Inside Threat Read online

  The crowd behind him roared again as the stadium announcer proclaimed another Bulldog first down.

  A hand landed hard on Riley’s shoulder. He looked down at it. Dirt formed a black crescent on the tips of the fingers, and three of the green-stained joints were oozing blood at varied rates. Following the arm up, he saw Don Bernier scowling at him.

  Suddenly, the scowl transformed into a grin. “Well, Mr. Covington, I would venture to say that it truly sucks to be you!”

  Riley chuckled in spite of himself. “Yeah, how many people hate me right now? I think I’ve got fantasy team owners all over the nation cursing my name.”

  “Not if they drafted Lendell,” Bernier responded, just before dancing back to avoid a rapidly swinging forearm.

  “Dude, I don’t know what’s wrong with me today,” Riley said when Bernier came around to the front of the bench. A groan sounded from the crowd—Finally, a good sign!

  “It’s easy,” Bernier said as he grabbed a water bottle from a passing trainer. He squeezed the contents all over his face, only aiming into his mouth for the last four seconds. After shaking the water off, he continued, “You’re thinking too much. You’re overanalyzing. You’re forgetting the fundamentals. You’re letting your outside life affect your inside game. You’re putting matter over mind. You’re letting your form determine your function. You’re not dancing with the one who brung you. You’re putting on the Eminence Front. You’re black and white, but you’re not red all over. You’re—”

  “All right, all right, you’ve made your point—I think,” Riley interrupted, laughing again. “Now, please, can’t you just go away and let me self-loathe in peace?”

  Bernier leaned in close to Riley. “And most of all, mi amigo, you’re forgetting that when it’s all said and done, this is just a stupid—”

  Riley cleared his throat hard, cutting off Bernier’s final word and causing the HBO audio guy to curse and snatch the earphones off his head.

  Don’t forget . . . Riley mouthed, then pointed to where the mic was tucked in his pads. “Don’t say anything near me you don’t want Bellefeuille and millions of others to hear,” Riley had warned his teammates in a meeting last night.

  You could say a lot of things about football, your team, even the coaches. But you never let them hear you say it’s just a game. Because then they start questioning your heart.

  After a moment, recognition showed in Bernier’s eyes. Standing up, he stuck his finger in Riley’s face and, starting out slowly but building up steam, shouted, “What I meant to say is this is just a stupid way for you to be playing the game. Yeah, that’s it. You get with the program, mister! Because, by gum, if my beautiful children, Ryan, Emma, and Leah, and my enchanting wife, Heather, could hear me now, I’d tell them that I love them and that I have too much pride in my profession to be playing as poorly as you are today!”

  By now, Bernier was starting to draw a crowd. “And besides that, you slacker, you good-for-nothing ne’er-do-well, our beloved Mr. Bellefeuille deserves better! He is without doubt the greatest owner the PFL has ever seen. Not only is he wise and gifted and a paragon of virtue, but he is also kind and, I’m not afraid to say it, remarkably handsome! So you give him your all! He deserves it! You hear me? You give him your all!” Bernier’s voice cracked in the final words of his speech. Then, giving Riley a quick wink, he turned and stomped away.

  Most of the players who had gathered followed Bernier, laughing and slapping his back. When the crowd finally thinned, there stood Coach Fields. Not surprisingly, he didn’t look pleased.

  “Phone,” was all he said; then he walked away.

  That’s just great, Riley thought. With Coach Medley and all the defensive staff currently on the sidelines, there was only one person left for him to talk to by phone.

  Riley crossed behind the benches. That route took him a little closer to the stands than he wanted to get, and he had to endure the Bulldog fans’ analysis of his play. Finally, he reached the phone bank, and there, lying on a table, was a single handset off its cradle. Before reaching for it, he quickly downed a cup of Gatorade from the next table over and threw the cup to the ground. He could feel Rick Bellefeuille’s eyes on him from above.

  Heaving a deep sigh, he picked up the receiver.

  “Covington here.”

  There was silence on the other end.

