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Ronan stood next to him, rocking the baby, who was falling asleep on Ronan’s shoulder, his little rosebud mouth hidden behind a pacifier. “That bastard,” Ronan murmured, his eyes on the TV.
“This is definitely going to complicate things,” Declan said.
“I think I’ll have some tea after all,” Alexa said, pulling her hand free from Nick’s. “Want anything?”
“I’m good.” He waited for her to be out of earshot to look at Declan. “Way to go, genius.”
“Just stating the obvious,” Declan said. “I’m sure Alexa knows it better than anybody.”
It was true, both because Alexa was a lawyer and because she’d been knee-deep in the mission to bring down Leland Walker since they’d figured out he was the one who’d hit her and Samantha all those years ago.
If anyone understood how complicated it was to investigate public officials, it was Alexa. She’d worked for the Massachusetts Attorney General up until four months earlier when she’d had to admit to her relationship with Nick, who as co-owner of MIS was the subject of an active investigation.
She’d resigned her position, but it had quickly become clear that while you could take the woman out of the law office, you couldn’t take the lawyer out of the woman, and she’d spent the last few months pouring over the data compiled by Clay, the hacker extraordinaire MIS kept on retainer. She hadn’t said it, but Nick knew she was trying to build a case against the Walkers, one that would be so irrefutable her old colleagues at the AG’s office would have to listen.
“You’re an asshole, but you’re right,” Ronan said to Declan. He looked at Nick. “This changes things.”
“The hell it does,” Nick snarled, glancing at the kitchen, where Alexa, Julia, and Elise were busy making tea.
“I’m not saying we let Walker off the hook — ”
“Good, because that fucker is still going to pay for what he did to Alexa,” Nick said. He couldn’t think about what had happened to Alexa without replaying the footage he’d seen on the local news — footage he’d found when doing background on Alexa before he knew her, before he loved her, footage of her barely able to stand, learning to walk again.
Those memories were followed by worse ones: the shattered expression on her face when she’d toldhim about her hysterectomy, the tears that had streamed down her face when she’d told him she would never be able to have children, the hungry way she sometimes looked at John Thomas when she thought no one was looking.
“I agree,” Ronan said. “Dec agrees. Don’t you, Dec?”
Declan nodded. “Fuck yes, I agree.”
Nick knew they cared about Alexa, but that wasn’t all that was at stake: the night of the attempt on Nick and Alexa’s lives at the hotel, an attack had also been staged on the Murphy house.
Everyone had come out unharmed, but it had prompted them to add more layers to their security system, and it had made the war with the Walkers personal for all the Murphys. It was one thing to come for the men. They’d known what they’d been getting into with MIS. It was something else to come for the women, for John Thomas.
That was something none of them could let stand.
“Leland is now a Senator-elect,” Ronan said. “There will be near-constant security, and the risks are greater for Clay now too.”
Nick nodded, pacified by Ronan’s agreement that they would still go after Leland Walker even as heknew Ronan was right: the stakes would be higher than ever — for everyone.
“It’s not like we’d gotten anywhere anyway,” Nick said bitterly.
He hated to admit it, would never say it aloud in front of Alexa, even though she’d undoubtedly come to the same conclusion. They’d spent the months after the hotel invasion looking for a way to bring Leland down, and preferably the whole Walker family, led by patriarch Frederick Walker, who was in the habit of paying — and threatening — Leland’s way out of trouble.
Clay had gone deep on the Walkers, and while he’d uncovered evidence of the wire transfers to people like Karen LaGarde, who’d filed an assault complaint against Leland, nothing they’d uncovered felt like enough.
Before the hotel invasion by Walker’s men, MIS had tried leaking Leland’s assault record — a record that had been suppressed by payoffs to the police the same way Frederick had paid off the detectives who’d been in charge of Alexa’s case.
It hadn’t worked. In fact, the media had been strangely quiet about the allegations. Other than a handful of armchair journalists on social media, the allegations had died a quick and painful death. Theycould only assume Frederick had put the word out that any publication seeking to bring down his son in the months leading up to the election would not be looked upon favorably by the powerful Walker family.
Finding evidence of the wire transfers wasn’t enough to turn the tide. That was the problem with moving the goalposts on right and wrong: eventually they disappeared from the field entirely.
Alexa had been painstakingly compiling the evidence, but none of them knew what to do next.
The Walkers seemed untouchable.
The thought made him want to punch something. To barge into Frederick Walker’s home and drag the man out of bed, use him as a punching bag just for the hell of it. To stand in front of television cameras and tell everything he knew about Leland Walker if only to force Leland to address what he’d done, to acknowledge Alexa’s existence.
Alexa returned to the living room holding a steaming mug. She leaned her head on Nick's shoulder and he took a deep breath. For her, he would force himself to quell his rage.
