Chapter 3 BLACKHAWKS
REYNA'S POV
I looked up slowly.
Blonde. Sharp eyes that caught light the way mirrors did, quick and deliberate. A smile already sitting on his face like it lived there permanently, easy and unhurried.
My brows lifted.
"Hush…look like you don't know me." He pressed a hand to his chest, mock wounded. "That hurts my pride. Anyway." The smile returned without missing a beat. "I'm Marcus Hale."
I clocked it immediately.
Marcus Hale. Assistant captain. Goalie. Aden Voss's closest friend on the team, possibly off it too.
I filed it. All of it. If I needed a path to Aden that didn't run through Cassidy Vane or a head-on collision, Marcus Hale was it. The door I hadn't known I needed until thirty seconds ago.
I smiled. Small. Careful.
"Sorry — I have to go," I said, already stepping back.
"Wait." He didn't reach for me, just shifted his weight slightly, easy. "We have a game tomorrow. Home ice." His eyes held something that wasn't quite a question. "Hope to see you there."
Then he walked off. No pressure, no follow up. Just left it sitting in the air like an open door.
I watched him go for a moment, then turned back toward the dorm.
Noted, Marcus Hale.
The room was quiet when I got back.
I sat on the edge of my bed, pulled out my phone, and called Clarissa. She picked up on the second ring.
"Talk to me," she said.
So I did. Cover intact, roommate acquired, layout partially mapped. Then I got to Cassidy and I heard Clarissa exhale slowly through her nose.
"She slapped you."
"Clean hit," I said. "Open palm. She's done it before."
"Reyna.."
"I'm fine. I let it happen. It works for the cover." I paused. "I genuinely wanted to break her hand though."
Clarissa's laugh was short and reluctant, "Of course you did." Silent. "So what's the next move?"
I leaned back against the headboard. The ceiling had a thin crack running east to west across the plaster. I followed it with my eyes.
"I don't have one yet."
Silence on her end. Not disappointed, just listening. That was the thing about Clarissa. She knew when to let empty air sit.
"Get some rest," she said finally. "You're no good to Zara running on fumes."
"Goodnight Detective Claris."
"Goodnight, Detective Brook."
I dropped the phone onto the bed and stared at the ceiling for a moment longer.
The door opened and Davina came in, a paper bag swinging from one hand, shoes already half off.
"You cool now?" she asked, toeing them off at the door.
"Yeah," I said. "I'm good."
"Good." She crossed the room and held the bag out. "I got us something to eat."
I looked at it. Then at her. Something in my chest shifted, small and inconvenient.
"Thank you, Davina." I meant it more than she knew. I hadn't eaten since morning.
She dropped onto her bed and kicked her legs up, already unwrapping her food. "You know I should have warned you before you ran into Cassidy." She bit into something, chewing thoughtfully. "Her dad owns the school. Has for years. And he and Aden's family go back.. old money, old connections, the whole thing. So Cassidy acts like she owns Aden by extension." She paused. "Aden hasn't exactly corrected her. He doesn't correct much of anything. Doesn't talk to many people. The only one he's ever given anything close to regular conversation is Cassidy, and even that is—" She stopped. Bit her lip. "Well. Especially after that incident with Za—"
She caught herself. Lips pressing together like she could pull the syllable back.
My pulse ticked once, sharp and deliberate.
"What incident?" I asked.
"Nothing." She shook her head, eyes dropping to her food. "Forget I said it. I don't want you in more trouble. Just.. let it go."
I nodded. Reached into my own bag. Kept my face neutral and my breathing even.
Za. Two letters. The beginning of a name she'd swallowed before it finished.
I filed it carefully and let the silence settle.
"Tomorrow's the qualifier," Davina said, tone deliberately lighter. "Newton team's coming in. Whoever wins goes through to the Champion League." She grinned. "You're coming, right? Front row. You have to."
I looked at her.
"Wouldn't miss it," I said.
I understood hockey on paper. I had done the research, the positions, the rules, the rhythm of the game. But nothing on paper prepared you for what it looked like live.
The rink was loud before it even started. Students packed the stands in waves of black and gold, Blackwell's colors bleeding across every surface. Davina had pulled us to the front early, practically vibrating beside me as the teams took the ice.
I wasn't watching the teams.
I was watching him.