  Another groan came from the crowd, and Riley saw the field goal squad head out onto the field. He waited.

  “Hello, this is Covington.”

  Still he waited.

  Looking up, he tried to spot Bellefeuille’s box. After a few seconds, he saw him. He was presently occupied yelling at the Warriors’ director of player personnel. Riley turned back to the field in time to see the Bulldogs’ kick go through the uprights. The stadium erupted in cheers and music.

  I’ll give him a couple more—

  “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you, Covington?”

  Riley spun around to see Bellefeuille with the phone in his hand, staring down at him from three stories up.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re doing this on purpose! You’re pissed because I forced you to have that HBO crew tailing you all day! So you’re tanking it!”

  Riley felt his temper rising. You could question a lot of things about him, but don’t you dare go attacking his integrity or his work ethic. “Listen, Mr. Bellefeuille, if you think—”

  “No, you listen, Covington! I let you back on my team because you asked me nicely! Because you came with your little sob story about how you needed to try to make your comeback to prove to yourself and to the world that you could still do it!”

  “That’s not exactly how—” Riley tried to counter.

  But Bellefeuille was in talking mode—not listening. “And what did I do? I said yes! Sure, Riley, we’ll give you another chance! You’ve been there for us; we want to be there for you!”

  Riley shook his head. Bellefeuille was twisting the whole situation around. “That’s not at all what—”

  “And all I ask in return for your chance at recapturing your stardom, not to mention millions of dollars of my money, is that you play hard on the field and you do some interviews! Is that asking too much? Is it?”

  Feeling that maybe Bellefeuille was actually wanting an answer, Riley ventured, “Well . . . no, sir, but—”

  “But instead what I get is a frickin’ prima donna—”

  “Listen, I’m no prima donna!”

  But Bellefeuille hadn’t paused long enough to hear Riley’s protest. “—who’s gonna play hard when he wants and tank it when he wants! Well, listen to me, Covington, this is no game—”

  “Well, technically—”

  Bellefeuille’s voice somehow increased an octave and multiple decibels. “You want to be a smart guy? You want to be funny? This is not a game; this is business! This is all about dollars and cents! And when something no longer is bringing me dollars, it stops making sense!”

  On and on Bellefeuille went, while Riley looked up at him. This is ridiculous, Riley thought as he moved the phone away from his ear and let it cradle horizontally in his hand. He was pleased to see Bellefeuille’s rage hit an all new level.

  Then Riley’s eye caught something on a table next to him. No, man, you can’t do that! That would just be so wrong! So wonderfully, wonderfully wrong!

  He quickly glanced at the HBO cameras around him, which had been joined by a Fox Sports handheld. Come on, remember—what would Jesus do?

  Actually, in this situation, that’s fairly debatable. The question I should be asking instead is what would Scott Ross do? And as far as the answer to that question goes, there is no debate.

  While Bellefeuille’s voice echoed through the handset, Riley stretched out the phone cord and walked to the table.

  Sunday, September 11, 2:50 p.m. EDT

  Washington, DC

  Scott ran the DVR back again, then paused it. He had already watched the segment twice, an
d now he was waiting for Tara to get back from getting little James up from his nap. With the flat screen ready, he quickly looked around for something he could use to clean up the mess from the Yoo-hoo spit take that had just redecorated the coffee table.

  It’s on our coasters. It’s on the candles. It’s on Tara’s Food & Wine magazine. Crud, it’s even on our wedding album!

  He spotted a decorative blanket that Tara used to accent a corner of the couch he was on. But when he reached for it, the pain from his chest bruise caused him to pull up short.

  “You were not just going to use my chenille blanket to mop up your mess, were you?”

  Scott looked over and saw Tara standing there, looking as beautiful as ever and as frustrated as usual. Baby James was squirming in her arms, wanting to get to Daddy.

  “Don’t worry, I called up the Captain, and he said it was okay.”

  Tara just stared at him.

  “Get it? The Captain? Captain and chenille? Sounds just like Captain and Tennille? Work with me, babe.”

