Play Dirty

CHAPTER 39

HIS NEW LAWYER TOOK IT FROM THERE. MCALISTER USHERED the detectives out. He instructed Griff to stay in contact and not to answer any further questions without him present, told him to rest, and then he too left.

Griff closed his eyes, but rest eluded him. Although his body was battered and he was exhausted, his mind wouldn’t shut down. Yesterday, he, along with Manuelo, had been transported by helicopter to the trauma center at Parkland Hospital, where both had undergone surgery.

He had vague recollections of being prepped and a few drug-blurred memories of the recovery room. This morning he had awakened in this private room, a little more than twenty-four hours after he saw Rodarte’s skull split open with the sharp edge of a shovel.

James McAlister, attorney-at-law, had shown up only minutes ahead of the Dallas detectives. He’d barely had time to introduce himself and tell Griff that as soon as Glen Hunnicutt had heard about the events in Itasca, he’d called him on Griff’s behalf.

Now Griff was relieved to have the interrogation behind him. But it had left him more exhausted than before. His body ached from his fight with Rodarte. His shoulder throbbed. But his mind was unsettled over Laura.

As Foster Speakman’s widow, she would once again be in the spotlight while the police and media sorted through the legal detritus left by Burkett, Ruiz, and Rodarte. The speculation that would swirl around her was inevitable. He could only hope for a bigger story to come along that would supplant them as the lead on the nightly news.

But in the meantime, how was she bearing up? Was she well? Beyond the obvious, had she suffered from the miscarriage?

He blamed himself for whatever suffering she had to endure. Things might have turned out differently, her heartbreak might have been avoided entirely, if not for their last afternoon together. If he hadn’t stopped her from leaving, as she’d been about to, could everything that had happened since have been prevented?

But-and now was the time for brutal honesty-if he’d had it to do over, would he have let her leave? Or, acting on her hesitation, would he have reached around her and closed the door as he’d done? Thinking back on it, he wondered, would he have let her go? Even knowing what he did now, would he?

He closed his eyes and let his mind drift back to that afternoon, to the sick disappointment he’d felt when she told him she was leaving and never coming back. He hadn’t tried to persuade her otherwise. How could he? He had no rights to her. None.

He’d had to stand by helplessly, hopelessly, and watch as she pulled open the door and said, “Depending on circumstances, this could be the last time I’ll see you.”

“Could be.”

“I can’t think of anything to say that seems appropriate.”

“Small talk seems smaller.” Her smile told him she remembered when she’d said those same words to him. “You don’t have to say anything, Laura.”

“Then, good-bye.”

They’d shaken hands, and he’d got the sense that she was as reluctant to let go of his as he was of hers. But she did let go and turned toward the door. When she made no move to go through it, he reached past her and pushed it shut.

He left his hand there for several seconds, giving her time to protest, giving her time to say, What the hell do you think you’re doing? Open the door. I’m leaving.

When she didn’t, he drew his hand back and placed it beneath her chin. With the merest pressure, he brought her around to face him. He looked deeply into her eyes and saw in them the same unspoken, desperate longing he felt, and when he did, he fell on her hungrily, pressing his open mouth against her neck, pinning her to the door with his body. She gave a low moan and reached for him. They kissed wildly, recklessly, with abandon and without finesse.

They brought one month of mental foreplay to this moment.

Her skirt was tight fitting, but he managed to work it up over her hips. He pulled down her panties as far as her knees; then she took over and got rid of them while he dealt with his belt and fly. Cupping her bottom in his hands, he lifted her and positioned her open thighs over his. He touched her. She was ready. In one fluid thrust, he was buried in her completely.

She wrapped her arms around his head and held fast as he fucked her, as much with his mind as with his body. Because of their position, it was impossible to move much, but he rocked against her, pressing as high and hard as he could. Thinking about what they were doing, knowing that he was at last inside her again, made him burn. And the angle was perfect for her. With each stroke, he grazed the erogenous spot. When he came, so did she. And it was crashing.

