Cat closed her eyes and scratched her fingers over her scalp to work out some of the frustration she was feeling. She didn?t care if it did go against her personal code. Someone was going to die if this kept up. Striding over to the bench, she grabbed a towel and draped it over her head as she took a long hit from the water bottle thrust into her hand.

“Well that?s it; they?ve managed to wrack them up against us?” Caulley remarked, looking down at her ever-present clipboard. It was covered with scribbles that might as well be Egyptian hieroglyphics for all the good they were doing the team.

“It?s bullshit!” Cat growled as she toweled her neck.

“I know it is, Catherine, but we don?t have a choice. Dylan is done, so we need to do the best we can here. From this point forward, we?re playing a straight passing game and we?re going to do our damndest to keep ourselves and the ball away from them. If we can?t get close to them, then we don?t want them close to us.”

“They?ll just call us out for traveling.” Chaney grumbled from her position kneeling at the coach?s feet. “Look at what they?ve been doing to Shortchange.”

“There?s no easy answer here.”

“Maybe we should just forfeit.”

“No way.” Caulley stood, pointing her tablet at the guard. “You?re going to go back out there and you?re going to play this game. We?re not going to let these people down. You can bet we?re going to challenge these calls, but we can?t do it now. All we can do it give it our best shot.”

Diana looked at each of her players and she could see that mentally, they were beaten, but she wasn?t going to let them give in. “I promise you all that this will work out. Not today and maybe not tomorrow, but it will work out. You have to act like the professionals you are. So go back out there and do your best. Party at Dylan’s house tonight for the best damn team in the league.”

Everyone couldn?t help but laugh as they made their plans to finish the game.

Dylan zipped her warm-up jacket as she strode down the short, dark hallway toward the Skybox that held one Horace Johnson. Standing next to the closed door was Mac, resplendent in a dark suit and crisp white shirt, his face grim. “D….”

“Buzz off, Mac.”

“But—”

“I’m serious. You don’t want to be here right now. I’ll catch up with you later.” She reached for the door handle, only to have Mac’s huge hand clamp onto her wrist at the last second. She looked down at the hand for a moment, then turned cold, steel-colored eyes to her friend. One eyebrow slowly rose.

Clearing his throat, Mac released her wrist, and thrust a folder into her face. “Before you do anything, just take a look at this, alright?”

After a moment, she relaxed her muscles and, with a frustrated breath, grabbed the folder. Inside were three summary sheets. She began to smile. It wasn’t a pleasant one, by any means, but its very presence caused Mac to breathe a silent sigh of relief.

“We got the bastard,” she said finally, eyes sparkling fiercely.

“Yeah, we got him. Safely, and legally. D, listen to me, please. You don’t have to do…whatever it is that you’re going in there to do. You do something stupid, and this could all blow up in our faces.”

“‘Stupid’ as in using his fat head to test the tensile strength of the window glass inside his skybox?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

Dylan patted his chest with the folder. “No worries, my friend.”

“But—”

“I mean it. This is between Horace and me. You were never here. Now buzz off.”

“Dylan….”

“Now.”

With a grunt, he pushed himself away from the wall. “Don’t make me have to bail you out of jail, D. Not again. Please.”

“Just go.”

A last, pleading look, and he went.

Dylan twisted the door handle, opened the heavy door, and slipped silently inside. Horace was alone, standing before the huge windows of his box, staring down onto the court. He was rocking on his toes, hands clamped behind his back. He looked, in short, like a naughty little boy whose dreams were one second away from coming true.

“Always were a little lax with your personal security, weren’t ya, Horace?”

Johnson slowly turned. His smirk seemed a permanent fixture on his seamed, homely face. “Ms. Lambert, how wonderful to see you here, darkening my doorstep.” He looked down at the folder in her hand. “Your letter of resignation, I presume? It’s a terrible pity, though it has been fully documented that ones of your particular…perversion…never were able to accept responsibility.”

Dylan crossed the room in a few long, silent strides. “You’ll probably want to be rethinking that…boss.”

“Really? Why?” His eyes were filled with a babe’s innocence, but the smirk never left his face. “Whatever you’re going to show me, Ms. Lambert, please do it quickly. I’m missing the end of the game.”

