There was no gun. It was more a bleep, like someone had made an error on their laptop, and the eight swimmers shot off into the water like missiles. Starting blocks are higher from the water than people think, and some of them got air time like Jordan.

  When they hit the pool, they all went under and stayed there, pulsing through the water like tuna. That’s not what I experienced; I’d dive in and come back up at the same angle, so I’d get pushed by my own wave and almost go backward. These swimmers eased to the surface, and their arms stroked the water like it was a kitten.

  Like all great athletes, they made their sport look easy. Greg Baxter was in front by the time he broke the surface. His strokes were long and languid, and he pulled himself through the water with such little apparent effort I wondered if he was trying at all. But by the time he reached the far end and did his tumble turn, he was more than a body length ahead.

  The crowd clapped and cheered, but not for Greg. His victory seemed so assured that people were interested in seeing who came in second. It was like watching Tiger Woods in his prime—the bets were on who the runner-up would be.

  Even that wasn’t particularly tight. The swimmer in second was two body lengths behind Greg but still a full body length ahead of third. The rest of the field finished in a bunch.

  The results popped up on the big screen hanging from the rafters.

  The judges said something to the swimmers in the pool, and they all climbed out.

  The competitors grabbed what little equipment they had brought—chamois towels, headphones, and robes—and made their way toward the corner of the arena where they’d exit. The television producer coaxed Greg over and into the interview spot with Beccy.

  She gave him the smile and then said something into his ear, and he nodded. An image of Greg appeared on the big screen, and Beccy’s voice echoed around the space that suddenly felt cavernous. I leaned forward and realized I was clenching my fists.

  “Greg, good time, backing up from the hundred final.”

  “It felt okay. Negative split, so happy with that, but the start could use some work.”

  “Now, obviously, everyone out there knows about what happened with Forrest Simpson last night. Our hearts go out to his family. How are you and the team managing? You must be in shock?”

  He shook his head and wiped a hand across his wet hair. “Honestly, Beccy, it’s a bit of a haze right now. We’re all still trying to come to terms with it.”

  “Do you think the program should have continued, or would Forrest have wanted you to fight on?”

  “Absolutely, Forrest would want us in the pool. He was a swimmer. He represented the US at two Games and was shooting for a third. He was at his best in the pool, and I think he’d want us all back doing what he loved.”

  “You’re swimming for him, I think?”

  “For sure. It’s hard to process right now, but I can tell you, every one of us who swims this week, and every one of us who races in Paris, we’ll be carrying his spirit with us.”

  “Greg, congrats and good luck for the final.”

  “Thanks, Beccy. Thanks, everyone, for the support.” He waved at the crowd in the stands, and they cheered him. The big screen cut back to a list of entrants for the next heat. Beccy fist-bumped with Greg before he walked back behind the curtain.

  She had done what needed doing. I wasn’t sure if it was the network’s words or if they trusted her to do her job. I suspected a bit of both. Beccy had addressed the elephant in the room like a pro. She had handed him the answers in her questions, saving him from having to overthink anything.

  “This seat taken?”

  I looked up to see Amanda Swaggert standing at the end of my aisle. There was a row of seats to choose from.

  “All yours.” I turned my gaze back to the pool.

  She sat with one plastic seat between us. “Did she just make all our problems go away in one little interview?”

  “She’s a pro, that Beccy. There’ll be more written and said, but the fire just got put out before it even started.” I frowned at her. “I thought you didn’t do PR anymore.”

  “I’m not the PR manager, but it falls under my department.”

  “You’re a mover and shaker.”

  “Hardly.”

  “How is the arena going? After, you know . . .”

  She smiled. “After you lost us our primary tenant?”

  “I think they did most of the work themselves.”

  “Things got a little bleak, but we’re on our way back. This is the first big event I’ve brought in.”

  “You brought it in?”

  “We had a bid committee with the mayor and some local boosters, but yeah, I wrote the proposal and made the pitch.”

  “How did you get the national swimming body to hold a meet in a place where there was no pool?”

  “We didn’t come up with that idea. Omaha had already hosted three trials in their downtown sports arena.”

  “Sports arena?”

  “Yep. They have an arena at their convention center.”

  “Wait, they dug a pool in a convention center in Omaha?”

  Amanda smiled. “They didn’t dig it. Neither did we. These pools are built, not dug. It’s a modular system constructed around a stainless steel frame.”

  “So it’s actually an aboveground pool?”

  “Technically, yes. But as you can see, they build the deck around the top.”

  “It doesn’t rust?”

  “No. Anything that comes into contact with water is covered in PVC, and anything that touches the ground is treated with a special film.”

  “That can’t be cheap.”

  “It’s not cheap, but neither is digging a pool of this size.”

  “So why not hold the event where we already have a pool?”

  “Like where? Down at the Y?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because people can’t see it. These events have gotten huge. Big television audiences, big crowds. Putting bleachers around an existing pool limits attendance. But swimming is now a stadium sport, thanks to Omaha. They’re saying the trials in four years will be held in a football stadium.”

