“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.”