“We all wanted to bring down Manifest once we knew what they were doing,” Ronan said.
“We wouldn’t have gotten far enough to figure it out if Elise hadn’t been Julia’s sister. We hit a wall on Elise’s case for three months. The only reason we continued to expend company resources, the only reason we — including Nora — had your back in Greece was because you were in love with Julia and were determined to save her sister,” Nick said. “I love Elise like a sister. I’m glad it worked out the way it did. But at the time we were burning resources, exposing ourselves to Manifest, for a pro bono case with no leads.”
“So I owe you now?” Ronan asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“You don’t owe me shit.” Nick turned for the door. “I just thought maybe you’d understand.”
16
Alexa sat on the bed, the walls of the hotel muffling the sound of the city outside. She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there, but she knew it had still been daylight when she’d mustered the courage to call Pat Heffernan, the investigator assigned to MIS' case.
She’d originally planned to wait until Monday morning when she went back into work, but the rally had loosened something inside her, an appetite for the truth she’d been missing the past few weeks.
She’d been deluding herself. About everything.
About Leland Walker, about her own commitment to the law, about Nick and his business and their relationship. She hadn’t known the truth and she hadn’t wanted to know, hadn’t wanted to have to choose.
But seeing Leland Walker on the rally stage, his charisma winning over the people around her, she’d had no choice but to face it: Leland Walker was a sociopath, perfectly capable of hiding the evil that lurked inside him, wrapping his callous disregard for others in a smile and a suit.
After she’d gotten over the sick feeling in her stomach, she’d felt something unexpected — relief. She didn’t have to guess anymore, didn’t have to read into Leland’s actions, didn’t have to imagine that maybe, just maybe, he was a very sick man in the throes of an addiction and mental illness that needed care and treatment.
Because as far as she knew, there was no treatment for a sociopath.
She wasn’t sure what she’d do with the information, but she’d felt clearer, less conflicted, and she’d come back to the hotel, taken a shower, and called Pat, reasoning that it would be better to speak to him outside of office hours, to get whatever news he had when she would have some space to consider it.
But she’d been wrong. However prepared she thought she’d been, prepared to hear the truth about MIS, it hadn’t been enough.
She’d hung up the phone and sat on the bed as daylight had turned to darkness, the lights of the city shining through the hotel’s sheer curtains, some of them winking out as it got later and later.
She jumped as a knock sounded from the other side of the hotel door. A glance at her phone told her it was after one a.m. She hadn’t heard from Nick for hours, since he’d left the beach with his family to take Julia to the hospital.
She checked her phone again and saw that there was a new text, sent from Nick a half hour earlier. She hadn’t even heard it come in.
On my way. Is that okay?
He would have been worried when she didn’t answer, would have come to check for himself that she was all right. Still, she approached the door cautiously, both because she knew she couldn’t take anything for granted and because seeing Nick was as much a minefield now as another one of Frederick Walker’s thugs.
“Who is it?” she asked through the door.
“It’s me.”
She hesitated, then opened the door.
“Hey.” He was carrying a black duffel bag, his face drawn and tired, shadows under his eyes. “I texted. You okay?”
“I’m fine.” She stood back and held open the door.
He walked past her into the hotel room and set down his duffel. She thought he might pull her into his arms, but he seemed nervous, pacing the floor of the small room and running a hand through his hair.
She leaned against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest.
He stopped pacing and looked at her. “Julia had the baby. A boy, John Thomas.”
She didn’t know what to do with the news, didn’t know how to make the jump from the birth of a new Murphy to what she now knew about their company. Did she ignore the news and launch into what she’d learned? Did she even know what she was going to do with it?
The question surprised her. There was no question what she would do: she would tell Imani the truth. She would open an official investigation into MIS, start subpoenaing documents, let it unfold however it unfolded.
That was her job.