For what seemed endless minutes, they clung to each other, their breathing loud in the empty house, their bodies giving off incredible heat. Finally he withdrew and gently set her on her feet. Her arms remained wound around his head, his mouth on her neck. Slowly he kissed his way up to her chin and then let his lips hover above hers for agonizing seconds before settling against them. Her lips parted, accepting his tongue.

It was their first real kiss. It was a perfect kiss. Silky and wet and sweet. Intense. Very sexy. When finally they drew apart, he placed his palms on the door on either side of her head, and rested his fevered forehead against hers. “The past thirty days have been the longest of my life,” he said, his voice raspy. “I lived in fear of you calling and saying we wouldn’t need to meet again. I was afraid I would never get to kiss you.”

She placed her fingers lengthwise over his lips. “If we talk, I have to go,” she whispered. “You can’t say anything. I can’t hear anything.”

He pulled back, about to argue, but her expression begged him to understand. And he did. They had to pretend this wasn’t personal. Each knew better. They weren’t fooling themselves. What had just happened had nothing to do with making a baby or anything else except raw desire. But they could not acknowledge it out loud. The only way she could stay was to pretend that she was doing this because her husband demanded it.

Saying nothing more, they went into the bedroom and began removing their clothes. By the time she got out of her shoes and had taken off her top, he was down to his skin. Unwilling to wait another moment to lie down with her, he stretched out on the bed and pulled her down beside him. Gathering her against him, he held the back of her head in his palm and kissed her until they were breathless.

He undid the front fastener of her lacy bra. Her breasts were lovely, soft, natural. He took the weight of one in his palm, brushed his thumb across the nipple until it was very stiff, then caressed it with his tongue. When he drew it into his mouth, she arched her back and whimpered with pleasure.

Blindly he sought her hand and guided it down. He sighed raggedly when her fingers closed around him, then her thumb, discovering a drop of moisture in the slit, spread it around the glans in slow, mind-blowing circles that were nearly his undoing.

Reaching around her, he unfastened her skirt and pushed it past her hips and down her legs. Naked now, she modestly lay back with her thighs closed, forming a perfect, enchanting V. He leaned down and gently blew on her, then pressed a kiss into the damp curls, teasing, teasing until her thighs relaxed. He moved between them and made slow love to her with his mouth.

It was she who drew her knees back and tugged on his hair until he was lying on top of her and his sex was deep inside her again. This time it was unhurried, more emotional than passionate. He savored each sensation and made certain she did. When he felt himself getting close, he took her face between his hands and looked down into her eyes, wanting there to be no question that it was he, only he, making love to her, and for only one reason.

He lost count of the number of times they made love that afternoon, because it was one long act, one erotic exchange melding into the next. Though they weren’t free to speak, they allowed each other unlimited access.

His lips touched each feature of her beautiful face again and again. He was at liberty to stroke every inch of her skin, to kiss the backs of her knees. He slid his thumb down the groove of her spine all the way to the cleft of her hips, then lay with his cheek resting in the small of her back.

Equally curious, she examined his large hands, tracing the heavy veins on the backs of them, sucking his crooked little finger into her mouth. She seemed to like his chest hair. A lot. She nuzzled it frequently. He loved the feel of her breath ruffling through it, loved feeling her fingertips exploring his navel and her knee tucked snugly under his balls, loved feeling her mouth’s wet tug until he thought he would die of pleasure.

They were lying quietly, fondling and kissing idly, as satiated lovers do, when she looked at him sadly and pulled away. And he’d had to let her go. There was so much he wanted to say, but he was forbidden to. He wanted to tell her that, for the first time in his whole, misbegotten life, he was in love. He loved, period. He loved her.

“God help me,” he whispered now to the walls of his hospital room, “I did from the start.”

He must have slept. A slight shift of air roused him. He opened his eyes. Coach was standing just inside the door. He said, “Were you asleep?”

“Just resting my eyes.”

He hesitated, then walked to the side of the bed and looked Griff over, his gaze settling on his bandaged shoulder. “How is it?”

