Nik moved to the green steel door and checked the peephole. Sure enough, the other man stood there, his expression stoic as he stared at the closed door.
Gripping the knob, Nik opened the door slowly and moved back to allow the other man to enter.
Maddix entered, his shoulders straight and tense as he reached back with one hand to rub at the tense muscles in tight circles. In the other hand, he carried a briefcase.
Nik stared at that briefcase, knowing what it contained.
Hell.
"Two hundred eighty thousand dollars." Maddix set the briefcase on the small table just inside the door as Nik moved to the other side.
Maddix stared at the case, sighed heavily, then looked back to Nik. "There it is," he said. "It's yours."
Nik stepped to the table, laid the briefcase flat, then flipped open the locks.
He flipped through the stacks of bills. Yep, that looked like two hundred and eighty thousand dollars to him. A fee for a favor owed.
Fuck.
There were days he wished he hadn't been raised to understand what honor meant. To understand what a favor owed truly was. Because standing there now, Nik could feel his gut clenching at the knowledge that he was stepping over a line.
He clicked the locks back into place and pushed the briefcase toward Maddix with a disgruntled glance toward the other man.
"It's all there." Maddix stared back at Nik in confusion.
"So hold on to it," Nik growled.
Maddix stared back at Nik silently, confusion darkening his eyes. "But you demanded the fee up front," he reminded Nik.
That line was staring him in the face, tempting him to cross it, to be the bastard the past was turning him into. To cross it now meant crossing it forever. There would be no turning back.
There would be no sunlit wheat-colored hair spread across his chest. No amethyst eyes staring back at him with true trust. Trust that wouldn't be later marred by the money that now sat between him and a job he knew better than to take.
"Take your money and get the hell out of here." Nik injected enough ice in his voice to ensure there was no chance of detecting the conflicting emotions raging inside him or the choices he didn't want to make at the moment.
"What . . ." Panic reflected in Maddix's face.
"I owe you the f**king favor," Nik stated coldly. "No fee required. Keep your money, Maddix. Maybe you can try to pay me off if I find out you're lying to me." He made certain his smile was colder than his eyes. "But I doubt it would work."
He'd hoped Maddix couldn't access the funds. Nik knew, despite Maddix's alibis, that there were indeed federal eyes watching for large withdrawals of personal funds that would hint at a hired killing.
He'd stared into eyes that hinted at dreams, at innocence. If he found out the innocence was true, then heaven help anyone daring to harm her.
Where the f**k had that come from?
"She gets to you, doesn't she?" Maddix shook his head. "I knew that picture would do it. It's the eyes."
Nik stared back at him, realizing now, as he had instinctively suspected earlier that day, that he was being played.
"I'll call you if I need to talk to you," Nik informed Maddix. "Until then, get the hell out of my face and pretend you don't know me. Or I'll walk away, Maddix. Right after I help her string your ass up."
And he could do it. He would do it. It wouldn't matter how many alibis Maddix had; Nik could destroy every damned one.
"I don't have to worry about that, Nik." Maddix picked up the briefcase and moved for the door. "And I can honestly say I have no damned idea who you are."
Nik stood back and watched as Maddix moved past him to the door. Maddix left the room, pausing only long enough to throw Nik one last confused glance before leaving.
Nik kicked the door closed, a curse escaping his lips as he raised his hands and linked them behind his neck before pacing into the bedroom.
The wildness burning inside him was only growing as the years passed. He managed to hold it back most days by throwing himself into a mission, by becoming the cold, unemotional robot he'd turned himself into ten years before when Jordan had offered him the chance of a lifetime.
A chance to walk away. To fight without rules. To make a difference.
Had he made a difference?
Not enough of one.
He still couldn't sleep at night. He still awoke to the sounds of gunfire, of his daughter's screams before he could reach the car she had died in.
If he had made enough of a difference, wouldn't those nightmares have left him by now? Wouldn't he be able to sleep in peace?
He stared at the bed, perfectly made, large, comfortable. The Suites had near-perfect beds. And he knew from experience he would find no sleep in them.
He left the helmet lying on the couch as he grabbed the keys to the Harley and left the room. Closing the door tight behind him, Nik made his way from the hotel to the shadowed back lot where he'd parked, and quickly checked the bike over before straddling it and giving the key a quick twist.
If he couldn't sleep, that left work. And he had plenty of work to do here. If he was going to figure out if Maddix was lying, then the place to start was with the girl.
All good girls had their secret little vices. There was no such thing as innocence or purity. Mikayla Martin might have a lot of good in her, but Nik was betting she was hiding a lot of bad as well. The key to getting past the good girl's defenses was to find her vices.
She might not party, but she did like to dance. She didn't have a steady boyfriend, but she was prone to date quite often. She was definitely a mystery.
Pulling from the parking lot, Nik hit the brightly lit streets of Wesel Boulevard while heading for the Cancun Cantina just minutes away.
Tehya's initial investigation into Mikayla showed a girl who loved her job, her family, her friends, and having fun in general. She was serious when she had to be, but she enjoyed her social life.
She was a different kind of woman, he thought. He wasn't certain if he knew how to deal with a woman who enjoyed her social life just as well as she enjoyed her job.
He was used to women who were somber, cynical, bitter, and/or psychotic. Women who had lived on the dark side too long, for whatever reason. Even those who worked with the team had their mental scars, their dark sides. They'd seen too much, knew too much about the evil that existed within the shadows.
She didn't look like a woman who knew anything about evil. She would be the type of woman that would provide a man the calm within the storm. Or would she remind him of everything he had never known or had and the innocence would be something to resent?