“As if you didn’t know how it was gonna end already. Does the name Tony Scippone ring any kind of a bell with you, Horace?”

A muscle twitched, just briefly, near the corner of one eye. Then his brow smoothed and the smug look returned. “Can’t say as it does, Ms. Lambert. Friend of yours? Fellow Sodomite, perhaps?”

“Las Vegas bookie, actually. Some degenerate laid down two hundred grand on the Badgers to lose by fourteen or more points.”

“Really,” he drawled, rocking on his toes again. “I’d say that that person was in for quite a handsome profit, given that the team is currently losing by….” A quick look over his shoulder, “...twenty one.”

Dylan shrugged. “Guess you’re going to have to fire the help, then. Seems that your new admin assistant…Bambi….Barbie….Bimbo…whomever placed the bet in her name, but used your line of credit with ol’ Tony to do it.”

The muscle twitched again, then smoothed. “Pity. She had the makings of an excellent assistant.”

“Betting against your own team, Horace. That’s a new low, even for you. Of course, it’s not just the kind of thing that’s against league rules. It’s also illegal.”

“What you lack, Ms. Lambert, other than good breeding and good manners, is proof. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get back to the game. Leave now, or I’ll have security escort you out, and it’s you who will be spending the night in jail.”

“I wonder how many of those refs your purchased tonight will stay bought?” she mused, as if to herself.

Johnson frowned. “That is the second slanderous allegation you’ve made against me in these past ten minutes, Ms. Lambert. Because I’m a gentleman, I’ll allow you those two free of charge, as they say. A third, and you will be escorted from here directly to the nearest police station, and that I can assure you.”

Dylan smiled her dangerous smile. “Oh, I think I’ll chance it, Horace. Because I really don’t think you’d want me to leave before you had the chance to look at this.”

With an easy toss, the file slipped into his hands. “Really, Ms. Lambert,” he remarked with a martyred sigh, “you’re becoming quite the bore. If I didn’t know any better, I’d…..” There his voice trailed off as he opened the folder and began to read the documents inside. His face paled even as a string of sweat beads popped out across his forehead.

“Horace, Horace, Horace. If you’re gonna try to make a living outta scamming Wall Street with that insider trading shit, don’t you think you should have taken a couple lessons from Martha and covered your tracks just a little bit better?”

He looked up at her. His mouth opened. Then closed. Then opened again, and stayed that way.

Grinning, Dylan slipped into one of the obscenely opulent skybox seats and crossed her legs casually. “Now it seems to me that my best course of action would be to call the cops right now. But, because I’m a ‘lady’, and a fair one at that, I figure now might be the perfect time for us to do a little dealing.”

A strangled sound came out of his mouth.

Dylan smirked. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.” She pretended to think on her words. “You’re scum, Horace. You know it. I know it. Your wife and kids know it. But you’re lucky, because I like your wife, and your kids. A lot. Almost as much as I detest you. And I really don’t want to see them deprived of your company—and your money—for, oh, say the next ten years or so.”

Another strangled noise. The folder slipped from his hands as one fist came up to clench at his heart.

“Not that I wouldn’t spill every single word in those documents to the DA, the press, and anyone else I felt like spilling it to, but if you give me a reason not to, I might be persuaded to keep my mouth shut. For now.” When it was obvious he was incapable of responding, she continued. “Here’s my one time only, never to be repeated, take it or leave it offer, Horace. You let Cat out of her contract, quickly and quietly. An amicable decision all the way around. No whispers of improprieties, no nothing. You just…let her go. Me, you can fire if it’ll make you feel any better, but Cat is not negotiable. You also let anyone else who wants to get off this team go, no questions asked. And…for my final demand, you sell the team. Tell the league owners it’s too hard on your health. Tell them it takes too much time away from you banging your secretary. Tell them anything you want, but you sell and retire from the sport permanently.” She smiled. “If you don’t, then I walk, and then I talk, and I keep on talking until there is nothing left of you but a pair of holey boxers. Do we understand one another?”

“Urk….heart…..”

“Heart? You mean you actually have one of those? Please.”

“...heart….”

Dylan slowly stood until she was towering over him. “Do we have a deal, Horace? A simple yes or no will suffice. Yes, and I get on the horn and get you an ambulance. No, and I get on the horn and get the cops. What’ll it be?”