Turner’s brows went up. “Her father?”

“Could be an accident. Could be a lot of shit. That is, could be if her father wasn’t Vincent Shade and known for doin’ that crap. But she said she ‘earned’ them. You have an accident, you ever use that terminology?”

Eric turned to his vodka rocks and lifted it, muttering, “No.”

“She never smiles,” Nick said as Turner took a drink.

His friend gave his gaze back to Nick but he didn’t speak.

“Not true, twice. Fucked her countless times, had her at my place every night for weeks. Ate dinner with her. Watched mindless TV. Saw her smile twice and both of them barely counted. Felt her smile but didn’t see them. She’d never let me in, Eric. Not because she’s protecting her father, because, if she does and she gets caught, what’ll she get? She knows. I saw those scars so I fuckin’ know. I’m not gonna fail in my mission but the slim chance I do and she gets caught between him and me, he’ll make her pay. And I’m not gonna be responsible for that.”

“She’s part of his business, Nick,” Turner reminded him.

“She hates her mother. I get a sense she’s relatively tight with her sister but that only goes so far. But she never talks about him. It’s like he doesn’t exist. And it’s not because we were both keepin’ shit to ourselves because that’s the way it is with people like us. She’s the most inaccessible person I’ve ever met. But if she opens up even minutely, lookin’ into her eyes when it’s there, it’s like falling into a pit of misery.”

“Jesus,” Turner muttered.

“Yeah,” Nick muttered back, remembering that look in Olivia’s eyes and shifting to the bar to grab his drink.

“If it’s her father who did that to her, why doesn’t she leave?” Turner asked.

Nick threw back a healthy pull before answering.

“The entirety of the small of her back to along the top of her hips. Not a lot of space but too much for what happened to it.” He turned his eyes to Turner. “Mutilated, man. Not even a centimeter of healthy skin. That at the hands of Daddy. Whatever she did to earn it, she learned. That lore in Denver?” He shook his head but said, “She learned it. Fuck yeah, Eric. She learned. But she learned privately. And she’s shit scared of it happening again. She’s bound, man. A prisoner in tight skirts and expensive shoes who lives in a mansion.”

“You take him down, you’re not gonna save her,” Eric stated.

“I won’t walk over her to take him down either.”

“She’s gonna know it’s you,” Eric pointed out.

Nick felt his mouth get tight and turned back to his drink.

She was. There was no stopping it.

“Nick,” Turner called.

Nick looked to his friend. “She will. And she’ll definitely get where I was at when I started things with her. But she’ll also know I didn’t end it that way. And she’ll know it was her that earned that respect. It might not be much, but it’ll be something.”

“Buddy, she’s your best way in there,” Eric reminded him.

Nick threw back more whisky and didn’t respond.

“Murder has no statute of limitations,” Eric went on. “You testify against Harkin, he’ll get the death penalty, takin’ out a federal agent.”

Nick looked again to his friend. “Not that I haven’t shared this with you a hundred fuckin’ times but maybe this time you’ll let it sink in. I come out as the confidential informant I was and openly rat on Harkin, Shade feels nothing. And it’s not just Harkin but Shade who’s gotta pay. And Georgia Shade is a wildcard, but she’s a Shade. She’ll be about retribution. And I’m not big on the idea of entering WITSEC, if that’s even offered to me for the low-level player that is Harkin. I’m also not big on puttin’ my family’s asses on the line. That happened once because of Vincent Shade, I’m not gonna let it happen again. I don’t disappear into witness protection and a miracle happens and no Shade wreaks vengeance, a rat in my business, I’ll lose every client I got. And I kinda like to eat, Eric.”

Eric’s lips thinned again, not a big fan of anyone talking to him that way, but he still got Nick so he also nodded.

Nick turned away and said no more.

Eric fell silent with him.

Minutes later, Eric broke the silence.

“I think of a way in, we’ll talk.”

“Appreciated,” Nick muttered into his glass, lifted his eyes and caught the bartender’s attention.

He got another drink.

So did Eric.

He caught the girl at the other side of the bar looking at him two more times.

He went home alone.

* * * * *

11:17 – That Night

Nick stood at his kitchen counter, his fingers wrapped around another glass of whisky, a framed photograph held in his other hand.

The picture was of Hettie. A woman who looked like a girl. A pretty girl. A mature girl.

But a girl.

When she was alive, Nick had thought she’d always look like a girl and would do just that until the day she died. He’d thought this thinking that day would be decades in the future.

But in the end, in a way he hated, it had turned out he was right.

Blonde hair, it had been thin-ish but it was soft. Big blue eyes. Freckles on her nose.

She could act like a dork. She was sometimes klutzy. She had no problem being a big goof.