He shook his head. “Nothing.”
He could tell from the expression on her face that she didn’t believe him, but she just took a big bite of spaghetti and slurped the noodles to make him laugh.
He did, forcing himself to squash the fear that had wormed its way into his belly as he’d thought about Alexa Nash. If the AG’s office had enough to arrest them, they’d be behind bars by now.
Alexa Nash had probably forgotten all about them.
4
Alexa woke up Saturday morning and threw on her running clothes. She headed for the front door of her basement apartment, her gaze catching on the picture of Samantha that sat on the end table next to the couch. She’d promised herself she would never forget her best friend and she never had, even though remembering was sometimes painful.
Weak sunlight leaked in through the windows, below-ground but exposed thanks to the little courtyard in front of her unit. She checked the temperature on her phone, then added another moisture-wicking fleece to her ensemble before stepping outside.
The cold air was an assault, shaking loose the last vestiges of sleep as she walked up the concrete steps that took her to the sidewalk. She lifted her knees to warm them up and turned on her music, then she adjusted her Air Pods and tucked her phone into her jacket pocket.
She started toward the park at an easy pace, scanning her body for unusual twinges or weaknesses, careful to keep her eyes on the ground to avoid icy patches. Her vigilance was second nature. She couldn’t afford to make assumptions about her body — that it would work the way it should, that if it seemed to be working the way it should it would continue doing so.
And she definitely couldn’t afford a fall.
Her parents hated that she ran outside, especially in winter, but they’d given up arguing on behalf of a treadmill. Alexa already had to make too many concessions to her body and the accident that had compromised it. Besides, running on a treadmill was easy — no obstacles, no pivots, no last-minute adjustments — and Alexa wasn’t a frequent traveler of the easy path.
The streets were already crowded, cars whooshing through the slush, people hurrying down the street, hunched into their coats and scarves for warmth as they tended to weekend errands. Running was one of the few occasions when she didn’t wonder how people saw her. Right then she must have looked like everyone else: someone healthy and fit enough to run, someone whose body wasn’t broken.
She liked that picture of herself a lot better than the other one she carried in her mind, the one where people pitied her, where they looked for the sometimes-limp, for the wounds hidden by her clothes and hair.
She picked up her pace as her body warmed up, her joints feeling lubricated and loose. Her bad leg twinged in the cold, a product of the titanium rod implanted there to hold it together, but it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary and she let her mind wander to work. She ran through her active cases as she made her way through the city, navigating around pedestrians and trash cans, jogging at the red lights to keep her heart rate up while she waited for them to turn green.
By the time she passed Trinity Church she was flying, her feet racing over the ground, the cold air moving deep into her lungs. This was why she ran on the weekends, why she braved the elements and her own fear to race through the city.
She felt free, normal, and for someone like her that was everything.
The controlled environment of the gym was good for building strength and stamina, but when it came to liberation it didn’t hold a candle to the sensation of running, her heart pumping, her body moving in perfect synchronicity like it had been made for exactly that purpose.
She hit Copley Square and raced across the brick in front of the church. The square was small, but the detour took her off the city streets for a few minutes and gave her something to look at, and it was quiet in winter, with only a handful of people and a few dog walkers in the park.
She crossed the square and passed the fountains, turned off for the winter, to enter the path that ran diagonally through the grassy areas, now covered with snow. The ground was wet, slush clinging to the edges of the path, and she moved around any of the spots that looked like they might be slippery.
She’d hit her second wind, that legendary moment all runners experienced when they’d pushed past the point of exhaustion. Endorphins were pumping through her body now, making her feel almost high.
Making her feel invincible.
She picked up her pace as she neared the end of the path, the city just beyond the square. There she would have to slow down again, and she pumped her arms hard, wanting to enjoy sprinting the final stretch in the square.
She was almost to the edge, a split second from slowing her pace, when a dog, clearly giving chase to something, burst onto the path from the snow-covered grass. She tried to stop before they collided and felt a sharp twinge in her leg just before the ground gave way underneath her, her feet slipping out from under her.
Her hands shot out, reflexively trying to brace her fall, but she still went down hard on her right side, the shock of concrete rippling through her bones like an echo.
She froze, moving into triage mode: could she move her limbs, her leg? Had she shaken loose any of the hardware in her old injury?
She turned off her music. Cold was seeping from the concrete into her hip, her heart racing, but she had to gather the courage to try and stand, still praying she hadn’t fucked herself up by falling.
“Are you okay?”
She looked up to find a man staring down at her. It took her less than five seconds to realize it was Nick Murphy.
5
Nick had seen it happen: the retriever chasing a terrier across the snowy lawn in the park, the woman moving like lightning toward it, seemingly unaware that she was on a collision course with not one but two dogs.