AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She made her way around the desk and walked toward the elevator. Recognition slammed through her even before she reached the rectangular object, and her heart rate kicked up again, her breath coming fast and shallow.
She looked around before bending to pick it up even though she already knew she was alone, knew whoever had come to the office had meant not to harm her — not today — but to leave the photograph for her to find.
She picked it up, her mind immediately flashing to the day it had been taken: a football game senior year of high school. For a few seconds she was there, could smell the popcorn from the concession stand, hear the crowd cheering, feel Samantha’s warm body pressed to hers as they huddled together to take the picture.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen the picture. It wasn’t one she’d displayed like the one of Samantha she’d kept on the end table in her old apartment, the one she now kept in the bedroom she shared with Nick.
This was one of the pictures she kept in a box in her closet — one she used to keep in a box in hercloset back when she’d had her own place. She’d moved it to a storage unit with the rest of her stuff when she’d moved in with Nick and his family.
But someone had found it, either back when her apartment had been broken into or in the storage unit since then.
There was no question that whoever it was worked for the Walkers. In spite of the silence in the office, she heard the message loud and clear.
We know where you are. We can always find you. We can always get to you.
You’ll never be safe. Never.
8
Nick sat in his car, his eyes on the balcony beyond the green that ran through the center of Pinckney Street. He’d rented a town car for the occasion, reasoning that in the Louisburg Square neighborhood of Beacon Hill he was less likely to be suspicious if he looked like someone’s driver.
All of Beacon Hill was a bastion of old Boston money, but no area as much as Louisburg Square, home to the rich so far removed from the origin of their family’s wealth they probably didn’t even know how it had been earned. The Walkers’ brownstone had been in the family for over a hundred years and was flanked by the homes of a Vanderbilt and an heir to a condiment fortune.
The neighborhood together with the home’ssecurity system would make his mission a little more challenging, but far from impossible.
The light in the room beyond the balcony on the second floor winked out. Nick checked his phone: eleven p.m.
Right on schedule.
He pressed a button on his phone and put it to his ear.
“Yo,” Clay said when he answered. “You ready?”
“Ready.”
“Wait five minutes,” Clay said. He hung up without saying goodbye.
If anybody else were on the other end of the phone, Nick would want confirmation that the security system had been cut, but he’d trusted Clay with his life more times than he could count.
He was still alive. That was good enough for him.
He marked the time on his phone, his thoughts turning to Alexa. He’d been livid when she told him about going to the office alone, but even as the anger had flooded his body he’d known it was a mask for his fear. Someone had known she was there, had known she was alone.
He didn’t know why they hadn’t made an attempt on her life then and there. Richard Delaney was dead. So was Karen LaGarde. Why not Alexa? Was itbecause of Nick and his brothers? Because of MIS? Because after the siege on the hotel — a siege that had ended with two of Walker’s men dead and one on the run — Frederick Walker knew killing Alexa would mean making a permanent enemy of them?
It was a narcissistic line of thought. Frederick Walker wasn’t afraid of them.
Which meant he was probably toying with them, making it clear he could come for Alexa any time he wanted, showing Nick who was really in charge.
What a sick fuck. No wonder Leland was a psycho.
Alexa had tried to hide her fear, but Nick hadn’t been fooled: the incident in the office, the picture of her and Samantha that had been left as a massage, had shaken her. She’d gone white when he’d told her about Karen LaGarde’s death. She hadn’t even hesitated when he’d suggested they take a trip to Spain.
He would use the time to convince her she had to go into hiding when they returned — not in Boston at the Murphy house but into deep hiding somewhere the Walkers would never find her. He felt hollowed out at the idea of being without her, but it was the only way to keep her safe while he,Ronan, and Dec figured out how to neutralize the threat of the Walkers once and for all.
He looked at his phone. Six minutes had passed since his call to Clay.
He put on the black cap sitting in the passenger seat, reached for the backpack on the floor of the back seat, and got out of the car.
