Game On (4 page)

5

S
ERENA
STOOD
THERE
FROZEN
, stuck in the moment as though she’d been superglued there.

She forced herself to step back from Lisa’s computer. “Well, somebody’s got a strange sense of humor.”

“I don’t think they’re being funny,” Lisa said. She rubbed her arms and Serena saw goose bumps there. “I don’t like it.”

“I’m not thrilled, either, but it’s only somebody at a computer terminal sending an anonymous message.”

“Have you pissed anybody off lately?”

She could think of only one person, but Adam Shawnigan was in law enforcement and definitely not the kind of guy to send creepy messages. He was up-front about his frustration.

“No. I don’t have enemies. I specialize in positive thinking, improved self-image. I pump people up. Who would threaten me?”

“I think you should call the police.”

“Why? Because some lonely weirdo tried to scare me? I won’t give in to fear. I won’t.”

“Okay. But I’m keeping the email. If you get any more, I really think you should report the guy.”

“So long as I ignore him, I’m sure there won’t be any more.”

She tried to put the email out of her mind, but the vague threat had lodged and didn’t want to budge. She ignored her discomfort by getting busy with work. She called the engineering firm and accepted an invitation to speak at their yearly conference, which would be held in Chicago three months from now. Then she worked on a draft of the column she wrote for a business magazine every other month.

Even as she wrote about the importance of holding positive messages in one’s mind, a very negative message whispered over and over:
I will teach you what real fear is.

When Marcus Lemming arrived at eleven, she was staring out of the window, something she never did.

Irritated with herself for being unnerved by a childish prank, she forced herself to smile at Marcus and invite him to sit down at the round table she kept in her office for small meetings.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

He didn’t meet her gaze, keeping it on the computer bag he carried around with him the way a child would carry a beloved teddy bear.

“I need to talk to you about fear.”

* * *

A
DAM
RAN
AROUND
his neighborhood.

He’d never been one to be cooped up in a gym. To him running on a treadmill was like trying to get somewhere in hell. He liked to feel the air on his skin, see what was going on around him. He often tried out different routes, so he had a pretty good sense of his neighborhood. He knew which roads had wide shoulders and thin traffic. He had learned which dogs always came out barking or sniffing and took a wide berth around the home of Rex, the Pomeranian who’d once taken a chunk out of his ankle.

As he pounded out the miles, he pondered. Cases under investigation, usually, but this morning he was thinking about hockey. About negative thinking. And how the hell the two got mixed up in his mind only during play-offs.

Didn’t make sense.

He was a detective. Nothing drove him crazier than things that didn’t make sense. He ended his run at a public park with an outdoor gym and dropped to the ground for a hundred push-ups and the same of abdominal crunches.

He was an early riser and finished his shower with a good half hour to spare before he was due at the office. So, as he did at least once a week, he dropped by his parents’ place, which was on the way to work.

His dad had retired from the force at fifty-eight and now, in his early sixties, seemed to spend most of his time planning elaborate cross-country trips in an RV and doing community work. He was often at meetings of one community group or another.

When Adam arrived at the back door, his mom hugged him, as she always did. “I had a feeling you’d come,” she said. “I baked muffins.”

“You never bake muffins for me,” Dennis complained.

“They’re for you, too,” she insisted.

Adam sometimes wondered if his mother had taken lessons from the TV since she was more like a screen mom than any of his friends’ mothers. She baked from scratch, she sang to herself when she cleaned the house and she’d volunteered so much at school when he and his sister were growing up that he sometimes felt he’d seen her more than he’d seen some of his teachers.

Almost as amazing, she and Dennis had been happily married for almost forty years.

She put three muffins on his plate, poured him a mug of coffee exactly the way he liked it and placed the works on a floral place mat on the kitchen table, complete with a matching napkin. His father got only one muffin, but Adam didn’t comment. He knew the diet his doctor and wife had forced on him was a sore point with his dad.

When they sat down, Adam’s mom placed glasses of orange juice in front of both men.

