by B. J Daniels
“You’re very good. Very convincing. I’m probably the only person you let your guard down for, right?”
He nodded, still clearly perplexed and downright worried she’d figured it out.
“I don’t know, ever since I got here... I remember things, and I can see...patterns that no one else seems to see. I thought I was going crazy. But... I don’t know. I was always good at that. Observing, remembering, figuring out puzzles and mysteries. It just works in my head.”
“Clearly,” he muttered. “Hopefully you’re the only one around here with that particular talent or I’m screwed.”
“How long?” she asked. Was he just starting out? He was so close to The Stallion, surely...
“Two years.”
She let out a breath. “That’s a long time.”
“Yes,” he said, a bleak note in his voice that softened her another degree toward him. He’d voluntarily held his own identity hostage, separated himself from his life. He’d probably had no idea the things he’d end up missing or wanting.
God help her, she hadn’t had a clue in that first day, week, month, even year. She’d had no idea the things that would grow to hurt her.
She felt a wave of sympathy for the man and, even if it was stupid or ill-advised, she had to follow it. She had to follow this first possibility in ages that there might be an end to this. “How can I help?”
“So, you trust me?”
“I don’t trust anyone anymore,” she returned, feeling a little bleak herself. “But I’ll try to help you. Because I believe you are what I think you are.”
“That’ll work. That’ll work. But there’s something you have to understand. Being a different person means being a different person. The ripping-your-shirt thing...”
“It was for him to think that you were...having your way with me.” She shuddered a little at the thought, at how close they might have to come to...proving that.
“Yes. There may be times I have to push that a little bit. Because he is...” He cleared his throat. “What do you understand about your position here? Is there a reason you were kidnapped? Is there a reason he’s kept you girls...untouched?”
“I’m not really sure. I have no idea why I was taken. I was waiting at my dad’s work for him to get off his shift and all of a sudden there were all these people and men talking and I was grabbed and thrown into a van with some other people. They took us somewhere that I don’t know anything about. It was all dark and sometimes we were blindfolded or there were hoods put on our heads.”
Gabby felt ill. She didn’t relive the kidnapping anymore. She’d mostly gotten beyond that horror and lived in the horror of her continual imprisonment. Going back and thinking about coming here brought up all sorts of horrible memories.
How awful she’d been to her mother that night when she’d had to cancel her date to pick up Dad. All that fear she hadn’t known what to do with or how to survive with when she’d been taken, moved, inspected. But she had. She had survived and lived, and she needed to remind herself of that.
“Eventually, after I don’t know how long... Actually that’s not true.” She didn’t have to lie to this man about her memory or pretend she didn’t know exactly what she knew like she did with so many people. “It was two days. It was two days from the time they took me and put me in the van to the time they took me to this other place, kind of like a warehouse. They took me—and all the people from that first moment—there and then we were sorted. Men and women went to different areas. And then The Stallion came.”
“Keep going,” he urged, and it was only then she realized she’d stopped because she could see it. Relive every terrifying detail of not knowing what would happen to her, or why.
“I didn’t know that’s who he was at the time, but he walked through and he asked everyone if we knew who he was. One woman in my group said yes and she was immediately taken away.”
“Did he say his name or offer any hints about who he was beyond The Stallion?”
“No. I’ve gone over it a million times in my head. He must’ve...he must be someone, you know? He had to be someone with some kind of profile?”
“Yes, he is.”
“He is?” She stepped toward the man who could mean freedom, a scary thought in and of itself. “Who? What’s his name? Why is he doing this?” she demanded, losing her cool and her calm in an instant.
“I can’t answer those questions.”
She grabbed his shirtfront, desperate for an answer, a reason, desperate for those things she’d finally given up on ever getting. “Tell me right this second, you miserable—”
“I’m sorry,” he said so gently, so emotionally, she could only swallow a sob.
“He kidnapped me. He brought me here. He separated me from my family for eight years, and you can’t tell me who he is?” she demanded, her voice low and scratchy but measured. She was keeping it together. She would keep it together.
“Not now. There are a lot of things I can’t tell you, because everything you know jeopardizes what I’m doing here. You deserve the answers, you do, but I can’t give you what you deserve right now. But if you help me, you’ll have the answers, and you’ll have your life back.”
Odd that prompted a cold shudder to go through her body. “You can’t promise me that.”
“No, I can’t, but I promise to put my life on the line to make it so.”
