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“Does he know we were in Havana?” she asked, ignoring his last statement. “Frederick Walker? It can’t be a coincidence, can it?”
“It’s not a coincidence,” he said.
“How would he know?” she asked.
He had a flash of Allen Clatcher, bloodied and beaten, unconscious on the tile floor of his house in Cuba.
Nick should have killed him. MIS’ business was death. There was no other reason anyone hired them. His sister, Nora, worked for an organization with a similar mission in California, but they were more open-minded about the tools of vengeance, holding that bankrupting someone or outing their criminal activity to their families was sometimes a more effective punishment than the easy out of death.
MIS only stepped in when someone had used up all their chances at redemption. When court records and evidence files and MIS’ own surveillance confirmed the target had earned the ultimate form of vengeance, when MIS knew that person was a danger to society and unlikely to be brought to justice.
Nick had let his conscience get the better of him in Cuba, had thought Clatcher was nothing more than a lackey of Walker’s, had thought maybe Clatcher even had a conscience given that he’d left Walker’s employ.
Had thought about Clatcher’s two daughters.
“Nick?” Alexa prompted, pulling him from his thoughts. “Do you think Clatcher contacted Walker after you left?”
He’d been vague with Alexa about his interaction with Allen Clatcher, had told her only that he’d interrogated the man and received confirmation that Leland Walker had a history of trouble, that Frederick had paid his son’s way out of it many times over.
She’d seen the dried blood on his hands, his bruised knuckles, but she hadn’t asked for any more detail than he gave.
Nick took a drink of his coffee. “He’s the only one I saw.”
“But whoever Frederick sent came to my apartment, not your house,” she said. “How do they know I was with you?”
“I don’t think they do.” Nick had thought about it, had gone over the possibilities a hundred times in the hours since the police had arrived at Alexa’s apartment, the hours afterward that they’d spent filling out the police report and answering questions about the “personal nature” of the break-in, alluded to by the officers on-scene because of the empty picture frame in Alexa’s living room. “But I do think they know we’ve been seeing each other.”
“So they’ve been… watching us?” she asked, her face tuning a shade paler. “Watching me?”
He forced himself to breathe through the fury that threatened to take over when he imagined some creep watching Alexa, peering through her windows while she worked on the sofa or fell asleep on the couch, watching her walk in and out of her gym in the morning, following her to work.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
She nodded. “I should have known.”
“What do you mean?”
“Here we are,” the waitress said, setting a giant waffle piled high with bananas and whipped cream in front of Nick. He bit his tongue while she set Alexa’s pancakes down. “Can I get you anything else?”
“We’re good.”
“Enjoy!”
He waited for her to leave. “What do you mean you should have known?” he asked Alexa.
She picked up her fork and bit her lip. “A couple months ago someone slashed my tires at the gym.”
“Someone…” He looked at her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She shrugged. “Things were… weird between us at the time.” She poured syrup on her pancakes. “I didn’t even know for sure that it was tied to the Walkers.”
He worked to stay calm. He wasn’t angry at Alexa. It was the thought of someone stalking her, of someone hurting her, that made him feel like punching something.
“I think it’s safe to say it was tied to the Walkers,” Nick said. “You couldn’t have known it then, but after talking to Karen LaGarde and Clatcher, after what happened at your place, it fits their M.O.”
She picked up her fork to take a bite, then set it down. “Do you think the cops were suspicious?”
Nick studied her face. “About you?”