“Roy Osgood decided to stay on as president of the local Rotary Club for another year,” his dad said before biting into his muffin.

Adam got the feeling this was part of an ongoing discussion, guessed his dad had been interested in the post himself.

He watched as his mom ruffled her husband’s hair fondly. “Not everyone can be president, honey. Besides, it’s the worker bees who really contribute to an organization, much more than a man with a gavel.”

“I know. I’m staying on the gardening committee. There’s a lot to be done.” He turned to Adam. “We’re trying to get rid of invasive nonnative weeds in the public parks. It’s amazing what damage those things can do.”

“I know. My yard’s full of them. Can’t you make my place a community project?” he joked.

“You know I’ll come anytime.”

“Yeah. Truth is, I want to get the inside fixed up before I put much energy into the landscaping.”

He ripped a muffin in half. It was steaming and full of good-for-you-looking grains and blueberries. Stuffed it in his mouth.

“I thought when you bought that house you might settle down,” his mother said. “I could not believe it when I heard you and Max and Dylan make that stupid bet about the last man standing. Why don’t you want to get married?”

“Because you’ve spoiled me. Where would I get a woman like you?” he said before stuffing the second half of the muffin into his mouth. He was only half joking.

* * *

“W
HAT
ABOUT
FEAR
?”
Serena’s voice was sharper than she’d intended and Marcus blinked at her.

“Remember? You said for some people fear of public speaking is worse than their fear of death. I think you even blogged about it.”

Her hand drifted to her throat. “You read my blog?”

He stared at her the way she imagined he’d stare at his computer screen when a piece of programming didn’t behave logically. “You suggested I read your blog.”

She had to shake this foolishness. “Of course I did. I’m just surprised you found the time.” She sat down, pulled out a pad of paper. “Okay,” she said. “You want to talk about fear.”

“Yes.” He took a deep breath. “I develop games because that’s what geeky kids with no friends do. Except I turned out to be really, really good at it. Now I’m worth millions and own a big company and most of the time I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”

She nodded. This was familiar territory. She’d worked with athletes and musicians, people who suddenly found themselves famous, rich and with responsibilities they hadn’t anticipated. They hadn’t had the time or training to prepare themselves mentally or physically.

“Your whole life has changed,” she told him. “Sometimes people feel as though they don’t deserve their good fortune, so maybe they sabotage themselves.”

“You mean like Trog in ‘Third Circle’?”

He’d referenced his own game, which was good. Except that it was one of those violent point-and-shoot games, so clearly for the teenage-male market that she hadn’t been able to play it after the second blasted and bleeding alien hit the ground groaning.

She took a wild guess. “In ‘Third Circle’ doesn’t your hero have to perform certain tasks to get to the next level?”

“You mean like vanquishing death meteors?”

“Exactly like vanquishing death meteors. Why don’t you work on that? Imagine that your fear of public speaking is your death meteor. How are you going to extinguish it and move to the next stage? Remember, you’re the hero of your own game.”

He was nodding, looking not enthusiastic exactly but more engaged than he had been last time she’d seen him.

“I could do that. I think.”

“Okay.” She saw that noon was fast approaching and she had a meeting with Adam at twelve-thirty. It didn’t matter to her that he was a pro bono client and Marcus was paying big bucks. She didn’t make schedule changes if she could help it. She rose. “All right. I think we’ve had a bit of a breakthrough. Why don’t we schedule you another session right here in my office? Maybe it’s good for you to get away from your own building for a while.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

She walked him out to the front. Lisa glanced up from her computer, quickly removing her glasses.

“Marcus needs another appointment. Can you schedule it?”

“Yes, of course.”

Lisa glanced up at Marcus. “I have to tell you, I really love ‘Third Circle.’”

Marcus dropped his gaze immediately to his computer case and mumbled, “Cool.”

“When’s ‘Third Circle: Zombie Apocalypse’ coming out?”

Marcus looked up from his computer case the most animated Serena had ever seen him. “It’s going to be so rad. We’re working out a couple of kinks. Can’t get the zombie blood right. I mean, what color is zombie blood?”

