Gone (Deadly Secrets #2)(6)

Once, as a teenager, when he’d been stuck at the Bennett Juvenile Detention center on a drug charge thanks to the man now striding toward him, he’d thought about finding her. Thought about begging her to take him back. But then he’d met Michael McClane, a man who, in a short amount of time, had become more of a father to him than Gilbert had ever been. When Alec had seen what a real family was like, he’d never thought about the woman who’d given him life again.

“Wondered when I’d see you,” Gilbert said, stopping across the table from Alec with a sinister gleam in his eye. “’Bout damn time you came to visit your old man.”

Alec refrained from telling the piece of shit he’d never be his old man and clenched his jaw. He hadn’t come here to beat a confession out of Gilbert. As much as he wanted to do just that, he knew Gilbert was too cunning to admit to anything. No, he’d only come here to see the asshat’s eyes when he mentioned the girl from the hospital. One look was all Alec would need to determine if Gilbert was somehow involved in what had happened to her.

Alec’s gaze passed over the bright-orange jumpsuit hanging from Gilbert’s thin frame. “Looks like the food in this place sucks. A strong gust of wind could knock you over, old man. Pity for you.”

Gilbert’s eyes hardened. “What the fuck do you want?”

Neither of them sat. This wasn’t a friendly conversation. Alec glanced past Gilbert toward the guard who was watching them closely as if he expected fireworks to ignite. “I heard you like using the phone.”

A smug smile broke across Gilbert’s weathered face. Deep lines marred his cheeks and mouth, aging him long past his fifty-four years. “Oh, you came out here for the same reason those FBI hotshots did. You think I had somethin’ to do with that missing girl. I’ll tell you the same thing I told them. I don’t know nothin’.”

The twinkle in Gilbert’s eyes contradicted his words. Just as Alec suspected, the fucker knew a hell of a lot. “If I find out you had something to do with that gir—”

“You’ll what? Kick my ass like you threatened to do three years ago? We both know you ain’t got it in you, son.”

Alec’s hand clenched at his side. He saw his fist come back. Saw it plow into Gilbert’s face. Saw the blood splatter and spray across the table and floor. But he held back from unleashing the rage inside him. Knew it was what the asshole wanted him to do and that it wouldn’t fix the situation or get Gilbert to admit to a damn thing.

“’Sides which,” Gilbert went on, “I done tol’ those FBI people that wasn’t me. Not my fault they can’t do their fuckin’ job right.”

That was bullshit and they both knew it. Alec narrowed his gaze. “You stay away from me. You stay away from everything that has to do with me. Are we clear?”

“Oh, we’re clear,” Gilbert muttered.

Alec turned and headed for the door.

“Hey, boy,” Gilbert called at his back. “How’s that pretty wife of yours? Or should I say ex-wife. Maybe I’ll look her up when I get outta here next week. Seein’ as how you ain’t got no use for her no more, that is. I bet that newscaster mouth of hers could do all kinds a’ naughty things. She’s just waitin’ for the right man to show her how.”

The cap on Alec’s temper shot free, and all the anger and rage he’d been holding back bubbled up and over. He whipped back, grasped Gilbert by the shirtfront, and yanked the man halfway across the metal table. “If you touch her, if you so much as look at her, I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch.”

Two guards hollered and rushed over. One shoved Alec away with a nightstick, and the other grabbed Gilbert by the arm and hauled him back.

Gilbert chuckled, a malevolent gleam in his eyes as the guard put space between them. “Still get all worked up about that news whore, huh? Oh yeah, she’s a fine piece of ass. I think I will look her up.”

Alec growled and struggled against the guard holding him back.

“Gilbert,” the other guard yelled. “That’s enough. Your visitation time is over.”

The guard holding Alec was close to six five, a wall of solid muscle preventing the annihilation Alec wanted to unleash. “You need to calm down,” the guard yelled as Alec struggled. “Rogers,” he hollered at the other guard. He nodded toward Gilbert. “Get him the hell out of here.”

Rogers hauled a laughing Gilbert across the room and through the far door, and only when Alec couldn’t see the son of a bitch anymore did the red haze finally lessen.

Alec stopped struggling when he realized the guard was talking to him and tried to focus on the guard’s words. The guard was threatening to call the local cops if he didn’t chill out.

“I’m fine,” Alec said several minutes later, still breathing heavily but no longer fighting to get free. “I got it,” he said to the guard, hoping the man would release him.

The guard frowned as if he didn’t believe him but finally let go. “Get out of here. And don’t come back, you hear?”

Alec stepped back, but his pulse didn’t slow even when he was outside in the cool winter air, staring at the cars in the parking lot. Because he now knew that, even from behind bars, his father had definitely had a hand in what had happened to that girl back at the hospital, just as he’d been involved in Emma’s disappearance three years ago.