Eye for an Eye Read Online Free PDF

the occupant of the black limousine now pulling into the rink’s parking lot, with small American flags waving from the front and rear corners of the vehicle, flanked by a convoy of Chevy Suburbans: The president of the United States, J. P. Dellenbaugh.
    Dellenbaugh and Senator Anthony DiNovi were the only participants in the weekly pickup game to have actually played professional hockey, Dellenbaugh for the Detroit Red Wings, DiNovi for the Boston Bruins. Most of the other players played hockey in college. A few only made it to high school. The only requirement was that a player played through high school and that Dellenbaugh like them. There was also a no-business rule—no talking politics, legislation, poll numbers, upcoming elections, nothing political whatsoever. Also, no lobbyists.
    Originally, the game was Dellenbaugh’s idea, begun when he was a freshman senator. It became a slightly more exclusive ticket when Dellenbaugh was selected as Rob Allaire’s running mate. When Allaire was elected president, and Dellenbaugh became vice president of the United States, it became still harder to get an invite to the game. After Rob Allaire’s untimely death, and J. P. Dellenbaugh’s swearing in as president of the United States, everyone assumed Dellenbaugh wouldn’t be able to continue the game. But they were wrong. Except for the occasional vacation, foreign trip, or crisis, Dellenbaugh had kept it up.
    Now it was next to impossible to get an invite to the game, played every Saturday morning at the blue-roofed Wheaton Ice Arena. Dellenbaugh himself needed to approve everyone invited. The Secret Service screened the names of all participants. Every week, FBI bomb dogs came out to the rink at 3:00 A.M. to sweep the facility.
    If you were an ex–hockey player, you probably knew about the game. That was the way the hockey world worked. Even if they were despised opponents in college, after the rivalry was over and the skates were off, hockey players reunited, like a tribe. Ex–hockey players didn’t like to brag or call attention to themselves. They were secretive too. Until recently, few people outside of the tight-knit D.C. community of former hockey players knew about the game. That is, until one of the players—still unidentified—leaked word of the weekly pickup game to a female reporter for The Washington Post. The reporter, a long-legged, beautiful sports reporter named Summer Swenson, wrote a piece entitled “The Pickup Artists,” with an old photograph of Dellenbaugh, showing him beating the daylights out of some unfortunate member of the New York Rangers. The article detailed the ins and outs of the president’s weekly game. It caused the Secret Service to move the time and location of the game.
    Checking wasn’t allowed, though that didn’t stop the game from occasionally getting chippy. Usually, it was Dellenbaugh himself who was the instigator. One thing about hockey players was that once they laced the skates on, each player invariably reverted to his habits and ways of old. The former puck hogs still hogged the puck, the former playmakers still set up plays, and the former fighters, such as Dellenbaugh, well, they caused trouble.
    Dewey hadn’t asked to be invited to the game. In fact, as he followed Hastings inside the rink, bag slung over his shoulder, he cursed Jessica under his breath. He hadn’t skated since his senior year at Castine High School. At Boston College, given the choice of football or hockey, he’d decided to play football. Dewey had been captain of his high school team. Back then, more than two decades ago, Dewey could handle himself on the rink pretty well. He played defense, scored the occasional goal, led the team in assists. But what he’d really been known for, the quality that caused his coach, a gruff old Mainer named Mark Blood, to nickname him “Mad Dog,” was his ability to hit.
    A slight tinge of adrenaline spiked in his blood as he walked through the door and