Chapter 7: The Tennis Balls

The scratch at the casita door came before dawn.

Three sharp taps against the glass, followed by an impatient snort. I pulled the lock back, keeping my shoulder braced against the frame.

Maple sat on the patio slab, breathing pale vapor into the morning chill. A sodden tennis ball dropped from her mouth, hitting my shoe with a wet thump. Behind her, Storm nudged his broad head against my knee, while River waited by the stucco wall, his tail sweeping across the stone.

"Not today, guys," I murmured. "Your boss is looking for an excuse to throw me through the gate."

A sharp electronic whistle cut across the lawn from the main house.

All three dogs snapped upright. They wheeled around on the flagstones and bolted toward the terrace.

Vaughn Mercer stood framed in the open doors of the south wing.

He wore black gym shorts and turf shoes, his bare shoulders catching the pale coastal light. He stood unmoving against the glass, tracking my silhouette on the porch with cold hostility. The second the dogs cleared the threshold, he slid the iron-reinforced door shut, the frame rattling with a dull thud.

I went back inside, splashed cold water over my face, and pulled my hair into a high knot. My phone screen showed no new notifications—which meant my mother was stable for another twelve hours.

I grabbed my cleaning bucket from under the sink and stepped outside at five-fifteen.

The sight waiting on the flagstones stopped me dead.

Dozens of tennis balls covered the entire walkway. They were wedged into the drainage grates, jammed beneath the lounge chairs, and floating in tight clusters across the shallow end of the pool. Every clear path from my door to the main kitchen was choked with rolling green rubber.

He had millions in guaranteed salary, yet he spent his pre-dawn hours staging petty obstacle courses for the cleaning girl.

"You want a maid who cries to Daphne," I muttered to the empty patio. "You picked the wrong girl."

A low rustle shook the boxwoods near the cabana. Maple squeezed through the dog run, tongue hanging sideways, Storm and River right on her heels.

I looked at the mess, then down at the three giant dogs.

"Come here," I said, snapping my fingers.

Maple trotted over, head tilted. I walked to the heavy canvas equipment bin by the cabana, flipped the lid open, and pointed at the nearest ball bobbing in the water.

"Fetch, Maple. Drop it here."

She didn't hesitate. She splashed into the shallow steps, scooped the ball into her jaws, and trotted back to drop it cleanly into the bin.

"Good girl. Again."

Storm figured it out in three seconds, darting across the terrace to snag stray balls. River joined in, prying spheres out from beneath the low patio tables.

In less than five minutes, the flagstones were clear.

I latched the bin, patted each dog on the flank, and sent them toward their bowls. Picking up my cleaning bucket, I took the path toward the west service entrance.

To reach the kitchen, the walkway ran past the glass pavilion jutting out from the basement training wing.

A sudden, violent crack tore through the quiet.

My stride hitched at the sound, followed by the high mechanical whine of a feeder loading another ball into a pneumatic chamber.

Crack.

The thud of a ball burying itself into heavy nylon netting vibrated right through the concrete beneath my feet.

The wide glass partition stood open six feet to let the cool ocean air circulate through the batting tunnel. Vaughn stood inside, crouched in a low, coiled stance with his back to the door. Sweat tracked down the groove of his spine, soaking the dark waistband of his shorts. The dark ink across his shoulder blades shifted with every micro-adjustment of his hands on the matte bat.

Seventy feet down the tunnel, the commercial pitching cannon whirred at full throttle.

The machine coughed. A white blur ripped through the cage at ninety-five miles an hour.

Vaughn's hips snapped in a violent arc. The bat met the ball dead-center with a deafening report, obliterating it into the far netting.

A wet nose brushed my ankle.

My grip slipped on the bucket handle. Maple had trotted up behind me, her focus pinned on the stray yellow balls scattered across the artificial turf inside the cage.

"Maple, stay," I hissed, lunging for her collar.

She slipped right past my fingers, drawn over the threshold by the smell of worn leather.

At that exact fraction of a second, the feeder on the automated pitcher shuddered. A misaligned ball jammed between the spinning wheels with a high mechanical shriek.