“Do zombies have blood?”

“Excellent question.”

Serena could not believe two intelligent, educated adults were having a conversation about the color of zombie blood. But it gave her an idea.

When the two paused in the midst of their geekfest, she said, “Marcus, why don’t you try reading your speech to Lisa?”

“What, now?”

She’d meant at a later appointment and was about to say so when Lisa said, “Sure. That’d be sweet. Unless you have somewhere you have to be.”

“No,” Marcus replied. “I do most of my work at night.” He shrugged. “Habit of a lifetime. I’d like to read it to you.”

“Awesome.”

“Okay,” Serena said. “I’ll be back in the office at two.”

“Sure,” said Lisa, not even glancing her way. “See you then.”

As she was leaving the office, she heard Lisa say, “If there really was a zombie apocalypse, where would you hide?”

“No, see, that’s a mistake a lot of people make. You can’t hide. You have to run.”

* * *

A
DAM
WAS
WAITING
at the restaurant when she got there. She’d let him choose the venue and he opted for a Mexican restaurant. “Sorry,” she said when she arrived a couple of minutes late. “I got caught up in the zombie apocalypse.”

Her client looked more relaxed than he had the last time she’d seen him, in well-worn jeans that showed the powerful muscles in his thighs and a navy sweater.

“Huh?” he said.

“Do you have opinions on whether it’s better to run or hide during the zombie apocalypse?”

He blinked at her. “Have you been drinking?”

She smiled. “Thank you, Adam. I feel so much better.” She settled at the table. He’d taken a seat with his back to the wall and she saw him scan the crowd, no doubt looking for lawbreakers or potential trouble. She doubted he even noticed he was doing it. The decor was typical. Tiled floor, rustic wooden tables, sombreros and Mexican kitsch on the walls. Mariachi music played, but softly, so you could hear yourself think. “What’s good here?”

“Everything. I like the enchiladas myself.”

She nodded, scanned the menu rapidly. Chose a taco salad. As soon as she closed her menu, a waitress appeared and they gave their orders. A basket of tortilla chips and salsa arrived almost immediately, with the iced teas they had both ordered.

“So? Did you do your homework?”

“Yes, teacher. I did my homework.”

She felt a smile pull at her lips. She was relieved he’d dropped the attitude. He’d clearly made his peace with working with her, which gave them much better odds of figuring out the root of his problem.

“Good. Did you discover anything interesting?”

“You don’t waste time, do you?”

“Not if I can help it. The sooner you have your issues under control, the sooner you can live up to your full potential.”

“Do you really believe that?” he asked as though he really wanted to know.

“Yes. Of course I do. It’s what my entire career is based on.”

Those blue, blue eyes of his made her forget this was a lunch meeting and imagine, almost wish, it were a romantic get-together. A date. The kind where you bolt your food because you’re so anxious to get home and get naked. “Maybe some people aren’t meant to do great things.”

She bet he could do great things in bed, then was shocked to realize that her thoughts were taking a whole different path than their conversation.

“Of course they aren’t. So long as you feel you are living the life you want, that you aren’t getting in your own way, I have no quarrel. I know people doing menial work at minimum wage who are happier than you or I will ever be. They find real satisfaction in what they do. They are living up to their potential. In your case, with the Hunter Hurricanes, you play at peak performance all year until the play-offs and then your game suddenly deteriorates. Why? That’s what we want to work on.”

“It was weird. I started writing out the games like you told me to and I got this feeling, like guilt, that came over me. It got hard to breathe and I had trouble staying in my chair to write it all out.”

He reached for a wad of folded paper in his pocket but she stopped him. “Tell me about it.”

“Well, I remember last year’s championship pretty clearly. Game was tied 2–2. And frankly, they never should have got two goals. Our defense was sloppy—mostly, though, our offense was weak. So I’m open. I yell. Dylan shoots me the puck. I’ve got a clear shot at goal. I mean, you could have nailed the shot. No offense.”