Aden came out last, the way captains did, unhurried, like the ice adjusted to him rather than the other way around. His jersey was dark with the gold lettering bright across the back. VOSS. The C for captain sat on his chest like it had always been there. He didn't look at the crowd. Didn't acknowledge the noise his name made when it moved through the stands.
He skated to center ice and said something to his team. Short. Whatever it was, they listened.
"The Blackhawks have never lost a qualifier at home," Davina said beside me. "Three years running. And Aden—" She shook her head like the sentence didn't need finishing.
The whistle cut through everything.
Face-off. Aden against Newton's captain at center ice, both of them coiled over the puck. The referee dropped it and Aden moved, not fast exactly, more like precise,a motion that had no wasted parts. He got the puck clean, pulled it back, and the crowd erupted before he'd even turned.
Cassidy's voice cut above it all from somewhere in the stands, sharp and territorial, screaming his name like a claim.
I watched him move.
He played the way he existed, economy of motion, no performance, no acknowledgment of the noise. He passed to a winger cutting left, read the Newton defense before they'd committed to a direction, and was already positioned for the return before most people had tracked where the puck went. First goal came off a shot so clean the Newton goalie barely had time to read it.
The second came off a play that silenced even the Newton side of the stands for a moment.
The third ,the hat trick, came in the final minutes, and the rink went loud enough that I felt it in my sternum.
Davina was on her feet. Most of the stands were. Aden coasted to a stop near the boards and his teammates converged on him, and even then, even in the middle of it, his face held nothing. Not satisfaction. Not joy. Just the same flat calm he wore everywhere else.
I watched him and thought about what Davina's voice had almost said.
Za…
My mind slipped back before I could stop it.
The case file. Page eleven. Deceased was last seen exiting the east corridor at approximately 10:47 PM. Direction of movement: toward the rink facility.
The locker room.
I excused myself quietly, Davina too deep in the celebration noise to notice immediately. I moved against the flow of the crowd, down the side corridor that curved toward the facility entrance, and slipped through before the crowd fully dispersed.
The changing area was loud and steam warm, voices bouncing off tile. I pressed left, away from the main space, following the corridor until the noise thinned. The eastern locker room. Older. Less used. I had checked the building map twice before today.
I was scanning the far wall when I heard it.
A sound that didn't belong to the celebration.
I stopped.
The sound came again, unmistakable, from behind the last row of lockers. I stayed still for one second then rounded the corner out of habit more than thought and immediately wished I'd thought.
He had a girl pressed against the lockers, her heels barely on the ground. His back was to me, jersey still on, hair damp from the ice. She saw me first, her eyes opened and found mine over his shoulder..But she didn't care..A loud moan left her lips..
“hmmm..yes Aden” her eyes lost..
Then he stilled, like he felt a present.
Then slowly, without hurry, he turned his head.
His eyes found me in the dim light of the corridor and stayed there. Dark. Flat. The same expression he wore the last time, except something underneath it now that I couldn't name.
He just won a game. He literally just came off the ice.
My fist closed at my side.
He is having fun. While Zara is in the ground. While her case is stamped closed. While he…
The girl straightened, smoothed her skirt, and walked past me with a look that could have stripped paint. Heels clicking down the corridor and gone.
I turned to follow her.
"Searching for me?"
His voice stopped me the way a hand would. Low. Unhurried.
I turned back slowly.
He had moved. Closer now, hair falling across his forehead, eyes still on me with that unreadable steadiness that made something in my chest pull tight in a way I did not appreciate.
"First the courtyard." He tilted his head slightly. "Now here." A pause, deliberate. "You want attention… or something else?"
He took another step forward. I didn't move. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction.
I was measuring my breathing, counting it, keeping my face carefully soft and startled.
Reyna Brook, not Reyna Cole, when the corridor flooded with sound.
"Woah—" The voice came from the entrance, stretched with amusement. "You got the new girl already? Game just ended, bro."
I turned.
The doorway was full. Half the Blackhawks team still in gear, bags over shoulders, sweat-damp and loud. Marcus Hale stood at the front of them, one brow raised, smile edged with something between surprise and entertainment.
And beside him, shoulder rigid, eyes moving from Aden to me and back again with the slow precision of someone calculating damage, Cassidy.
The heat that hit my face was immediate and involuntary.
I hated that.