  “How does that work?”

  “I think they’ll halve the stadium and put in two pools with a massive curtain or something between them, so only one side will be for public viewing.”

  “How do you hang a curtain that big in a football stadium?”

  “You choose an indoor stadium, like Lucas Oil in Indianapolis.”

  “So they just truck these pools around like circus tents?”

  “No, the pools are new each time. The technology gets better.”

  “So what happens to the old ones?”

  “That’s the beauty of the modular system. Before we even put them in place here, the two pools already had permanent homes. This main pool is going to a college in Kansas, and the warm-up pool is going to a new aquatic center in St. Kitts and Nevis. Big pools are expensive, so this is a way a local community or a state or even a country, like St. Kitts, can get one for a fraction of the cost.”

  “Lightly used.”

  “Exactly. And with a story attached.”

  “Not a good story in the case of the warm-up pool.”

  “We might downplay that angle. But the college, for example, would never build a full fifty-meter pool otherwise because of college competition requirements, so this gives them the best of both worlds.”

  “What college requirements?”

  “US college races are still done in yards. International competitions are always in meters, so the pools are not the same size.”

  “That’s genius. But this a fifty-meter pool, isn’t it?”

  “It is. But the manufacturer can install bulkheads that can move or be fixed in place. So this pool could become a twenty-five-yard short-course pool, or a full fifty-yard or fifty-meter-long course by moving the bulkhead.”

  “Amazing.”

  “It really is.”

  “So that shed out there, that’s only temporary?”

  “Yep. The pool is off to the Caribbean, and the building is going to an agriculture college in Texas.”

  “Gotta love recycling.”

  “Reusing rather than recycling, but the same idea. It means we recoup some of the cost of the event and they get a cheaper pool. Win-win.”

  “It looks like the real thing.”

  “It is the real thing. Better even. Easier to maintain, easier to repair. No digging holes if your pipes spring a leak. A technician can get in under the pool deck and do the work.”

  “There is no problem a motivated human can’t solve,” I said.

  Amanda nodded, and we turned back to the pool as the next race was introduced. We watched it and several more, then the women’s 100 freestyle was called.

  Amanda touched my shoulder. “I’ve gotta get back to my office. You’re welcome to come and watch from up high if you want.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll stay here and enjoy the atmosphere.”

  She smiled and bounced up the steps. I didn’t see the point of being up in an office or suite high above the arena. For a sport like hockey or basketball, the perch could give you a view of the entire playing surface and therefore the strategy and positioning of the players. But swimming went up one way and back the same way. There were no Xs and Os. The strategy was to go fast, period.

  The crowd got vocal for another lane-four swimmer when the announcer called Missy Callahan forward. I remembered the name from somewhere in the recesses of my brain. She waved to the spectators like she was on the red carpet at a movie premiere rather than about to swim a race that would determine her future in the sport.

  I need not have worried; Missy won her heat as easily as Greg Baxter had won his. Afterward, she walked along the pool deck to celebrate with a group wearing red shirts and white shorts. She high-fived several, hugged a woman in the stands, and moved back along the deck to chat with Beccy Williams. When the woman turned back to take her seat, I saw a large S embroidered on the breast of her polo.

  The heats came and went. Some were close, but others were not. The wheat was clearly separating itself from the chaff. That’s the nature of elite sports—the drop-off rate is sudden and fierce. Competition is tight until you bring the truly gifted and hardworking into the frame. Then they’re as obvious as a Maine lighthouse on a clear night.

  I watched a few more events—some backstrokes and breaststrokes—and then a women’s individual medley, where each athlete on the team had to swim all four strokes. Missy Callahan reappeared in lane four again. It was a closer race, with lane six pushing her all the way, but Missy took the heat with an impressive final burst in the last leg, the freestyle. Then she bounced along the pool deck again and gave high fives to the red-shirted cheering squad and a hug to the woman in the polo. As Missy moved toward Beccy to do another interview, the big screen flashed a message that thanked us for attending and reminded us that tonight’s finals would start at 7 p.m.

  I stepped down a few rows to a group of supporters who had been cheering for pretty much everyone.

  “Excuse me, do you know who that is?” I asked a woman with US flags painted on her cheeks.

  “That’s Missy Callahan. Gold in Tokyo in freestyle, IM, and relay free.”

  “And the woman with her? In the stands there.”

  “Oh, that’s her coach. Kellie Almonde.”

  “Is that a Stanford shirt she’s wearing?”

  “Yes. She’s the head coach there. Number-one ranked program in the country right now.”

  I thanked her for the information and eased down to where the swim squads were sitting. I wanted to meet this Kellie Almonde.

  I hadn’t developed a weird fascination for a woman I didn’t know. It was just that my interest had been piqued. Not by the coach but by what was on her polo: that large S with a tree through the middle of it—the Stanford cardinal, the logo for Stanford University sports.