  Scott could see just the faintest movement at the corners of Tara’s mouth, which was all the encouragement he needed to plow forward. He stood up and moved toward her.

  “Come on, ‘Love Will Keep Us Together’? ‘Do That to Me One More Time,’ which, for the sake of the little dude-a-mus here, we will assume is referring to the desire for another shiatsu foot massage.”

  Tara’s resolve broke and she started laughing now. Sliding up against her, Scott wrapped her and the baby in his arms and began slowly swaying with them.

  “And of course, the greatest of all, folks,” he continued in a bad Casey Kasem impersonation, “the one that zoomed to the top of the charts, the animal love ballad to top all other animal love ballads, ‘Muskrat Love.’”

  As the threesome danced around the room, Scott sang, with Tara soon joining in:

  And they whirled and they twirled and they tangoed

  Singin’ and jingin’ the jango

  “I have no idea what that means,” Scott whispered to James.

  Floatin’ like the heavens above

  It looks like muskrat lo-o-o-o-ove.

  Scott tried to end the dance with a dip, but his chest caught him up again. Unfortunately, Tara was already on her way back, and all three of them ended up in a laughing heap on the hardwood floor.

  “I told you, baby,” Scott said to Tara, “once you give in to the dark side, there’s nothing but good times ahead.”

  He still couldn’t believe that she was his, or that he was hers, or that they were each other’s, or whatever the politically correct phrase was. It was nothing short of a miracle that they were together.

  In a conversation on their honeymoon, Tara had admitted to him that she’d spent much of the last few years in a love-hate relationship with Scott. She respected his intelligence, courage, loyalty, and surprisingly to her, his leadership skills. Also, his willingness to sacrifice himself for his country and his friends was well beyond most people she had ever met.

  But on the flip side, she had said that his lack of professional discipline, his disregard for authority, his passion for sarcasm, and most of all, his insistence on wearing T-shirts celebrating the tours of bands who had probably been broken up or dead for decades had all combined to make sure that no love connection would ever be made between them.

  Then came the daily visits to the hospital. It was during those long visits, she had told Scott, that she really had a chance to see the character beneath the frungy exterior. It was then, also, that she had given up her mission to change him and had decided to start trying to love him as he was.

  Now, two years and one baby boy later, Tara took time to remind him daily of how lucky she was to have a man like him. And to Scott, who had never really known what family love was and who deep down had the self-image of a hairless terrier, those words were like gold.

  “How’d you like that dancing, Jimmy-Jer?” Scott said, lying on his back and tossing James above him. Each throw caused him to wince in pain, but his boy’s laughter made it worthwhile. “Yeah, I know you! You got the moves! You like to rock it! You like to get down! Admit it, you dig it when this white boy plays his funky music!”

  Scott brought his knees up and laid James against them. He quickly glanced at Tara, who was watching him with love in her eyes.

  “You ready to work it, son?” He started dancing the boy’s chubby legs while he laid down a beat. James was giggling uncontrollably, causing spit to fly everywhere. “Uh . . . oh yeah . . . uh, uh, uh, break it down.”

  “Pardon me, MC Scott,” Tara broke in, laying a hand on Scott’s shoulder.

  “Just a sec. Drum solo.” Scott took James’s arms. “Doog-a-doog-a-doog-a-doog-a-doog-a-doog-a-crash-crash.” Then raising James’s arms up, he said, “Thank you, folks! I’ll be playing here all week!”

  Tara shook her head, laughing. “You realize that our boy doesn’t stand a chance of being normal?”

  Scott just grinned.

  “I hate to break up the concert, but what’s up with the mess? Is there a reason Yoo-hoo is all over the floor and apparently the coffee table, too?”

  Scott put James’s hands up to his chubby little cheeks. “Oh, my! That’s right! I’ve got to something to show you and mommy! Come on!”

  “Scott . . . the mess?”

  “Sorry, you’re right. James, wanna play Indy 500?”

