Caitlyn Catowize's story Pt.9

[CrazyCaityCat 65]

If you want to start from the beginning of the story part one can be found here:

 

The last installment can be found here: 

 

It turns out the man had a gambling problem, and had just filed for bankruptcy. The media loved this, they pontificated, they lambasted, they destroyed the public image of the man. If only that was the worst part. It seemed that the ADA in Philadelphia had taken an interest in the case. Turns out prosecuting someone who worked for the VHLM team in the city might be a good way to get a promotion. The poor equipment manager, thought Caitlyn, he’d been sentenced to 6 years in prison for destruction of private property, and something called the Sports Bribery Act. The national sports media picked it up. EXPN ran stories on the Reapers for weeks. Caitlyn felt so guilty she felt like she was going to explode. She wanted, every day, to run into the locker room and confess. She knew she couldn’t though; her life might very well depend on her silence at this point. The blackmailers, she didn’t know who they were, what they were capable of. They obviously weren’t a two-bit operation, they had ways of finding her when she didn’t want to be found.

 

A couple of weeks ago she’d had a week off to prepare for the upcoming playoffs. Caitlyn had taken the opportunity to drown her misery, she left her phone in her apartment and gone to Mexico. She took a bus south from Tijuana and let it go for 2 days before she got off at a random town she didn’t know the name of that seemed likely to be big enough to have a bar. She lived in that bar for the next 3 days, drinking until she passed out, waking up and starting the cycle all over again. The locals were friendly enough, though only a few could speak English well enough to converse with her. The truth was though that she wasn’t in the mood to talk. She just wanted to drink her guilt away. Late in the third day she was approached by a man who was obviously not local. He wore a very expensive suit and came directly up to her, calling her by name. Caitlyn had only just woken and finished her first beer so she was pretty coherent, enough to be extremely suspicious and scared of this man who knew her name where no one should know her. He explained that he’d been sent by their mutual friends, that they had a message for her: Get your ass back home and sober up. You’ve got playoff games to perform in. Caitlyn told him to fuck off but she was a bit hesitant about how much leeway she was going to get here. He told her their mutual friends had a vested interest in her and weren’t going to be happy if she allowed her career to be ruined by her having a pity party in Mexico. He then shifted his suit coat intentionally to show off the holster he had hidden under it. Caitlyn understood. She was to be a good girl, play hockey, and do whatever the hell they told her to for however long it took them to decide she was useful.

 

She did head home after that, she felt she didn’t have a choice. If they could find her in that random bar, in a random town, in the middle of Mexico then they could find her anywhere. Caitlyn sobered up and tried to focus on her training for the upcoming playoff games. The Reapers won in a sweep, and Caitlyn underperformed. Her draft stock was still pretty high according to her agent, due to her natural skills, but she was certainly not happy with her performance. In the second playoff series she found herself underperforming again, yet the team did well in spite of her. The Reapers won in 5 games, moving on to the finals. All the time Caitlyn threw herself into training. It was the holiday season and all Caitlyn could do was train, worry, and try not to let her guilt overwhelm her. It didn’t help that she couldn’t even remember the equipment manager’s name whenever she tried to recall it.

 

Then, two days before the finals she got another call from that ominous voice that she didn’t know. He told her that he was excited by her draft prospects and that if she did well in the finals that she’d find herself in a much better position to pay off her debts. Caitlyn could do nothing but cry in frustration. The voice went on to tell her that something had been done to help her, and that she’d better take advantage of it. They didn’t need to say “or else…”. Caitlyn asked what it was that they’d done to help her and all she got in return was a laugh and a dead line. Great. So now she was not only supposed to do what they wanted her to do, she had to guess at what the hell it was too? This was bullshit…and there was nothing she could do about it. It was all thanks to her mother for racking up this debt with these people then dropping it on her. Actually…wait. What the hell? If they could find Caitlyn where she had hidden herself at that bar in Mexico then how the hell had they not already found her mother? Why were they extracting the debt from her when her mother would have been able to be found? Caitlyn was so angry. She’d been lied to by everyone, again. She realized what had happened. Her mother had racked up the debt using Caitlyn’s career as collateral. The reason they were using her is because she was far more valuable to them than her mother seemed to be. Caitlyn knew better, she knew that if anyone in this group was aware of her mother’s abilities that they’d find her immediately more useful than Caitlyn. The ability to convince almost anyone to do almost anything you needed them to do would likely have been considered extremely valuable to these people.

 

Caitlyn struggled with it but there didn’t seem to be an obvious way to turn this to her advantage. She thought about telling them what her mother was capable of but she was sure they wouldn’t believe her. People just couldn’t do what her mother could do, it wasn’t believable. It wasn’t that it was supernatural, it’s just that it was so absurdly perfected that no one would believe it. Caitlyn would just have to do her best in the coming days to figure out what it was that was expected of her and do it, regardless of how awful it was going to end up being.

 

1263 Words

 

[CrazyCaityCat 65]

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