Page 68 of Blood Money

“Exactly. Monsters.” Gray stared straight ahead at the empty wall, but inside his head the scene he was reliving was as vivid as the day of the explosion. “I got word to Dom. He was devastated. Not just for the children or the men who died, but for Anika. Turned out he was crazy in love with her. He’d already served four rough tours in Afghanistan, but he refused to leave because of her. As long as she was there, Afghanistan was his home.”

Alex caressed his shoulder. “You said the hospital was hidden. How did the enemy know where it was?”

“Marina.” Gray clenched his jaw so tightly his teeth cracked. “With Dom’s spook connections, he found out the bitch sold Anika and those children out. Literally.”

He balled his hands into fists. “Marina was a beautiful woman, but she was getting older. Selling her body for cash and pretty things no longer netted her enough to live at the level she was accustomed to, so she began selling information to make up the difference. The hidden location of a hospital funded by the U.S. military, let alone one receiving blood donations from American troops, was worth a lot to the enemy. So she sold the location of the hospital.”

Something I have to live with for the rest of my life.

“It was my fault.” Gray squeezed his eyes shut. “I trusted Marina, and I shouldn’t have.”

“How could you have known what she would do?” Alex’s voice was soft and full of compassion. “How could you ever have imagined that she would sell the lives of those children, your unit, and Anika for money? Wartime or not, no woman with a soul would ever hurt a child.”

“Marina had no soul,” Gray growled, baring his teeth. “I should have known that. I should have seen it.”

Alex continued rubbing his shoulder in slow, gentle circles. “People only let us see what they want us to see.”

“She was on the Watchlist, under a different name. Unfortunately, that’s common.” He still remembered the black and white photo on the computer screen. Gone were the lively brown eyes bubbling with laughter. In their place were cold, hard eyes brimming with malevolence.

Needing to focus on something else—something to ground him to the here and now—he sought out Alex’s compassionate, crystal-blue eyes, thanking God they were so different from Marina’s.

“How did you find out she was on the Watchlist?” she asked.

“Fingerprints.” Gray held up his hands, staring at his fingers. In his mind they were covered in blood.

Alex touched her hand to his cheek. “So you caught up with her?”

“Yeah. I caught up with her.” Another memory assaulted him, one he wasn’t proud of. “Dom scoured the area for her, crazy with revenge. I finally got intel on where she was hiding, but I didn’t tell Dom. What happened was my responsibility, my mess to clean up.”

“What did you do?” Alex’s voice was a soft whisper.

A chill passed through Gray, and his blood went cold. “I hunted her down and killed her.”

He stared at the bedroom wall while Alex’s hand slid up and down his arm. He no longer saw the framed paintings he knew were there on the wall. The picture he saw in his mind was Marina. Cold, lifeless eyes. Blood running down her chest, seeping from the fatal knife wound he’d inflicted. Someone with that much evil inside them—a woman who callously took the lives of so many innocent children—should no longer have the privilege of walking on this earth. He had no remorse. She needed to die. But a part of him died with her that day.

Until today he hadn’t told a soul what he’d done. Not Cassie, not even Dom. Although Dom knew. The day he hunted Marina down like the animal she was, he found Dom and told him not to bother looking for Marina. Then he turned and walked out of Dom’s tent without another word. Neither of them spoke of it again, nor had they uttered Marina’s name since. It was an unspoken pact between them.

It took a moment for Gray to realize that his head rested on Alex’s chest, and her hand was stroking the back of his head. He exhaled a tight breath. For the first time in well over a decade, he experienced a sense of freedom. Or was it vindication? Christ, he’d needed to tell someone, and he hadn’t realized it until now. Until Alex.

She stroked the side of his head. Her touch was cool and soothing. “What did you and Dom do after that?” she asked.

“I don’t know what Dom did. I went back to what was left of my unit, but it wasn’t the same. I needed to get out of there or blow my brains out. A few months later, I left the Marines, came home, and applied to the NYPD. I tried to get Dom to join up with me. At first he didn’t. It was difficult for him to leave Afghanistan and Anika’s memory. Eventually, he came home and the department picked him right up. With his background, he was a shoo-in for the job.”

“Now I understand.” Alex continued stroking his hair.

“Understand what?”

“Dom is worried that if he gets involved with Daisy, he’ll lose her, too.”

“Probably.” He lifted his head. “But you have to let those two work it out alone. No intervening and no repeating any of this to Daisy. Promise?”

When Alex smiled down at him, it was like sunshine peeking through the dark storm clouds of his deadly past. “Promise.”

Gray shifted position, tucking Alex’s body against his, and fell into the deepest, most peaceful sleep he’d had in fifteen years.

Chapter Sixteen

Seated at one end of the conference table, Alex listened while Gray completed his briefing to the room packed with NYPD officers, detectives, and federal agents. Lt. Frye sat silently at the far end of the table. Maps were reviewed, radios checked, team assignments made.