  Sitting James on the floor, Scott said, “Here we go! Vroom, vroom! Rev that engine! Yellow, yellow, yellow, green!” With the sound of peeling out, Scott began scooting James all around the floor. “Watch out for the parked car—you don’t want to be like Mario Andretti,” he said, curving around a large decorative vase, which held three brown-painted bamboo stalks that Scott had never quite figured out the purpose for.

  “Scott Ross, you are not using my son as a human mop!”

  “Of course not, baby! He’s just driving the track. It’s pure coincidence that his super-absorbent patooski is soaking up the spill. Errrrk!” Scott made a quick turn of James, just missing a table leg.

  When the floor was dry, Scott took James to the couch and sat down with him on his chest. Tara was just finishing cleaning the liquid off the coffee table. After dumping the paper towels, she sat next to him.

  “Uh, I think your son needs a change. He seems to be a little moist underneath,” Scott said trying to hand James over.

  Tara responded with a slap to his arm. Then she picked up the remote while Scott grumbled to James about his derelict mother.

  She pressed play, and the frozen Fox PFL logo spun on the screen, then shot off the top right. Full screen were the two announcers for the Washington Warriors–Cleveland Bulldogs game, Clay Sturgis and Tim Anderson.

  “Well, just when you think you’ve seen everything the PFL has to offer,” Sturgis started out.

  “No doubt,” Anderson tagged in. “While you were away, folks, the action here didn’t stop—at least not on the sidelines.”

  The picture of the announcers switched to a bouncy close-up shot from across the stadium of Rick Bellefeuille. He appeared very upset as he spoke into a telephone handset.

  “Obviously, with his team down by twenty-eight points early in the fourth quarter, Rick Bellefeuille is not a happy man,” Sturgis said. “And right now he’s letting somebody know it. And who, Tim, is the lucky recipient of his wrath?”

  “Why, it appears to be America’s hero, Riley Covington,” Anderson answered.

  The television screen switched to a split screen. Bellefeuille was relegated to the left half, while a tight shot of Riley on the sideline filled the right.

  “There’s no doubt that Superman has been fed a kryptonite sandwich by the Bulldogs today. And it appears that Bellefeuille is letting him know what he thinks about it.”

  “Poor Riley,” Tara said.

  “Just watch.”

  “Now, there’s nothing new about a player getting chewed out by an owner,” Sturgis said.

  “Althou
gh Bellefeuille is one of the few who actually does it during the game,” Anderson added.

  “True. What is unusual, however, is Covington’s response.”

  As Sturgis said this, Scott and Tara watched Riley let the phone fall away from his ear and lie horizontally in his hand.

  “He did not,” Tara said with her mouth hanging open.

  “Shhh, it gets better!”

  “. . . seen a player do this with an owner,” Anderson continued. “And judging by Bellefeuille’s reaction, he’s not seen it either.”

  On the screen, Bellefeuille was in meltdown mode. He was wildly swinging his free arm, causing all of his staff to move to a safe distance. His wife could be seen in the corner of the box with her mouth hanging open, covering the ears of their tween-age daughter.

  “It’s probably good we don’t have audio with this shot,” Sturgis said.

  “You got that right. But we haven’t seen the best of it yet. Watch what Riley does next.”

  As Scott, Tara, and an estimated 205 million other people watched (whether now, during later sports reports, or after the video went viral online), Riley walked to the Gatorade table, lifted the white plastic lid off the big orange bucket, and dropped the handset in.

  “Aughhhh,” screamed Tara. “He didn’t! He didn’t just do that!”

  Scott tried for some smart comeback, but he was laughing too hard to get any words out.

  “Put it back,” Tara cried. “Play it again!”

  Scott quickly rewound the DVR. This time they watched it muted.

  “Look at his face,” Tara said through teary eyes, ever the analyst. “He’s trying to decide what to do. Then watch . . . right there! That’s when he got the idea. Now he’s mulling. . . . He’s thinking about the outcomes—you can see it in the way his eyes are darting up to Bellefeuille, then over to the bucket. And there! That’s when he decides to do it. And we both know that once Riley decides to do something, he doesn’t stop until it’s done. Splash!”