“I’ll live. Hurts like hell.”

“They don’t have any pain medication in this hospital?”

“I’m getting it.” He raised his hand with the IV port. “It still hurts.”

“Any permanent damage?”

“The surgeon says there shouldn’t be. If I do my physical therapy.”

“Yeah, well, I wish him luck. You always shirked on that.”

“She.”

“Huh?”

“The orthopedic surgeon is a she.”

“Oh.” Coach looked around the room, took note of the TV suspended from the ceiling, the wide window. “Nice room.”

“Can’t complain.”

“Food okay?”

“All I’ve had is beef broth and lime Jell-O.”

“You hungry?”

“Not really.”

Having run out of small talk, they were quiet for a time. Then Griff said, “Thank you for not calling the cops on me the other night.”

“I did.”

Griff looked at him with surprise.

“Despite Ellie’s yammering, I put in a call. But not to Rodarte. After being passed around to several detectives, I finally landed one who sounded like he had some sense. I told him what was what, where you were headed, and that the situation had all the makings for becoming dangerous, possibly lethal to somebody. He got in touch with the police department in Itasca and mobilized them immediately.”

“So you believed me.”

“I believed her.”

“Laura.”

“I believed every word out of her mouth. You, I still know to be a liar.”

“I was not lying! I did not-”

“Hell, I know you didn’t kill Foster Speakman or that Bandy lowlife. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Then give me a hint.”

“You lied about that game against Washington.”

Griff’s heart skipped a beat or two. He hadn’t seen that coming. He stared at Coach for a moment, then averted his head and mumbled, “What are you talking about?”

“You know goddamn well what I’m talking about.” His face red with anger, Coach bent over him until Griff was forced to look him in the eye. “That pass to Whitethorn. That game-throwing pass that got you sent to prison.” Coach jabbed the edge of the hospital bed with his index finger. “I know the truth, Griff, but I want to hear you say it, and then I want to know why.”

“Say what? Why what?”

Coach fumed. “I’ve looked at the video of that play till I’m cross-eyed. From every possible angle. In slow motion and fast forward. Time after time after time. A thousand times.”

“So has everybody and his grandmother.”

“But everybody and his grandmother don’t know the game like I do. And not everybody knows you like I do. Nobody taught you and coached you like I did. Griff.” His voice had turned husky, and if Griff hadn’t known better, he would have thought he saw tears starting to form in the older man’s eyes. “You couldn’t have thrown a better, more accurate pass. You practically walked the football to the two-yard line and laid it in Whitethorn’s hands. You put it right between the numbers on his jersey.”

He straightened and turned away for a moment, and when he came back around, he said simply, “He didn’t catch it.”

Griff remained silent.

Coach said, “Whitethorn didn’t catch it, but not because you threw a bad pass. He simply dropped the damn ball.”

Griff, feeling the pressure of his own emotions, nodded. “He dropped the damn ball.”

Breath streamed out of Coach’s mouth, sounding like a plug had been pulled on an inflatable toy. It even seemed to Griff that he deflated. “So why in God’s name did you lie about throwing that game? Why did you admit to a crime you didn’t commit?”

“Because I was guilty. I was guilty as hell. I had every intention of screwing up and losing that game for my own profit. For two million dollars, I was gonna see to it that we lost. But…”

He broke off, unable to continue for several moments. When he did, his voice was gravelly. “But when it came right down to it, I couldn’t do it. I wanted to win that game. I had to.” His hand formed a fist as though trying to grasp the unattainable. “The only hope I had of saving myself was to win that game.”

He lay back and closed his eyes, placing himself there on the field. He heard the roar of the crowd, smelled the sweaty jerseys of his teammates as they huddled, felt the tension compressed into a stadium of seventy thousand screaming spectators.

“We’re down by four. A field goal won’t do. The clock is running out. No time-outs remaining. It’s the worst-case scenario, and if that isn’t enough, the Super Bowl is riding on this game. We’ve got time for one more play.