  The same logo I had seen on a dead man’s swimming trunks that morning.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Kellie Almonde was packing a sports duffel as I made my way down the steps. The crowd was clearing out, but the squads seemed to be leaving together as if they had carpooled.

  “Coach Almonde,” I said.

  She looked up at me with an expression I could only frame as calculating. Her green eyes didn’t narrow when she saw me—they started that way. She gave me the once-over like a TSA agent at the airport.

  “I’m busy.”

  It was a bold initial gambit. It really left a guy with almost nowhere to go. I assumed she had pegged me as a nonathlete, given the absence of a tracksuit top and the fact that I was wearing big boy pants.

  “Sorry to bother you. I’m working for the national team.”

  “Doing what?” Her mouth scrunched up like paper in a waste basket.

  “Managing the Forrest situation.”

  Now her face turned to granite. She had the facial range of Meryl Streep.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said.

  “What makes you think it’s my loss?”

  “Forrest swam at Stanford, didn’t he?”

  She pulled a towel from the duffel and refolded it. “He did.”

  “Your team must be in shock.”

  “They’ll get through.”

  “I have no doubt. The team has people they can talk with if they need to.”

  “I said they’ll get through.”

  “Like Forrest, you mean?”

  Now her nostrils flared like I was an old gym sock. “Excuse me?”

  “One of your squad killed himself last night.”

  “I am aware.”

  “You don’t exactly seem filled with sorrow.”

  “Will falling in a weeping mess help the rest of my swimmers?”

  “There’s a fair bit of ground between there and where you are now.”

  “Thanks for the advice. I’ll take it under advisement.” She frowned at me. “You don’t have any credentials.”

  I pulled my pass out of my pocket and showed it to her.

  “Miami Jones,” she said. “You should be wearing that at all times.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement. But I would suggest that if a reporter asks about Forrest like I just did that you choose your words more carefully.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or Forrest will be all the news is talking about. That and how he swam for a coach who hasn’t shown the slightest bit of concern for him being dead.”

  “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Neither does the media. Difference is, they won’t care. I do. I’ve been asked to help manage the narrative.”

  “They already have people who do that. Who are you anyway?”

  “I’m the guy who stops a tragedy from derailing the whole Games campaign. We don’t want a repeat of Rio.”

  Coach Almonde nodded, but not in a way that suggested she agreed. “This is about Baxter.”

  “It’s about the health of the team.”

  “I leave Coach Collis to manage his people as he sees fit, and I expect the same courtesy.”

  “Aren’t we all on the same team?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means these trials are to select the team. If my swimmers get beaten by his swimmers, they don’t make the team. At this point, every other competitor is the enemy.”

  “Including Greg Baxter.”

  “Of course.”

  “He was Forrest’s enemy.”

  “No.”

  “But you just said⁠—”

  “I know what I said. But Forrest and Greg were not in the same league. Their goals were different.”

  “How so?”

  “Greg is a generational talent, no doubt about it. Rio was a disaster that could have been managed better, in my opinion, but he showed what he could do in Tokyo. Forrest was a good swimmer, but he wasn’t challenging for individual swims. We knew that. We weren’t aiming for that.”

  “You weren’t aiming to make the team? What’s the point?”

  “Of course we were aiming to make the team, but in the relays. That was Forrest’s likely route to Paris.”

  “So he wanted to be one of the four relay swimmers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wouldn’t Greg have been one of those?”

  “Of course. Both individual swimmers would most likely be in the relays.”

  “So there were two more slots?”

  “For the final, yes.”

  “And Forrest came sixth in the one hundred freestyle final last night.”

  “Yes.”

  “So he wouldn’t have been on the team.”

  “It wasn’t looking good.”

  “Is that why he . . .”

  “I don’t know why he took his life.”

  “You didn’t see any evidence of depression?”

  “No. If I had, I would have acted. We have protocols for that now.”

  “But he was under pressure. You might say he was swimming for his life.”

  “We all are. That’s the nature of the business. Some people can’t handle that. But Forrest had been to two Games before. He knew what was expected, and he knew what the price of failure was. Everyone’s career comes to an end. Two Games is more than most.”

  “So you were surprised.”

  “Very. But I don’t see a big story here. It’s sad, but sometimes things go that way. We offer care where we can, but we can’t control how people think.”

  “But it’s not the first time.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Deena Senza.”

  “That was different.”

  “How?”

  “Just different.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “Not well.”

  “You were coaching back then?”

  “No.” She zipped up her duffel as if it were the final word. As she made to move away, I spoke.

  “I am sorry. About Forrest. I hope everyone on your team is okay.”

  “They’re far from okay, but I told you. We’ll get through. That’s what teams do.” She took two steps down toward the pool deck before she stopped and turned.

  “I’ll be doing a press conference this afternoon. I’ve already spoken with Stanford. You can tell the powers that be we know what to say.”