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As she looked at the sink, a new possibility came to mind. She played it out a few different ways, then dropped the biscuit in the bag and made her way to the vanity.
20
Nick watched as Clay laid out the stack of papers in his hand one by one, spreading them across the kitchen island as he spoke.
“I did what you said and searched all the properties in Boston tied to the Walkers, directly or otherwise. There’s no guarantee we got them all — we don’t even know if we found all the shell companies — but these are the properties connected to the ones we did find,” Clay said.
Nick watched as he laid out the papers. The thought had come to him on the way home from Alexa’s parents’ house the day before: assuming Alexa was alive, and he had to assume she was because anything else was unimaginable, where could they be keeping her?
It was more than likely that Juska was the one who’d taken her, but Nick was betting Juska was still on the Walker payroll. After all, he’d been successful so far, intimidating Alexa, nearly killing Nick at the hotel, shaking the Murphy household with the fire. Plus, he’d eliminated Richard Delaney and Karen LaGarde, and those were just the things Nick knew about.
Juska was undoubtedly well paid, but he didn’t strike Nick as the kind of guy who’d invest in property, and he would need a safe place to keep Alexa, someplace nobody would ask questions.
That meant no hotel, no nosy neighbors.
Which had led Nick to the Walkers. He already knew about the shell companies, knew the Walkers had an assortment of investments tied to them, laundromats and dry cleaners and construction companies, and yes, property.
“How many are there?” Ronan asked. He was standing at the island holding John Thomas, whose head bobbed on his tiny neck as he looked around.
Julia reached out and smoothed the baby’s hair.
“Sixteen,” Clay said. “But not all of them are good candidates.”
“Which ones are good candidates?” Russell asked.
Nick was glad Alexa’s father was asking questions. It showed he was still engaged, that he hadn’t sunk so far into despair that he was checked out. He’d been at the house for nearly forty-eight hours, and Nick had set him up in the extra guest room, hoping he’d take advantage of the bed to sleep.
Clay scanned the pieces of paper and started plucking some of them out one by one. “These ones,” he said, fanning out six pieces of paper. “Three warehouses by the harbor, two condemned apartment buildings, and an abandoned factory. The rest are active businesses or rental properties with tenants. It’s still possible they’re keeping her in one of those locations — or somewhere we haven’t found yet — but since the clock is ticking, I’d focus on these ones first.”
Nick’s stomach tightened at Clay’s mention of the clock. Alexa had been gone for over forty-eight hours, and every hour that went by meant it was less likely they would find her alive, especially since they hadn’t had a ransom or any other demand from the Walkers.
He tried not to think about it, but his police training was too ingrained. He knew the odds even if he tried to deny them.
Declan took the papers from Clay’s hand andshuffled through them. “Southie, Field’s Corner, Roxbury, Mattapan,” he said, ticking off the neighborhoods represented on paper.
“Figures,” Elise muttered.
Boston was diverse and gentrifying at a shocking rate, but all of the areas named by Dec had less than sterling reputations.
“It makes sense,” Nick said. The neighborhoods represented by the six locations were rough and urban, low income areas where people mostly kept to themselves. If Juska wanted to keep Alexa someplace where people were unlikely to ask questions, any one of them would be good places to do it.
“What do we do?” Russell asked.
Russell had stayed on top of the police, who had now made Alexa’s disappearance official. They’d stopped by the house to interview Nick about the last time he’d seen Alexa, but he couldn’t tell them much more than they already knew.
Their involvement didn’t give Nick much hope. They were obviously still skeptical she’d been taken against her will, and it would take them awhile to work through protocol for disappearances like hers, protocol that was irrelevant when Nick already knew who’d taken her.
On the other hand, it wasn’t a bad thing to havethe police out of the way for a couple of days, especially with this new information from Clay. Once Alexa’s disappearance became serious by BPD’s standards, Nick would be a prime suspect, both because boyfriends always were and because there had been so much heat surrounding Nick and Alexa in the past few months. After that, everything he did would be under a microscope and finding Alexa himself would be a lot harder.
“We case these places,” Nick said, answering Russell’s question. “Stay out of the way, see if anyone suspicious comes or goes, if there’s any sign of Juska.”
Would Leland or Frederick Walker show up to confront Alexa? It depended on how much of the Walkers’ motivation was a result of self-preservation versus narcissism.
“I agree,” Ronan said, patting the baby’s back. “We can each take two locations, stake them out for a few hours, see if anything rings an alarm.”
“I can take one,” Russell said.
“You can come with me,” Nick said.
