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“How much longer can they keep this up?” she asked.

Finn and his brothers had had Eudorus at the mountain house for three weeks, and other than a few mumbled words that had so far proven useless, they’d gotten nothing out of the man.

Alexa shook her head. “I don’t know. Not much longer, I think.”

“It’s taking a toll on Finn,” Elise said.

Alexa looked at her. “Finn can call it off at any time.”

“That’s the problem. I don’t think he wants to call it off. I’m not even sure he’s capable of calling it off.” Elise paused. “It’s destroying him, but he’s in too deep to see it.”

“Dec said the same thing to Nick,” Alexa said.

“He did?”

Alexa nodded. “Dec said he was going to try and get Finn to come back to the city for a few days, take a break.”

Elise shook her head. “He won’t do that.”

“Nick agrees with you,” Alexa said.

“What does he think about it?” Elise asked.

Nick and Alexa were practically the same person — stubborn enough to have it out now and then, smart enough to give each other a run for their money, but ultimately so much alike they couldn’t be mad at each other for long.

Whatever Nick thought about Finn, Alexa would know, even if Nick hadn’t told her.

“He’s worried too, but ultimately, it’s Finn’s call. Everyone else is essentially working for him,” Alexa said.

Normally Elise would have balked — none of the Murphy brothers would take orders from Finn, who was the youngest and who’d been gone eight years while they built MIS.

But they were keeping the man named Eudorus prisoner because he was the only lead they had on the people behind the murder of Finn’s friends in Ukraine. And they were doing that because Finn had asked them to.

“But that can change right?” Elise asked. “Ronan, Nick, and Declan own MIS. They can pull the plug if they want.”

“Is that what you want?” Alexa asked.

Elise looked out over the water. She was glad it just her and Alexa. There was too much baggage with Julia — they were sisters after all — and Kate, Declan’s girlfriend, was a pragmatic businesswoman who made tough decisions on a daily basis and with a minimum of emotion.

Alexa had been one of the state’s top lawyers at the Attorney General’s office before she’d left to be with Nick, but she had a softness that helped her walk the line between logic and emotion.

“I don’t know,” Elise said. Finn was only in Boston to figure out who had been behind Fedir and Iryna’s murder. He’d been honest from the beginning about his plan to leave again once he brought the murderer to justice.

“You don’t want him to leave,” Alexa said softly.

Elise shook her head. “But I’m not sure it’s good for him to stay.”

She wasn’t sure it was good for her to stay either. It had been two years since she’d been rescued by the Murphys from the trafficking ring that had kidnapped her.

Two years of therapy.

Two years of nightmares.

Two years of anxiety.

She was better now. She could be honest with her therapist — and with herself mostly — about what she was feeling. She could breathe her way through the aftermath of a bad dream. She could talk herself down from a panic attack when she got lost.

But the thought of leaving behind everything that was familiar, of striking out on the open road with nothing but a backpack like Finn, was terrifying. And besides, Finn hadn’t asked her to go with him.

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