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She made her way through the darkened office, her earlier excitement at the prospect of seeing Nick replaced with a knot in her stomach.
She didn’t know what she’d expected. She’d known she would eventually get the report from the investigator assigned to the Murphy case. It’s not like she thought she’d be able to remain ignorant about MIS forever. Wasn’t that the point of ordering the investigation?
She could have shut it down six weeks earlier, could have told Imani there was nothing there. Instead she’d authorized one of their investigators to get to work digging deeper. She’d done it because she had to know, because even though Nick had saved her ass in her apartment, Alexa had been left with more than one question.
How was it that Nick had reacted so calmly to the aftermath? To the dead body in her hallway? How had he known who to call to clean up the mess? What had happened between the time Nick had spirited her out of the apartment to a hotel and the time she’d returned to her place to find it in perfect order and smelling of bleach?
And even though she’d known then that she was falling hard for him, she hadn’t been able to let the questions go unanswered. She could have asked. Nick might even have told her the truth, but deep down she hadn’t been ready to know. The investigator was a way of buying herself time, but now it was time to pay the piper.
She forced herself to take deep breaths, trying to stave off the anxiety humming through her body as she stepped into the elevator. There was no point worrying about it. Either MIS was exactly what it purported to be — a private investigative firm specializing in cyber intelligence — or it wasn’t.
And if it wasn’t, odds were it was exactly what the media had reported when the story had first broken: a highly illegal organization that did whatever was necessary to make the guilty pay for their crimes when justice hadn’t been served by the system.
The question was: if it was true, what would she do about it?
3
Nick had just pulled into one of the coveted spots in front of Alexa’s building when his phone rang. He glanced at the display.
“Hey, Clay.”
“You busy?” Clay Reddy was one of many cyber experts on retainer at MIS, but he was by far the best and most trusted. He ran a small team of independent contractors who were given work on a need-to-know basis in just enough detail to get the job done. No one person was given enough information to sink MIS if they decided to grow a conscience — or if they found themselves in a position to trade information for a plea.
Nick had never met most of them, had no desire to meet them. That’s why Nick paid Clay: Clay handled his team, MIS dealt with Clay.
“I’ve got a few minutes,” Nick said, staring through the windshield at Alexa’s basement apartment. The lights glowed softly from inside, and he had a flash of her, sitting on the couch in leggings and a T-shirt. Her silky dark hair would be piled into a messy bun on top of her head, her computer balanced on her lap while she waited for him, her feet bare now that the weather was becoming warmer.
He pushed away the image of the man holding her throat in his hands, choking the life out of her in the hallway of her apartment. There was a time for that memory, a time when it would be useful, but now was not that time.
“I’ve been running down that suggestion you gave me a couple weeks back,” Clay said.
“Yeah?” Nick had known from the beginning that something was off about the hit-and-run that had almost killed Alexa after her high school graduation. It had been one of the things that had first intrigued him about her — all the news stories of her as a teenager, painstakingly putting one foot in front of the other with a physical therapist, contrasted against the steely woman who’d marched into the offices of MIS to make it clear she was going to find out the truth about them.
He hadn’t been surprised when his former partner from Boston PD had given him a heads-up on the case’s anomalies: the detective who’d retired six months later, the other detective who’d been rapidly promoted while maintaining a close friendship with Frederick Walker, patriarch of one of Boston’s most influential families.
He had been surprised to learn that Frederick’s son Leland, heir apparent to the family fortune and a shoe-in for Senator in the upcoming election, was involved, that he had a long history of drug abuse and assault, that Daddy had a long history of cleaning up his messes.
“You were right,” Clay said.
“You found something?” Nick asked. He’d gotten his first break on the Walkers by talking to Karen LaGarde, a former girlfriend of Leland’s who’d filed assault charges five years earlier, then promptly disappeared after the charges were dropped.
It was Karen who’d warned Nick about Frederick’s willingness to go to any length to protect his son, Karen who’d told him Frederick had once sent a man to break into her apartment with a “suggestion” that she drop the charges against Leland.
The revelation had led Nick to a new possibility. Namely, all the people who had once worked for the Walkers that were no longer in their employ.
“It’s not as long a list as you might think,” Clay said. “Most of their employees have been with them for years, some for decades.”
“I bet the bastard has dirt on most of them,” Nick said. “It’s the only way to guarantee they stay quiet about what they see.”
“Wouldn’t put it past him, but I think I hit the jackpot on one of the former employees,” Clay said. “Name’s Allen Clatcher. Used to be Frederick’s driver.”
“Just a driver?” Nick knew enough about powerful people to know anyone who worked in a confidential capacity probably served more than one purpose.
“Hard to say.”
“Where is he now?” Nick asked.
“That’s the interesting thing. The guy officially left the Walker’s employ four years ago and no one’s heard from him since,” Clay said.
