“That wasn’t me,” the other guard replied.

There was a moment of silence when the two men realized what that meant.

Mack grabbed Noah buy the arm and hauled him up. “Run,” he hissed.

The last thing they heard as they hit the stairs was a disgusted cry. “Oh my God. What is that smell?”

“I think I shit myself.” The Russian could barely walk much less run downstairs.

“Then you’re walking home,” Mack hissed. “You nearly got us caught!”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Noah gagged, gasping for air. “What the fuck? What the fuck is wrong with him?”

“He has digestive issues.”

“Oh my God, it’s like he slaughtered a cow in his colon.”

They burst through the back door of the delivery bay and ran down the alley. A squeal of tires greeted them as the van pulled up. Liv threw open the door. “Get in!”

Mack jumped in first, followed by Noah, and lastly the Russian.

“What the hell happened in there?” Liv yelled.

Noah pointed at the Russian. “He farted.”

“Forget all that,” Hop growled from the driver’s seat. “Did we get it?”

Mack slumped against the wall of the van. “We got it.”

Noah hauled his laptop onto his legs, briefly let his head fall back against the wall so he could catch his breath, and then powered it up. He shoved the thumb drive in.

Mack looked at Liv. He wanted to put his arms around her but held off. She looked skittish again, worried. Probably it was because of what had just happened and had nothing to do with them, but he wasn’t going to take any chances.

“This is going to take me a while,” Noah said. “I need to go through all this shit and see what’s here.”

“Fine,” Mack panted. “The Russian needs a shower anyway.”

“False alarm,” the Russian said. “It was just a fart.”

The drive back to Mack’s house was quiet and tense. Noah carried his laptop into the house and set it up at the island in the kitchen. Mack handed out cold beers.

“How long?” he asked Noah.

“I don’t know,” Noah said, ignoring the beer. “Maybe an hour. Maybe twenty minutes. Leave me alone.”

Mack caught Liv’s gaze. “I’m going to go change my clothes,” he said, hoping she got his hint. The hint being, I’m going to take my clothes off, and it would be cool if you did too.

She didn’t or was just back to being standoffish. “I’ll wait down here,” she said.

But when he came back down ten minutes later, she was gone. He found Noah, the Russian, and Hop wearing matching expressions of oh shit in front of the computer.

“What?” Mack growled. “Where’d she go?”

“You need to see this,” Noah said.

Mack stomped over and looked down at the screen. “I don’t understand. Is this a list of former employees?”

Noah gulped. “It’s a list of women who’ve been paid off.”

And there at the top was a name he knew.

Alexis Carlisle.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

It was just before closing time at ToeBeans when Liv walked in.

Alexis stood at the counter in her cherry apron, waiting on a woman who was super excited to get the day’s last cookies at half price. At the sound of the door, Alexis looked up and then waved with a smile. It died quickly on her lips.

Liv marched around the counter. “I need to talk to you.”

Alexis glanced apologetically at the customer, who was signing her credit card slip. “Um, can it wait?”

“No.”

Alexis asked the young man working the espresso machine to finish the transaction. Then she turned with an annoyed look to walk into the kitchen. The cook was cleaning the kitchen, so Alexis led Liv to her office. It was no bigger than a bathroom, with barely enough room for a desk, chairs, and filing cabinet. Liv had to wedge herself against the wall to shut the door.

Alexis crossed her arms. “Okay, that was seriously rude out there. What is going on?”

“I have the list.”

Alexis swallowed hard. “What list?”

“The list of people who’ve been paid off by Royce.”

Alexis paled and she shook her head. “We’ve been over this a hundred times. I am not going to tell you anything.”

“Your name is on the list!” Her friend jumped at the sound of Liv’s shout. Liv didn’t have the time or patience to feel bad. “Why is he paying you? Why are you protecting him?”

A spark of fire lit up Alexis’s eyes. “I’m not protecting him!”

“You have a chance to help me expose him. Right now. And you’re not willing to do it. So I’m sorry, but that makes you no better than any of men who’ve covered up for him.”

