Stephanie Evanovich - The Sweet Spot

And together they ran for the door, right past the tiny blinking red light hidden inside the innocuous small black sphere mounted on the ceiling above them.

FOUR DAYS LATER, Chase was lacing up his cleats at Kauffman Stadium, getting ready to warm up for playing the Royals. Another city, another road trip, and another three days of wishing he were home. He tried to look on the bright side. His bride had stayed behind, touring venues for their wedding, something that didn’t interest him. He looked up from the bench he was sitting on inside the visitors’ locker room as soon as he heard his name called.

“Walker! Coach needs to see you,” the assistant coach called out from the doorway of the visiting team’s management office. Chase finished what he was doing and hustled over to answer.

“You were looking for me, Coach?” Chase stuck his head in the open doorway.

Leo Bennett sat behind the desk, leaning back in his chair. He waved his hand, beckoning his star player full entry. “Come in, Chase. Shut the door and have a seat.”

Chase immediately did as he was told, alert to the level of intensity that showed on the faces of Leo and the already seated assistant and batting coaches. He sat down.

The four men sat in awkward silence for several long moments.

“Am I getting benched?” Chase finally asked jokingly after looking from one unreadable face to the other.

The three remaining men exchanged knowing looks and what Chase could’ve sworn were sly smiles that were being held back. Leo cleared his throat and leaned both his elbows on the desk. He steepled his fingers over his mouth to hide the grin and tried to decide how best to tell the man he thought of as a son what he needed to tell him without laughing. He took a deep breath, getting ready to tackle the topic at hand.

“I just hung up with the front office. There’s a situation back in New York.”

AMANDA WAS IN HER BEDROOM, finishing getting dressed for work, when the phone rang.

“If you don’t get out of town, you’ll ruin him,” threatened the voice on the other end by way of a greeting. Amanda didn’t need the caller to identify himself; the familiar skin-crawling, bile-buildup reaction was completely indicative of every conversation she had ever had with him.

“Who is this?” she asked anyway, just to antagonize him.

“It’s Alan Shaw, the agent of the next disgraced athlete. Way to go.” He spoke with such reproach, it instantly made her defensive.

“Alan, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, and how did you get this number?”

Another one of his slimy snorts echoed through the receiver. “Are you kidding, sweetheart? I know everything there is to know about you. While you were busy wrapping him around your finger, you forgot that he’s one of those people who is constantly drawing attention. Now I’m left to do what you didn’t, and that’s try to protect him.”

During the few times she was forced to endure him since meeting Chase, Shaw was always sanctimonious, always trying to leave her with the impression that there was some sort of inner circle that she would never know about. He had made it clear early on that he thought of her as a dalliance, and his view hadn’t changed, but he was careful to conceal his opinion when forced into their company, which to Chase’s credit wasn’t very often. But now he had entered into her personal space, adding hostile, and Amanda was already tired of being bullied by him. She cradled the phone against her ear with her shoulder and finished putting on her pumps. “Stop speaking to me in riddles and get to the point.”

“Get to the point?” Shaw shouted loud enough to make her eardrum vibrate. “I’ll get to the point! At five P.M. my client and your fine ass are going to be the lead story on all the major networks. CNN and Fox may even beat them to it! You and your perverted little escapades are about to take down one of this country’s most loved role models, how’s that for getting to the point?”

Amanda could feel the hair on the back of her neck begin to stand on end as his venom flowed through the phone.

“What do you mean?” she rasped, all blood draining from her face, confrontational pretext gone. She closed her eyes and held her breath, praying he would say anything other than what she knew by his cryptic opening he was about to confirm.

“You know exactly what I mean.” He brought his tone back down and it was now more of a hiss. “Does the tunnel under Kings Stadium ring a bell?”

The thought of Alan Shaw bearing witness to something so private was as repugnant as if he had been peeping through their window when they made love. As soon as she heard him say it, the bile in her throat became real.

“Yeah,” he mocked her silence. “I thought it might. You can probably catch it on YouTube right now if you need a reminder.”

She didn’t need to be reminded. Her knees buckled, the bed breaking her fall. YouTube. She glanced over to her laptop on the nightstand and unsuccessfully willed it to blow up. Sweat began to bead on her upper lip and terror gripped her. “Does Chase know?” Amanda asked quietly, trying to keep her voice from shaking as badly as her hands.

She heard Alan take a deep breath, although it was far from settling. “I don’t think so. Thank God he’s on the field in Kansas City, and I can get a few hours head start. He still has a job to do, whether you know it or not.”

“I’m going to call him—” Amanda began.

“No you’re not,” he cut her off abruptly. “I just told you, he’s on the field. He can’t answer. You’re going to shut up, stop wasting time, and do exactly what I tell you.”

“I’m not doing anything till I speak to him. He’ll know what to do,” she said aloud, mostly to calm herself.

“Know what to do?” Alan’s voice started rising again. “He hasn’t done anything right since he got mixed up with you. Making a damn fool of himself, following you around like some lost puppy. I don’t know what kind of spell you’ve put on him, but don’t you think you’ve fucked him up enough?”

The tears were in her eyes in a blink. No matter how much she despised Alan Shaw, there was truth to his words, and he was using them to his full advantage, throwing them in her face.

