‘Mule-we gotta talk, man.’ Before Lauren can object, Hudak drapes his arm around her fiance and leads him away.
K. C. shrugs. ‘Sam’s a popular guy.’
‘Too popular.’
The Haitian girl slides over to K. C., grinding her bare groin into his hip. ‘I’m tired of playing defensive ball. How ’bout teaching me a little offense?’
K. C. winks at Lauren. ‘Back in a minute.’
‘Yeah, go grind your brains out.’ She watches him lead the girl away.
Lauren’s eyes search for Sam. She spots him by the hot tub, surrounded by most of the team’s defensive starters, all of whom are dyed the same shade of Miami green.
The hell with this… She heads back inside.
‘You’re accusing me of tanking it?’ Sam shakes his head in disbelief.
Hudak leans in, spewing his garlic breath. ‘We lost. No way we lose to the fubishitting Seminole-holes if you’re running the way you usually do.’
‘I had 104 yards on the ground, 54 more receiving. I scored a touchdown.’
‘Don’t diss us, Mule,’ says Keith Plourde, the Hurricanes’ cocaptain. ‘You haven’t run for less than two hundred yards since you were in grade school.’
‘I need that playoff bonus, Mule,’ Brian Mundt whines. ‘I’m fuupdass without it.’
‘Maybe you wouldn’t be so fucked-up-the-ass if you learned how to tackle,’ Sam says, pushing the defensive end out of his face.
‘I heard a ton of gamblers lost money on the point spread today,’ Keith Plourde states, accusingly. ‘Maybe you were in on the action, huh?’
Sam lunges for Plourde, pile-driving him backward against a palm tree.
Hudak and Mundt intercede before the first punch is thrown.
‘Knock it off!’ The veins in Hudak’s thick neck bulge like garter snakes. ‘We know Mule wouldn’t do that, K. P. What we don’t know is if our soul brother is turnin’ pro?’
‘Not this season.’
‘Yeah, but what about next year?’ asks Jeff ‘Bubba’ Larsen, Miami’s six-foot-three-inch, three-hundred-pound all-American strong-side linebacker.
‘I don’t know.’ Sam stares down Larsen, his heart pounding with adrenaline. ‘I haven’t decided.’
‘Fuck!’ Now it’s Larsen who is ready to strike. ‘You leave after this year, and we’re all fuupdass. Between stipes and bonuses, we’re talkin’ a buck forty large a piece.’
‘One forty-five,’ corrects Mundt.
‘Most of us don’t got two-hundred-million-dollar GFL contracts waiting out there,’ growls Matt Eterginio, the starting free safety.
‘None of us have,’ Sam corrects. ‘You’re supposed to be an English major, Matt. Of course, you’re also supposed to be a free safety, but that didn’t stop FSU from takin’ it to the house on you all afternoon.’
‘Okay, everybody just calm down,’ commands Hudak. ‘Look, Mule, we’re your teammates. Your brothers. Brothers stick together.’
Brothers stick together… The words seem to echo in his brain.
‘Are you gonna be there for us, Mule?’
They crowd around, creating a pine-green wall of flesh.
*
Lauren surveys the banquet table of food and drugs in the dining hall. The sushi and Chinese ribs look tantalizing, but she passes. The last time she ate at one of K. C.’s parties, she ended up playing naked volleyball on the dean’s lawn.
She hears cheers. Bored, she follows the sound to the entertainment suite.
A dozen football players are lying on body cushions, drinking beer and watching a 3-D holographic replay of the Miami-FSU game. Lauren grabs a juice pouch off the cooler tree and takes a seat on the floor.
The projection is playing Miami’s opening drive. A hovering spherical-video end zone cam zooms in on K. C. Renner as he mouths incomprehensible signals, the action set at ultraslow motion. The quarterback takes the snap and pitches the ball to Sam, who heads to his right, where several Seminole players are waiting.
Wild cheers of ‘Mule… Mule… Mule’ as Sam executes an eye-popping pirouette, races back toward the line of scrimmage, then stiff-arms his way through a wall of defenders like a mad bull, opening up his own hole.
Lauren feels goose bumps. She allows herself a smile. Maybe I won’t be tired tonight…
The camera zooms in tight on Sam’s face.
She stops smiling.
Lauren Beckmeyer has known Samuel Agler since they were in ninth grade. In all that time, she has never seen anything like the expression now etched on her boyfriend’s face.
Fear.
23
Sunday Afternoon
The palatial south Florida mansion of billionaire Lucien J. Mabus and his wife Lilith, stretches eight hundred feet along a private pristine coastline in Manalapan, a small island town just north of Boynton Beach. The thirty-one-room, three-storey home, originally built for $21.3 million back in 1997, features a seaside swimming pool complete with waterfall and swim-up bar, two tennis courts, a fitness center, a twelve-hundred-square-foot grand salon illuminated by a six-thousand-pound crystal chandelier imported from a nineteenth-century French chateau, an observatory dome, and an eight-car garage, its floors paved in Saturnia marble. Each of the six bedroom suites has its own balcony facing the Atlantic. All of the home’s windows are self-cleaning, made with a thin metal oxide coating electrified to help rainwater to wash away loose particles.
The mansion’s staff includes two housekeepers, a chef, a licensed pilot who doubles as a chauffeur, six heavily armed security guards, and a mechanic. Robotic mowers and trimmers perpetually manicure the lawns and shrubs to incessant perfection. Every computer and control station in the home is wired to a backup fuel-cell power station located on the northern side of the property. There are three satellite dishes on the roof.
All this-for only two adults and the occasional visiting business associate.
Twenty-six-year-old Lucien Mabus, son of the late Peter Mabus, opens his mouse brown, red-rimmed eyes and gazes at himself in the ceiling mirror. His face is ashen gray, his lips-alabaster white. His eyes are sunken, surrounded by dark circles.
‘It’s just the flu,’ his personal physician has assured him. ‘You’re far too young and rich to leave us now, Lucien.’
That was sixteen days and thirty pounds ago. His personal physician had wanted him to undergo tests in a hospital, but Lilith refused. ‘Those hospitals will kill you, darling. I’m sure it’s just a bad case of food poisoning. I keep warning you about eating so much shellfish. I’ve sent the cooks home. From now on, I’ll personally be bringing you your meals, at least until you feel better.’
Lucien glances to the nightstand on his right. Prescription medicines, tissues, and a plastic beach bucket, in case he has to vomit again. A half-eaten bowl of chicken soup sits on a tray. The sight of it makes him queasy. Chicken soup… can’t she cook anything but chicken soup?
The billionaire rolls over, pulling the blanket over his shoulder. What’s all the money in the world if I’m too sick to enjoy it?
Chills fade into a hot flash, bringing with it the dreaded queasiness.
Lucien grabs the bucket and retches.
His pulse throbs in his head. His throat burns, his stomach convulsing in spasms. Flopping onto the floor, he holds his head in his hands, praying for the pain to stop.
God… what is it you want from me? Charity work? Another wing at some third-world hospital? Just tell me and end this misery.
Gathering his strength, he drags himself to his feet, the vertigo causing the bedroom to spin. Staggering forward, he heads to the bathroom-then stops, staring at his bare feet.
His toes are numb.
‘Oh, God… what’s happening to me? Lilith? Lilith!’
He stumbles out of the master bedroom and into the hallway.