The internal tension broke with a sharp metallic snap.

The machine head torqued violently on its steel mount, spitting the ball at a jagged, erratic angle. The projectile ricocheted off the steel support pillar, spinning violently across the open floor—straight for the dog, and straight for my face.

"Maple!" I shouted, diving forward.

"Look out!"

The bat clattered against the turf.

A wall of heat and solid weight slammed into me before my knees hit the ground. Vaughn hooked one thick arm around my waist, dragging both me and the dog backward into the padded safety net, throwing his own back toward the line of fire to shield us.

The errant ball blasted into the acrylic dispenser by the door, shattering the plastic in a violent spray.

We hit the turf hard.

The impact knocked the breath from my lungs as his sheer mass pinned me flat against the rubber underlay. Maple was wedged beneath his forearm, whining softly as he kept her locked out of harm's way.

For two seconds, neither of us moved.

His chest rose and fell against mine in ragged heaves. The heat rolling off his bare skin was suffocating, sharp with sweat and cedar soap. His dark gray eyes stared straight into mine, completely stripped of their usual arrogance.

It was pure, uncalculated instinct. He had thrown his own body into the path of a ninety-mile-an-hour projectile to keep a dog and a hired maid from getting their skulls cracked.

"Are you out of your mind?" he rasped.

"You left the door open," I managed to say, my ribs throbbing beneath his weight.

Vaughn shifted, planting his left hand into the artificial turf to push himself up.

Then his body betrayed him.

His left wrist snapped inward in a sudden, violent jerk.

The fingers on his left hand splayed out, rigid and clawed, trembling uncontrollably against the green turf. A tremor ripped up his forearm, the tendons jumping beneath his skin in wild, erratic spasms.

The color drained from Vaughn's face in a split second.

Pure, unvarnished terror cracked through his expression. He stared down at his shaking fingers as if his own arm belonged to a stranger, fighting to force his hand flat against the mat. But the tremor only intensified, seizing his entire shoulder.

"Vaughn," I whispered, reaching out without thinking.

"Don't look at it!" he snarled.

In a blind, frantic bid to crush the spasm, he curled the trembling fingers into a white-knuckled fist and slammed his knuckles straight down into the concrete beneath the turf.

The sickening thud echoed through the cage.

It was a desperate, futile act of rage against his own failing nerves. But the shock didn't fix a thing. The hand remained locked, the tendons twitching beneath the skin, his knuckles split and bleeding.

He shoved himself off me with his right arm alone, staggering back two paces like he had been burned.

Maple scrambled out from between us, whimpering as she retreated toward the sunlit doorway.

I pushed myself up onto my elbows, every muscle aching as I scrambled to my feet.

Vaughn was breathing in shallow draws of air, his face ghost-white and slick with fresh sweat. With his good right hand, he snatched a dark gym towel from the bench, wrapping it tightly around his left arm to hide the shaking fingers from view.

The defensive rage returned in a frantic wave, desperate to cover the crack in his armor.

"Who told you to bring the animal near the cages?!" he shouted, stepping into my space to block my line of sight. "Can you not read the warning signs on the glass?!"

"The machine jammed!" I fired back, my voice shaking with lingering adrenaline. "She would have taken ninety miles an hour to the head, and so would I!"

"Then stay in your quarters where you belong!" he yelled, towering over me, his shadow cutting off the morning light.

He was loud. He was aggressive. He was trying to tear the room apart with his voice.

None of it worked.

"Sweep the plastic by the door," he rasped, his voice rough and strained. He took two steps back, keeping the wrapped hand buried in the dark towel, his uninjured fingers gripping the fabric like a lifeline. "Then get inside and make breakfast."

He didn't wait for an answer. He backed through the interior tunnel door and disappeared into the shadows of the basement.

The heavy steel door clicked shut, leaving me standing alone on the turf among the shattered plastic.

Beneath all that defensive rage, I had seen what was really there.

Terror.

The undisputed franchise icon was shivering in the dark, watching his multimillion-dollar career die from the inside out.

And I was the only person alive who had seen it.