He closed the door and locked it too.
“I’m surprised they sent you,” Alicia rasped. “You don’t need to wear that thing, by the way.”
Gray didn’t respond. He sat down in the middle of the floor and took a deep breath, letting the memories cling to the edges of his self-control. If these walls could talk… How many kids had been held here?
The gleaming hooks were too sinister.
Alicia tried to straighten a little. Maybe she felt cockier because Gray was the one paying her a visit.
She shouldn’t.
“Let me guess,” she said with a fake pout, “you want to kill me for everything you’ve suffered through.”
Gray smiled faintly. “Not really. As much as I wanna put this past year behind me, it brought me to Darius and two amazing little boys we’re fortunate to call our own.”
Christ, she was ugly. He’d once seen a cool chick who played in the big-boy league. Hell, she’d been at the very top. Smart as fuck. Beautiful. Calculating. Resourceful. But now, all he saw was a two-bit hag with makeup smeared all over. With vomit on her dress, hair pointing in every direction.
“No, I wanna kill you for other reasons,” he murmured.
She snickered softly. “Is this where you try to make me feel guilty?”
“To do that would imply that I believe you have the ability to feel anything,” he answered, not missing a beat. “You’re a psychotic bitch, and you believed in yourself too much.”
That sparked anger in her eyes.
Gray smirked a little. “You hate that you lost, don’t you? Because you did. You failed spectacularly—even though you’re the only one who’s seen all the cards. You knew the hand we were gonna play, and you still fucked it all up.”
She clenched her jaw, and the sight was enough for Gray. Even though she’d failed tonight, she was too experienced and too proud to talk. He wasn’t sure she had any info he wanted anyway, because there was no reason for her to know where the other victims were being held.
He rose from the floor again and took out his gun. “Willow will have a field day cleaning out your bank accounts. I don’t know how many lives you’ve ruined, but you’re gonna pay for the best care any survivor out there might need. Anonymously, of course. We don’t want you to get postmortem hero treatment. That would be ironic, huh?”
Alicia’s anger didn’t fade until Gray was standing right in front of her. That was when a little bit of fear crept into place. She had to know she was running out of time. And there was nothing she could say that would change the outcome.
“There’s no way Darius wants you to do this,” she said in a rush.
Gray chuckled, and he removed his mask and strapped it to his belt. He wanted to see this properly, clearly, without anything in the way. “He’s not here, is he?”
Man, she was really reaching if that was her strongest approach.
Her chest started heaving, and her gaze flickered between Gray and the gun pointing straight at her. “Just give me a chance to talk to AJ. Five minutes. We can work something out. You’ll let us go, and you’ll never hear from us again. You’ll be set for life, Gray. Think about your boys. College, their futures, travel, homes—I have the money, I swear.”
Gray hummed and slid the gun between her eyes. “That’s the problem, Alicia. I don’t want my sons to grow up in a world where you roam free.”
Panic exploded in her eyes as Gray’s finger brushed the trigger.
“Wait!”
“No.” He pulled the trigger, and the sound blasted through the small room. It felt like his eardrums shattered in the process.
Goddammit.
As he rubbed his ears, he remembered the damn earpiece in the left ear. The men upstairs probably hadn’t heard anything, unless they’d put on their headphones again, but he couldn’t be sure about the rest. Maybe Tariq, though. Oh, and Dante. Definitely Dante—he must’ve heard. He should be back soon with the truck.
Gray winced and took out the earpiece, then left the room without giving Alicia another glance. Reese would be pleased to see her brains splattered on the wall.
Good riddance.
Reese was standing outside the viewing window of Alfred and AJ’s room, but he offered his full attention to Gray as soon as he came out. The look on the man’s face, apprehension meeting grim concern, let Gray know that Reese still had his earpiece turned on.
“You okay, kiddo?”
Gray nodded once. “Yeah.” It wasn’t a lie—although, to be honest, he didn’t wanna poke too hard at that box right now. “Have AJ and Alfred talked?”
“A bit,” Reese replied with a nod. “Looks like Friedrich has given us the most, though. Niko and Dante took the truck to check out two addresses in Henderson. Willow disconnected from us to focus on helping them with surveillance.”