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Except now it seemed she hadn’t.
He forced himself to focus on Clay. “What happened?”
“I have spiders crawling the internet for anything related to the Walkers,” Clay explained. “It’s the M.O. anytime we’re stuck and need a break.”
Nick knew from working with Clay in the past that a spider was code that ticked through the internet 24/7, looking for a hit on certain words and phrases. “You had a spider on Karen?”
Clay looked insulted. “Dude, where do you think all those data dumps come from? I have a spider on everything: every woman Leland has dated, every known business associate of him and Frederick, every member of the Walker family, every city where they have property or business dealings. It would be too easy for the break we need to slip through the cracks otherwise. There’s just too much data.”
“So you got a hit on Karen,” Nick said.
“Yesterday,” Clay confirmed. “Took me to an article in the local paper in Haverhill. House fire in the building Karen lived in, the one she owned.”
“Was anyone else hurt?” Nick asked.
Clay shook his head. “That’s what’s weird. Firehappened on a day Karen had called out sick to work. Said she had the flu. Almost everyone else in the building was at work. A woman and her kid were home but managed to get out. They were treated for smoke inhalation, but according to the article, they were released.”
Nick rubbed his jaw, trying not to picture Karen, sick and asleep, dying alone in the apartment building that had been her escape plan from Boston and Leland Walker. “What’s the word on the cause of the fire?”
“Local fire department is still investigating,” Clay said. “You know how these things go.”
Arson investigations took a long time, especially in a small town like Haverhill that probably didn’t have a ton of experience with it.
He sighed. “Fuck.”
“Yeah,” Clay said. “It really sucks.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Nick said. “And you’re right — there’s no way it’s a coincidence. First Delaney and now Karen?”
“That’s my thinking too,” Clay said.
“Feels like tying up loose ends to me.” Dread ran through Nick’s veins like blood as he thought about Alexa, just another loose end for the Walkers. “It makes sense, in a fucked up kind of way. Lelandwins, there’s a bunch of attention on him right after the election, so Frederick instructs him to lay low until he’s sworn in.”
“And now that he’s sworn in, Frederick has his sights set higher than the Senate and figures there will never be a better time to cover Leland’s tracks,” Clay finished.
“Sounds about right.”
“What does this mean for Alexa?” Clay asked. He’d spent hours with Alexa over the previous few months, the two of them a data collecting and data analysis dream team. Clay’s expertise at finding information dovetailed perfectly with Alexa’s expertise at making sense of it.
“It means we have to get her into hiding.”
Clay snorted. “Good luck with that.”’
Nick scowled. Clay wasn’t wrong to be skeptical, but the last thing Nick wanted to think about was the insurmountable odds of getting Alexa to agree to hide out while Nick, Ronan, and Declan dealt with the Walkers.
“She’ll just have to listen,” Nick said. “There’s no other option at this point.”
Clay still looked doubtful as he leaned forward and hit a few keys on his keyboard. “There is a bright spot.”
“A bright spot?”
Karen’s death had eclipsed the sun like a bank of clouds moving in front of their efforts to take down the Walkers. They knew the Walkers were taking out anyone who could tie Leland to a crime, but it didn’t change anything in terms of Nick’s strategy: Leland was still a Senator in the public eye, still a difficult target for the only kind of justice Leland deserved.
“I got another hit,” Clay said, his eyes on the glowing monitor.
Nick sat up straighter. “Besides Karen?”
“Besides Karen,” Clay said. “Believe it or not, I got a hit on Juska.”