Alexis slammed her hands on the desk. “How dare you! How goddamn dare you walk in here and say that to me? You have no idea what you’re talking about or what I’ve been through.”

Liv took it all in at once. The shimmer of rage tears in Alexis’s eyes. The tremble in her lip. The color in her cheeks.

“Oh my God,” Liv breathed, knees weakening, the adrenaline crash making her nauseous. “Oh my God, Alexis. How could you not tell me?”

She instantly regretted the question, but confusion and betrayal had taken hold of her tongue. “You let me work there and never even warned me. After you left, you didn’t even warn me what he was like.”

Alexis shook with indignation. “That. That right there is why I never told you. Because it’s all about you. Do you have any idea what it was like for me? Do you even care?”

“You have a responsibility to other women!”

“Do you hear yourself? You walk in here so full of judgment—”

Bile stung Liv’s throat. “I’m not judging you.”

“Are you serious? All you’ve talked about since the minute you got fired is how you’d never stay in situation like that and you can’t understand a woman who’d let this happen to her.”

“That’s not true.” Except it was. Even Mack had called her out on it.

Alexis’s expression turned mournful and furious at once. “Do you honestly think I didn’t want to tell you? To unburden myself just once of the secret I was hiding? But I knew that I couldn’t. Because you use weakness as a weapon. You’re so ashamed of your own mistakes in life, so afraid of your own fragility, that you accuse everyone else around you of being soft just for the crime of basic human frailty.”

Her words were like shards of glass. They stabbed, shredded, and left Liv bloody. Somehow Liv’s voice found its way through the wreckage to stammer out another weak denial. “That’s not true.”

“I’m not helping you, Liv. I’ve endured enough because of Royce Preston. I got out, and it’s over for me. And you have no right to expose those women and subject them to something you can’t possibly understand. If you want to be the big hero and take on Royce, be my guest. But don’t drag us into it just because you have something to prove.” Alexis’s hand trembled as she pointed to the door. “Now get the hell out of my life and don’t come back.”

Two hours later, Mack was officially worried because Liv wasn’t responding to any of his text messages. Noah, Hop, and the Russian left just after eleven.

Just before midnight, Mack texted again. I’m worried. Just let me know you’re OK.

His doorbell rang.

He barely had time to open the door before Liv barged in. He stumbled back in relief and also a little bit of anger. “Christ, Liv, where have you been—”

Her arms went around his neck, and she silenced him with her lips. Even as he went weak-kneed, the logical part of his brain recognized that this wasn’t right. Her actions were almost desperate. Something was wrong.

He snaked one arm around her middle and pulled her inside, kicking the door shut with his foot. “What happened?” he mumbled against her lips.

She claimed his mouth again, this time using the distraction to back him into the living room. He went willingly because he was powerless against the way she made him feel, against the havoc she wreaked on his senses with a single touch.

They stopped in the middle of the room, and he broke the kiss with a guttural groan. “Talk to me. What happened with Alexis?”

She burrowed her face into his chest, tangling her fingers in his shirt.

“Liv.”

She backed away, letting her arms fall against her side. “She’s been lying to me all along. For years.”

Mack swallowed against the stinging taste of something sour and sinister in his throat.

“She didn’t trust me,” Liv said, voice flat. “She said I’m judgmental. That I use weakness as a weapon.”

The instinctive need to protect her brought his hand to her face. “Then she doesn’t know you.”

Liv looked up at him with an expression that reminded him of the day when she’d come to his office and demanded that he hire Jessica. Just like that day, her eyes betrayed a battle inside—the need to believe his words, to trust him, but no idea how. But this time Mack was struck with the sickening realization that she had no reason to trust him, to believe him.

Because he was lying to her too.

He had fallen for her. Hard. And he was lying to her.

His voice was like gravel. “Liv—”

She interrupted him. “She’s not going to help us. She won’t come forward.”

“Maybe she just needs time.”

“We don’t have time!” She shook her head and faced him with an expression that usually preceded words he didn’t like. “We don’t have time to wait for anyone else to do this.”

Mack tilted her face up. “Meaning?”

“This is my fight. I started this. I need to be the one to finish it.”

“Liv—”