“How did you find out about this?’ Amanda tried to sound focused and rational and not like she was about to start bawling.

“It’s my job to stay one step ahead, something you obviously didn’t think of,” he scoffed, refusing to divulge his sources and opting instead to continue the verbal beat-down. “You would think with a family on the political fringe, you would be better at it.”

Her careless actions would now also cost her parents. Amanda laid her head in her shaky hand to try to steady them both.

“It’s not that bad.” But her words didn’t even convince herself.

“Oh yeah? How do you think Nike is going to feel when ‘Just do it’ becomes the catchphrase of wife beaters worldwide?”

“It’s not even like that,” she replied, filled with humiliation, a compilation of every kind imaginable.

“And I’m pretty sure it’s not what AmEx has in mind when they boast about membership having its privileges,” he spat out sarcastically.

“Alan, enough,” she snapped, pushing against the wave of dread that was swelling with every biting word he spoke. At least having him to fight against brought out the last of her chutzpah and made her feel tougher. “You’re not helping by berating me.”

There was silence on the other end as Alan regrouped and tried a different tactic.

“And you’re not going to help him by being here when this story breaks,” he told her, still unsympathetic but marginally civil.

“But we’re a team,” she weakly parroted the line Chase faithfully told her, while glancing at the ring on her finger and feeling the dread wave cresting over her head.

“No, the Kings are a team, a team that’s invested the next five years in him at great expense. And they’re going to want to know exactly when their golden boy became a domestic abuse offender. You really want to be the one to explain it to them?”

Amanda shook her head to both clear it and answer the man she detested without having to confirm it with words. Words would’ve revealed that she was on the verge of a total meltdown.

He took her silence as the affirmation he needed. His voice became calculated and conspiratorial. “Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go on a little vacation, two weeks, maybe three. By then this thing will have run its course. You may want to lay off the television; speculation about your character will be flying fast and furiously. Stay off the phone and Internet, too. The fewer people who talk to you, the better.”

For a moment, Alan sounded rational and like he really wanted to help, but she should’ve known better than to believe he had any of her interests at heart. If she wasn’t so stupefied and worried about vomiting, she would have noticed just how premeditated his plan was.

“And you’re to have no contact with Chase whatsoever.” He said it as if he took perverse pleasure in knowing it crushed her.

“But why?”

“Because he’s going to be pissed as hell, that’s why.” Alan’s voice began to rise again, in response to her having the nerve to question him. “And he already can’t think straight when it comes to you, as his lapse in good sense has already proven. He needs to focus on controlling the damage here.”

Something in the logic didn’t make sense, but Amanda’s mind was racing with too many scenarios to break it down. And she was ashamed to admit it, but he was offering her a way out. He was not only giving her permission to run away, he was recommending it.

“You ready to stand next to him in front of fifty cameras and microphones and listen to him explain away your sex life?”

The thought alone was enough to make her gag. She flashed to a few particularly hateful comments she saw on social media since their engagement was announced. Faceless trolls who labeled her everything from fat and unworthy of their hero to a gold-digging slut. It was nearly as repugnant as the comments from men who freely speculated on exactly what Chase saw in her.

Shaw went in for the kill. “Or maybe withstand a sneak attack of paparazzi? Not only are they not known for their couth, but you know he’s going to defend your honor. He can add an assault charge to the list of bullshit.”

The dread wave crashed down upon her.

“He’ll find me,” she gasped on the last gulp of air before she started to drown in panic and degradation and sadness.

“He won’t have time to look,” Alan quickly replied, trying to downplay the victory and get her in motion. “I’ll text you when the coast is clear.”

“He’s going to be furious,” Amanda whispered brokenly.

Alan Shaw finally laughed. It was as cold and harsh as he was. “When this is all over, he can give you a good spanking.” And then he was gone.

Oh my God, she thought, he actually said it. She swallowed another round of shame and revulsion. When Chase said it, it was passionate and erotic and tantalizing. To hear it coming from Alan Shaw, it was tainted and depraved and warped.

In Amanda’s mind, it was already all over, her fairy tale, the love of her Prince Charming, and even her previous life as she knew it, back before she met him. If it was only going to be half as bad as he made it sound, it was going to be unbearable. She stared at the phone in her hand as it went from silence to dial tone and ultimately the high-pitched scream designed to alert that it wasn’t hung up. She pushed the Off button and threw the phone on the bed as if it were covered in poison.

You’ll ruin him.

She hugged herself and began to rock slowly, her eyes darting wildly around the room. She spied the television and her stomach cramped. It was no longer just about ruining it for herself.

She wanted to go on automatic pilot and finish getting ready for work, but her legs refused to lift her. How was she supposed to go about the mundane business of applying mascara when she couldn’t even bear to look at herself in the mirror? How in heaven’s name was she going to walk into the Cold Creek and face her customers, or worse yet, her employees?

And worst of all, she knew there was no way for Chase to protect her. He was states away and maybe it wasn’t far enough. She had tempted and teased him knowing full well he couldn’t resist her. The result was that she had single-handedly revealed America’s Golden Boy as some sort of sadist. The one thing he specifically said he wanted to keep to himself. What had started as a romantic interlude was now a travesty. She would call his reputation into question all because she was too immature to control her jaded tastes in public.