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Gretchen smiled. “Good evening. I hope you’re well tonight.” She turned slightly when the door behind her opened and Neil stepped inside.
Ronnie turned to Neil. “Please, you have to get her out of here,” she cried. “She did this to me. She tried to kill me.”
“You had a gun to her head,” Neil reminded her. “I think she would’ve been within her rights if shehadkilled you. She only injured you.”
“Injured me?” Ronnie screeched. “She fucking disfigured me.”
“You’ll thank me,” Gretchen assured her. “You were way too pretty for prison before. No one would’ve taken you seriously. I’ve given you a look and a story. I’ve worked wonders for you.”
Neil took a seat across the table from Ronnie.
“She’s lying,” Ronnie started.
Neil shook his head. “We recorded all of it. The room had cameras. We got everything.”
“Cameras?” Ronnie muttered.
“Yes,” Gretchen piped in. “Like Lilah’s apartment where your men attacked me.” She dropped the file with the pictures and drive on to the table in front of Ronnie.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t—”
“Save it. Your men admitted it.” It might not have been the truth, but no one would deny it. Tears stung at Gretchen’s eyes. Shaking them away, she asked, “Why were you in that room anyway?”
Neil had already told Gretchen he’d sent her into her old room because their informant had promised Ronnie would be there.
The other woman’s eyes narrowed. “Jay sent me.”
“Jay sent you?” She hadn’t expected that. “Why?”
“We were going to meet the stripper back there, so we could fuck her.”
Despite her best efforts to remain impassive, Gretchen flinched as if struck by Ronnie’s words.
“Poor little good girl,” Ronnie pouted. “Did you think he’d love you? That you could save him? How’s that working out for you now?”
Gretchen steeled herself against the other woman’s taunting and smiled, despite the turbulent storm of emotions within her. “Not great, since he’s dead.”
She met Ronnie’s usually cool blue eyes, feeling nothing as the woman’s eyes filled slightly with tears, before Ronnie quickly gathered herself.
“Dead?” she asked. “How?”
Gretchen shrugged. “Don’t know. I was too busy defending myself againstyouto savehim.” She turned to Neil. “You can finish this.”
She rushed out of the room and through the halls to the locker room, trying to make herself breathe the way the shrink had told her to the night before. But her chest was too full of the pain of missing Finn to expand enough for air.
Her anger at Finn and herself and the world rose within her. She kicked the locker in front of her until it bent under the force of the blows, then spun, shoving a chair to the floor and sending the table sliding. She pounded on the tabletop with the sides of her fists and screamed as loud as she could.
The door to the locker room flew open before it banged shut. Someone yelled her name before they pulled her away from the table and turned her into a hard male chest. She struggled and tried to pull away. She didn’t want to be consoled, she wanted Finn alive. Even if he never wanted to see her again, she wanted him alive.
“Gretchen, it’s okay, honey, shh.” The soothing voice managed to drill through the rage inside her, and she looked up.
“Grant.” She pushed against his solid chest, but he only held her tighter.
“I’ve got you,” he assured her.
“What . . . Why are you here?” She looked around the room for a guard or someone who would explain why this man, whom she’d seen in handcuffs only days before, was standing in the agents’ locker room.
“I heard you. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
