better.”

“I’m making some changes,” Dan snapped. “We’ve got the lead, so we’re going to play smart.”

“It’s only the third quarter! It’s too early to get conservative.”

Dan couldn’t have agreed more, so he simply removed his headset and glued his eyes to the field. No matter what he had to do, he was going to keep Phoebe safe.

By the middle of the quarter the Sabers had scored their first touchdown while the Stars’ ground game had failed to move the ball, reducing their lead to seven points. The fans’ booing had grown so loud that the offense was having a hard time hearing Biederot’s signals. Dan’s assistants were furious, the players livid, and, two minutes into the fourth quarter, when the Sabers evened the score at seventeen, the network’s color man ran out of patience.

“Can you believe what you’re seeing?” He was practically shouting into the cameras. “All season, Dan Calebow has been one of the most aggressive coaches in the NFL, and it’s terrible to see him fold like this. This isn’t the kind of football the fans came to watch!”

Phoebe tried to shut out the commentator’s understandably harsh assessment of Dan’s coaching, just as she’d been trying to ignore the sound of the crowd’s jeers. She didn’t want to think about what this public humiliation was doing to his pride, and she knew she had never loved him more.

Her wrists, chafed raw by her struggles to get free of the ropes, were bleeding.
Ignore the pain,
she told herself.
Play through it.
Everything she had heard the players say, she repeated to herself, but she was beginning to think the knots would never loosen.

Hardesty had tied her wrists in a figure eight of rope, then secured the free ends to the vertical post that supported the back of the chair. Although her fingers had become sticky with blood as she worked at that tight double knot that held her in the chair, it wouldn’t give.
Play through the pain. Shake it off.

Hardesty stared at the screen, took a drag on his cigarette, and coughed. The air was so thick with smoke that she could barely breathe. Sometimes she thought he had forgotten her, but then he would look at her with eyes so empty of any remorse that she didn’t doubt he would kill her.

Five minutes into the fourth quarter, the Sabers pulled ahead. On the sideline the emotions of the players and assistants reflected everything from fury to despondency, while the crowd had begun to throw debris on Dan. He stood alone, isolated by the players and the coaches. Only his iron discipline was keeping a full revolt from breaking out on the bench.

Sabers 24, Stars 17.

As the Sabers kicked the extra point, Biederot slammed his helmet against the bench, hitting it with such force that the face mask cracked. Dan knew it was only a matter of time before Jim ignored the threat to bench him and began calling his own plays. With less than ten minutes left on the clock and the temper of the crowd growing uglier by the minute, he could no longer keep the game on the ground.

All his life Dan had been a team player and going it alone had become too risky. Praying that he wasn’t making a fatal mistake, he called Jim and Bobby Tom over just before the offense took the field again.

Jim’s face was ruddy with fury, Bobby Tom’s rigid. Both of them started spewing obscenities.

“Bench me, you cocksucker! I don’t give a skit because I don’t want to be part of this.”

“We didn’t work this fucking hard to have you fuck us like this!”

A minicam zoomed in on them. Dan grabbed their arms and ducked his head. His voice was low and fierce. “Shut up and listen! Phoebe’s been kidnapped. The man who has her is crazy. He says he’s going to kill her if we win this game.” He felt the muscles in their arms grow rigid, but he didn’t glance up because he was certain the cameras were on him. “He’s watching on television. I can’t let the team score even a field goal because he’s threatened to hurt her if we put any numbers on the board.” He sucked in his breath and lifted his head. “I believe he’ll do it.”

Biederot swore softly, while Bobby Tom looked murderous.

Dan let every one of his emotions show in his eyes as he called the next series of plays. “Make it look good. Please. Phoebe’s life depends on it.”

He could see they had a dozen questions, but there was no time to ask them, and to their credit, neither man offered any argument.

In the subbasement below the dome, Phoebe heard the crowd cheer. Her bloody fingers grew still on the knot, and her eyes snapped to the television. She stopped breathing as Jim threw a long pass over the middle to Bobby Tom. Bobby Tom extended his body in the lean, graceful line that had been photographed so often, with his weight balanced only on the tips of his toes. How many times this season had she seen him snatch the ball out of the air from exactly that position, defying gravity as effortlessly as a ballet dancer?

But not this time. The crowd groaned as the ball bounced off his fingertips. Bobby Tom fell to the turf, and she remembered to breathe again.

It was the first long pass Biederot had thrown in the second half, and she wondered if Dan’s control over the men had at last snapped. She refused to think about what that would mean. Not now. Not when the knot that held her to the chair had finally given way.

She had been so excited when it had shaken loose, but that small moment of triumph had evaporated when she realized she was still bound. Although she was no longer tied to the chair, her wrists were secured by a knot she hadn’t previously discovered, this one holding together the figure eight of rope he had whipped around them. She was free of the chair, but that wasn’t good enough when Hardesty had a gun and she couldn’t use her arms.

The camera moved in for a close-up of Bobby Tom. Pain had dulled her senses, and several seconds ticked by before she noticed that something was wrong. When Bobby Tom missed one, his customary good humor always deserted him. He screwed up his face and cursed himself. But now, even on the small TV screen, she could see that his expression was devoid of any emotion.

He knows.
Every one of her intuitive powers made her certain that Dan had told him what had happened. She knew how much this game meant to Bobby Tom, and she could only imagine what it had cost him to deliberately miss the ball. Her anger burned as she stared at Hardesty’s back. He had no right to steal this day from them.

The Stars punted and the Sabers began their next series, while the scoreboard clock continued to tick.

7:14
. . .
7:13
. . .
7:12
. . .

The Sabers began a series of passing plays. She thought of the way the men looked after the games: dirty, limping, bloody. In her mind she saw them on the plane coming back from road games, with their knees wrapped in ice packs, their shoulders bandaged, while they popped pain killers so they could sleep. Not one of those men wouldn’t do anything for the Stars.

6:21
. . .
6:20
. . .
6:19
. . .

With so little time left, she wasn’t at all certain she could undo the last knot before the clock ran out. It was loosening, but not quickly enough. She had the awful feeling that she was letting down the team, that somehow she wasn’t trying hard enough.

5:43
. . .
5:42
. . .
5:41
. . .

Portland scored another field goal.
Sabers 27, Stars 17.
She had to make a decision. She could play it safe and stay where she was, hoping he would let her go at the end of the game. Or she could risk everything to win her own freedom.