All because Leland Walker, Frederick’s son, had left them to die on the side of the road.
She hadn’t known it then, couldn’t even know it for sure now. Nick had been the one to uncover the anomalies in the ten-year-old case. It had been Nick who’d interviewed the widow of one of the detectives, Nick who’d driven to Haverhill to interview a former girlfriend of Leland who’d once accused him of assault.
The details of Leland’s crimes were sketchy, but a picture was emerging of a man with a substance abuse problem and serious anger management issues, a man from an old money family in Boston who’d covered his tracks with dollar bills since he’d been a teenager.
A man now leading the field as a possible United States Senator for the state of Massachusetts.
She still had nightmares about the night at her apartment: the race down her hall with the man at her heels, the knowledge that if he caught her she was dead. The man had been choking her to death, Alexa losing consciousness, when Nick had plunged a knife into his back.
She pushed the thought away. She tried not to think about how much trauma one person could take. Tried not to think about her own breaking point.
She focused on the exercise instead, on waiting out her excitement to see Nick. It was designed to make her feel more in control, to prove that she didn’t need to see him even as she was increasingly certain she was in love with him.
If she could wait out her impatience to see him, force herself to sit through the urge to race home, the only place — except for the occasional hotel room — where they could be together without fallout from his family or her job.
The implications weren’t lost on her. The fact that they had to hide their relationship was a red flag like no other. It only proved what she already knew: she had no business dating him.
“Hey.” She looked up as José Martinez, one of her favorite colleagues, walked into her office. He dropped into one of the chairs opposite her desk with a sigh. “Want to get a drink?”
“Can’t.” She studied him. “What’s up with Heather and Luna?”
José and his wife, Heather, had had a baby girl three months earlier. They’d been in the throes of sleep deprivation ever since, José racing home as early as possible to relieve Heather before the long and sleepless night ahead.
“Luna’s been sleeping through the night,” José said. “Three nights in a row now.”
“That’s great!” Alexa said.
He grinned. “You have no idea. I feel like a different person.”
“Sorry I can’t join you for a celebratory drink,” Alexa said.
“It’s probably for the best. I’d have to make it quick anyway.” He laughed. “I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. I can’t help feeling we’re not out of the woods yet.”
“You’re not,” Alexa laughed. “Not for another, oh, eighteen years or so.”
He hoisted himself to his feet. “And on that note, I’m out.”
She laughed. “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”
“Yeah, yeah… see you tomorrow.”
She watched him leave, lifting her arms over her head to stretch out the kinks from her morning workout. After years of working together, Alexa’s trainer, Terri, still managed to find new and inventive ways to push Alexa’s body to the breaking point. As much as Alexa complained, she didn’t mind. It felt good to use her body, to push it, to prove that she wasn’t broken.
Not outwardly anyway.
She bit her lip as a familiar heaviness settled into her chest. Nick had brought her body back to life, kissing her scars and making love to her with passion that couldn’t be faked, passion that said he wanted her even with the web of lines marking the places where the doctors had put her back together.
But she still hadn’t told him about the hysterectomy that had been necessary to save her life when her uterus was punctured in the accident.
That wound felt different. It wasn’t the ghost of something that had happened in the past, something she’d overcome with months of physical therapy and years at the gym while everyone else was still sleeping. It was a living, breathing consequence of her accident, one she couldn’t overcome, one she would pay for the rest of her life.
And not just her, whoever ended up with her. She would never be able to give that man children, would never be able to have all the things most people took for granted.
She hadn’t met Nick’s family. It was way too complicated with MIS still under investigation by her office — especially since she was the one who had ultimately commissioned the deep dive on their business — but she’d imagined it a hundred times. It was apparent from the way he talked about them that he and his family were tight, that they meant the world to him. Not just his brothers but Julia and Elise too.
In the hours she and Nick had spent lying on the sofa or in bed late at night, she’d learned that Nick’s mother had passed away of cancer when Nick had been a teenager. She’d been able to hear the pain in his voice when he talked about her.
Nick’s father was an old-school Irishman, a retired cop who valued the law over everything but his family. Nick regaled her with stories from his childhood, with big gatherings where siblings and cousins ran through the house while the football game blared in the background.