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Nick did. Cover-ups were a rarity, but when they happened, they happened because someone was rich enough or powerful enough — or both — to pull high-level strings.
Nick slid out of the booth and threw a twenty on the table. “You’re not going to ask?”
Kyle looked up at him. “About?”
“If it’s true,” Nick said. “What they were saying on the news.”
He shook his head. “The Nick Murphy I know is a sucker for justice.”
Nick nodded, his old friend’s words echoing in his mind as he headed for the door.
2
“One more! Come on, Alexa. You’ve got this!”
Her trainer’s voice hardly made its way through the fog of pain and exhaustion weighing down Alexa’s body. Her left leg twinged and she lifted her knee, testing the range of motion before positioning herself over the barbell on the floor.
She hated deadlifts with a passion matched only by how much she loved them. After more than five years of training, she had perfect form, but she never stopped feeling like her leg would give out on her, turning traitor against her and all the work she’d done to save it.
She forced herself to face the fear the three times a week she met with her trainer, Terri Chu. She forced herself to face it the other two days a week she went to the gym on her own. She forced herself to face it during her runs in the park and every single moment of every day when pain shot through her body, reminding her that no matter how much she tried to convince herself otherwise, her body still wasn’t whole and never would be again.
She bent down and placed her hands on the barbell, then lifted the way Terri had taught her, mindful of her form, the part of her mind that was used to policing her leg constantly scanning to make sure it was stable.
She got the bar off the floor, held it in place, and exhaled.
Terri’s cheers and claps were muffled by Alexa’s own breath, the working of her body. She lowered the bar and let go. It dropped with a clatter and Terri stepped over with her hand in the air, ready for a high five.
“You did it!”
Terri was Alexa’s age, but it was hard not to feel like a wizened old woman next to her. Petite and blond with the sculpted body of a gladiator, Terri moved with the assurance of someone who never wondered if she might find herself on her ass for no reason at all except that her body had decided to give out on her. Terri didn’t have scars on her stomach that made people stare when she wore a bikini and she didn’t have to wonder if any man would still be attracted to her when he saw them.
“Thanks,” Alexa huffed, slapping Terri’s hand. She didn’t begrudge Terri her wellness or her confidence. It just made Alexa sad sometimes to know that those days had ended for her twelve years earlier on the stretch of road that had stolen Samantha, her best friend.
That had stolen the life Alexa had expected to live.
“See you Monday?” Terri asked.
“See you Monday,” Alexa said. Sweat rolled down her temples and pooled in the well of her sport’s bra between her cleavage.
She picked up her towel and wiped her face and chest, smiling at a few of the regulars as she made her way through the gym. She ducked into the safety of the locker room, grateful to be away from the thumping music that streamed through the gym’s speakers 24/7.
She’d been a member since she’d come to the end of the PT her insurance would cover after the accident. By then she’d been able to walk, although her leg had still throbbed almost all the time, the scar that ran from just above her ankle to above her knee still pink.
She’d known she wasn’t a hundred percent and had immediately signed up for personal training sessions with Melvin Howard, a former Marine who’d since moved to the country where he’d started an organic farm-to-table restaurant. He’d been just what she’d needed at the time, pushing her body to the point of pain that forced her to ice her legs before racing to class at Boston University. The workouts had been too punishing to feel good, but she’d gotten stronger, and that had been the point.
Still, by the time he’d left for his new adventure, she’d been ready to move on. After trying out a few different replacements, she’d stumbled on Terri, who had a different philosophy entirely. Working out for the joy of it, a celebration of what her body could still do, had been a relief.
She still hurt — Terri’s workouts weren’t exactly a piece of cake — but they had a different tenor than her old workouts with Melvin, back in the days when she’d had something to prove.
Now she just wanted to stay strong, to wear heels now and then, to walk up the steps instead of taking the elevator at her office downtown.
She checked her phone for the time, then stripped off her workout clothes and walked to the showers. She thought about her cases while she got ready for work, running down the ones that were in-process and the ones that were in the queue, waiting for more evidence from the FBI or local law enforcement to give them the green light.
She hadn’t intended to go to law school. Back then, before that dark night on that dark road, she hadn’t really known what her major would be. She’d only known she was going to California, that she wanted to learn how to surf, to reinvent herself outside the context of her childhood, which had been nice and safe but was still her childhood and therefore something she wanted to put behind her in the name of starting her real, grown-up life.
Then her world had shattered into a million pieces. Samantha had died and Alexa had been too sick to go to school in the fall. It had taken two years of surgeries and PT to get to the point where she could seriously think about going to college. By then Stanford felt like a dream that belonged to someone else. She’d enrolled at Boston University instead, much to her parent’s relief.
It had been the right decision. She’d been able to stay with her existing doctors, continue her workouts with Melvin, check in with her parents often enough that they didn’t have a heart attack every time she was out late. BU was a good school, and law had felt like a calling after what had happened to her, to Samantha, especially since they’d never found the guy who’d hit them, who’d left them for dead inside the twisted skeleton of Samantha’s parents’ car.
