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"Why would Maddix Nelson's mercenary, his hired hand, want to help the woman he was hired to incriminate as a liar? Do you think sleeping with him will convince him to deviate from the job he accepted?"
"Sleeping with me wouldn't cause him to deviate from anything," she said softly before turning away and heading for the door.
The silence that filled the room was heavy with recrimination and fury as Nik turned back to Reed Holbrook.
"Watch your back," Nik advised the other man softly. "Very diligently, very carefully, Holbrook, watch your back."
Being attuned to another's feelings was something Nik knew he had never asked for. It was something he wouldn't have wanted if it had been offered to him. But suddenly he found himself attuned. Attuned and aching because he knew Mikayla had been hurt. Reed Holbrook had sliced into her heart with his question.
Nik's fingers clenched around the steering wheel. He was so fucking tired of watching other men decimate this little woman. Calm, gentle, composed. Mikayla, for all her strength and determination, hadn't lashed back at Holbrook. She'd lifted that stubborn little chin, narrowed her eyes, and delivered her parting shot without self-pity or tears.
"We can say all the rumors about Reed Holbrook are true," she commented. "He's not a very nice person, is he?"
The thread of rueful amusement in her voice had Nik's gaze slicing to her before he pulled it back to the heavily traveled interstate they were on. 203
Her voice was amused, but he saw her eyes. They were hurt.
"I could use stronger language," he grunted.
"So what exactly did we learn, besides the fact that he's rude, overbearing, and ugly?"
Nik almost chuckled at the description. "We learned he's definitely involved with Kefler and Kefler was involved with Eddie. We're narrowing in on the common denominators that are linking several people."
"But are they linking to Maddix?" she sighed.
"Maddix has links to everyone but Kefler. If Eddie was working for Holbrook, or Kefler, to sabotage the job, then the delays would have been a major loss of cash for Maddix as well as those who have allied themselves to him. His alibis also have interests, one way or the other, in that job site or others that Maddix owns. Once we get the financials I've requested and look a little more deeply into Maddix's business activities, then I'll have more information."
"Did Maddix Nelson pay you to make me look like a liar?" He had expected the question. He knew it was coming.
"Maddix paid me two hundred and eighty thousand dollars to find out why you were determined to convince everyone he committed murder," Nik answered her. "I wasn't hired to make you look like a liar, Mikayla. I was hired to find out why you were trying to make Maddix look like a killer."
"Because he is one," she said painfully.
"Then he miscalculated and spent a hell of a lot of money for nothing. Because I promise you, if he killed Eddie Foreman, then he'll pay. For nothing else, he'll pay for daring to drag you into it and endangering your life."
"What next then? Where do we go from here?"
Nik's jaw clenched. His next course of action was one he hated taking because he knew there was no way in hell he could keep Mikayla out of it.
"Kefler. Next, we talk to Kefler."
And he took care of making that appointment quickly, Mikayla thought as they pulled onto the exit to Hagerstown. Martin Kefler was waiting for them at his home office. According to Nik, Kefler claimed there wasn't a chance he was turning down a request from the woman his girlfriend spoke so highly of.
The fact that Nik wasn't happy to be taking Mikayla was apparent. His expression was hard, his gaze so icy it was brutal. He had drawn completely away from her now. She felt as though she were sitting in the truck alone, the man operating it now no more than a robot.
"Why?" she asked as they turned from the exit. "Why don't you want me with you, Nik?"
His jaw seemed to tighten further.
"You don't understand the danger," he answered, his rough voice darker, harder, than before as his hands clenched around the steering wheel.
"Explain it to me. I want to understand it, Nik. Then, when you're gone, I'll know."
He was silent for long seconds; then the muscle at his jaw flexed and tightened before he glanced at her with eyes filled with shadows.
"A long time ago," he said quietly, "I was married, Mikayla. I had a wife and a 204
child."
