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“About me, about us, about what happened a couple months ago.”
“No one knows about that,” Nick said. “Trust me.”
He’d called the same people MIS used to clean up messy crime scenes on local jobs. They were professionals, connected to the Syndicate, an organized crime consortium that was more sleek, well-oiled machine than old-school mafia.
Nick only had access to them through Nora, who had access to them through her boyfriend Braden Kane. Nick trusted them to do the job right because not doing the job right would blow back on the Syndicate, and that was something that Syndicate leadership would never allow.
“You’re sure?” she asked.
“I’m sure.” He’d put Alexa up in a hotel after the attack in her apartment, but she’d insisted on returning to her place after a few days. It had been spotless, smelling like bleach and Lysol, not a single indication that a murder had taken place there less than a week before.
She nodded and half-heartedly lifted a bite of pancake to her mouth. He watched her chew, trying to think of the best way to bring up the next thing on his mind.
“You can’t go back,” he said. “To the apartment.”
“I know.”
He tried to hide his surprise. He’d been bracing for another fight, for her determination to not let the Walkers intimidate her. “Good. How about the hotel? The one you stayed in last time.”
“I can’t afford that,” she said. “Not long term.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Nick said. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Nick…”
“What? It’s nothing,” he said.
“Maybe not, but if there’s anything that would look worse than what we’ve been doing — sleeping together, working on my case, digging for dirt on Frederick Walker — it’s you paying the bill for me to stay in a fancy hotel.”
He hesitated, all too aware of the secrets between them. “I could funnel the payment so that no one would know it was me,” he said. “It wouldn’t be connected to MIS in any way.”
She shook her head. “No, thank you.”
He set down his fork. “I fucking hate this.”
“I know,” she said. “Me too.”
“What about your parents’?” he asked. “Could you stay with them for a while? Until you find a new place at least?”
She hesitated. “I could…”
“But?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she said. “Aside from the fact that it’s a tough commute to work, I wouldn’t have any privacy and right now…”
“Believe me, I get it.” It was all he could do not to blurt out his secrets to someone in the house — Ronan, Elise, Dec, even Julia, although god knew she had enough on her plate with the baby due any minute. “So what are your other options?”
“I don’t really have any,” she said. “But I have a little savings. If I stay in a moderately priced hotel, I can swing it for a couple weeks while I look for something more permanent.”
He searched his mind for a better solution, something that wouldn’t strain Alexa’s finances, something that would keep her safer than a Holiday Inn with virtually no security, but the necessity of keeping his distance from her — at least on paper — made it impossible.
He couldn’t come up with a damn thing. Nothing she would allow anyway.
“All right.” He said it even though he hated it, even though he wanted nothing more than to whisk her away to a suite at the Four Seasons and post two of the meanest looking guys he knew outside her door.
The line between their personal relationship and the potential investigation by the AG’s office was getting thinner, the moment when she would find out the truth about MIS, when he would have to come clean about who and what he was, growing nearer.
Would she still want him then? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.