“To cash in from Vista, all I really had to do was let the clock run out, and Washington would have had it. But, coming out of that last huddle, I thought, Fuck those Vista bastards. Fuck their dollars. They may break both my legs, but I’m going to win this championship.

“It all came down to that one play, Coach. One pass. One choice that would make me better than the sludge I’d come from. What I did on that play would define my character. My life, actually.”

After a moment, he opened his eyes and laughed at the irony. “Then Whitethorn dropped the pass. He dropped it!” He scrubbed his face with his hand as though to rub out the memory of seeing his receiver lying on his back in the end zone, his hands empty as the game clock ticked down to double zeros.

“But it really didn’t matter. I had sold my soul to the devil anyway. After the loss, I figured I might just as well get paid for it. So when Bandy showed up with my cash, I took it.

“Sometimes I think that maybe the shrink at Big Spring was right, that maybe I wanted to get caught. Anyway, after I was busted, people assumed I’d thrown a pass that was impossible to catch. Whitethorn let them think it. And I let them think it. I was guilty of everything else. I had lied, gambled, cheated, broken the law, pissed on the rules and ethics of professional sports.” He smiled wryly. “But I didn’t throw that game.”

Coach dragged his fists across his damp eyes. “I’ve waited a long time to hear you say it.”

“It feels good to say it. Because the worst part of it, the very worst thing of the whole experience, prison, everything, was knowing how badly I had shamed you and Ellie.”

Coach cleared his throat and said gruffly, “We lived through it.”

He said it in an offhand manner, as though this moment didn’t have any significance. It did, though, and it was huge. Griff hadn’t begged his forgiveness, and Coach hadn’t granted it. Not in so many words. But that was the understanding that passed between them without it getting sloppy and sentimental. He was in Coach’s favor once again. He had his pardon. Maybe even-dare he think it?-his love.

“It would mean a lot to Ellie if you came around more often, let her cook you a meal, fuss over you some, sneak you money she thinks I don’t know about.”

Griff smiled. “I will. I promise. If I’m not in jail.”

Coach frowned. “Over what you did to get Laura away from Rodarte?”

“She told you about that?”

“Yeah, and it’s all over the news today. But I don’t think the assault charges will stick. Not when it comes out what a threat Rodarte posed, and she’ll make sure everyone knows.”

Mention of her name brought Laura into the room with them, an intangible but conspicuous presence. Griff looked hard at Coach, who read the unasked questions in his eyes. “She can’t come to see you, Griff.” He spoke in as soft a voice as he could manage. “Press would be on it like flies on dogshit. There’s already been speculation. Raised eyebrows. You know what I’m talking about. Nothing specific, just the suggestion that something between the three of y’all was a little shady.

“Don’t forget, it’s only been days since she held a very public funeral for her husband. Joe Q. Public doesn’t know that Speakman had gone off his rocker, and, for the future of the airline, she’d like to keep it that way. She certainly doesn’t want anybody to know what you were hired to do for them.”

“She told you about that, too?”

“All of it.” Coach shook his head in bewilderment. “Hell of a thing. Never heard of such.”

“It’s in the Bible.”

“Yeah, but Moses also wore a beard to his navel and ate locusts.”

“Abraham.”

“Well, anyway, Laura said you would understand why she can’t come to you now.”

“I do understand.” Then after a beat. “I love her, Coach.”

“I know.” At Griff’s surprised look, the older man nodded. “The other night, when your whole future depended on chasing down Rodarte and Ruiz, you stayed with her. That wasn’t like you, putting somebody else’s welfare ahead of your own. You’ve got to make another sacrifice now, Griff. If you truly care about this lady, you’ve got to give her time. Distance. Absence from you.”

Griff knew that. He understood the necessity. But that didn’t make it any easier to accept. “Is she all right?”

“Doing fine. Her worst problem is Ellie.”

“Ellie?”

“She’s in her mother hen mode. Practically smothering the girl.”

Griff smiled and closed his eyes. “She’s in good hands.”

He must have dozed off again, because when he woke up, Coach was gone. The room was empty. He was alone.