She didn’t know what to do with that or him, or any of this, so she turned away from him, hugging herself, trying to calm her breathing.
There were no promises. There were no guarantees. But she had a chance. She had to believe in it. She had to fight for it. With everything she had. If not for herself, for the three girls she shared this hell with. For their family’s, and hers, even if they probably thought she was dead.
She owed it to a lot of people to do what this man said he would do: put her life on the line to make it so.
* * *
Gabriella was clearly brilliant. The way she described remembering things and figuring out patterns no one else did, to the point she thought she was crazy... It sounded like a lot of the analysts he knew. Because when you saw things no one else saw, it was very easy to convince yourself you were wrong.
But she wasn’t wrong, and she had so much information in that pretty head of hers... Jaime was nearly excited even though she now had the power to end his life completely.
He didn’t care because he was so close now. So damn close to the end of this.
She might be brilliant, but he was a trained FBI agent, after all. He wasn’t going to let her figuring him out be the end. No way in hell.
“Tell me about what happened after the woman who knew who he was disappeared.”
Gabriella nodded. “She was taken away from the room. She had no chance to say anything at all. After that, the rest of us women were separated into groups, and I tried to find a rhyme or reason for these groups, but I really couldn’t. Except that all of the women in my group were young and reasonably fit. Dark hair, though none of the same shade—it ranged from black to light brown.”
Jaime thought back to The Stallion’s odd statement about searching half his life for the perfect woman. He couldn’t make sense of it, but that had to be connected to this.
“At that point, it was just six of us. The Stallion lined us up and, one by one, he inspected us.”
“Inspected you how?”
Gabriella visibly shuddered, and Jaime hated that she had to relive this, but she did. If they were going to put The Stallion away, she’d probably have to relive it quite frequently.
“He touched our hair and...smelled it.” She audibly swallowed, hugging herself so tightly he wished he could offer some comfort, some support.
But he was nothing to her.
“He had one of his cronies measure us.”
“Measure you?”
“You know, like if you’ve ever been measured for clothes?” She turned to face him again, though her dark eyes were averted. But she gestured to her body as she spoke. “Shoulders, arms, chest, hips, legs, inseam, and the guy yelled out each number and The Stallion wrote it all down on this little notepad.”
She was quiet for a few seconds and instead of pushing this time, he let her gain her composure, let her take the time she needed.
Time wasn’t on his side, but he couldn’t...lose the humanity. That was his talisman. Don’t lose your humanity.
“He dismissed everyone except me.”
Jaime didn’t know how to absorb that. He could picture it too easily after everything he’d done with and for The Stallion. The fear she must have felt having been taken for no reason, having been chosen for no reason that she understood.
It was dangerous to fill her in on the things he knew. But he had already entered dangerous territory when he had allowed himself to behave differently enough with her for her to figure out who he was. What he was.
“He’s a sick man,” Jaime offered.
“A sick man who is very, very smart or very, very lucky since he hasn’t gotten caught in eight years. Probably more than that.”
“Yes. Listen, there are a lot of things The Stallion does. But this thing you’re involved in... He told me something just now about how he spent over half his life looking for the perfect woman. That women are basically stupid and you shouldn’t dirty yourself with them unless you find this perfect specimen.”
“Oh, how lovely. I’d love to show him how stupid I can be. With my fists.”
He smiled at the irritation in her tone because it was life. A spark. It wasn’t that shaky fear that had taken over as she had relived her kidnapping experience.
“Let him have his delusions. They might get us out of this mess.” He wanted to reach out and take her shoulders or...something. Something to cement this partnership, but he was still a strange man in her room who’d ripped her shirt. He had to be careful. Human. “Between what you said and he said, I think that’s what he’s been doing with this arm of things. Searching for the perfect woman.”
“So that’s what the measuring was, then. He has a perfect size, I just bet.” Gabriella rolled her eyes. “Disgusting pig. And then when we got here he, like, tested me. He would ask these questions, and I never answered. I only fought. For weeks, every time he opened his mouth, I’d just attack. I thought maybe that’s why...”
She took in a shaky breath, still hugging herself. Jaime hadn’t been lying when he’d said she might be perfect. She was smart, she was strong—not just physically. Strong at her core.
“I thought for sure I would be raped, but I never have been, and I’ve never understood why.”
“He thinks women are dirty. At least, in this context of looking for the perfect woman. I can’t rationalize a madman, but the point is that you were brought here because he thought you could be the perfect woman. The fighting, I guess, proved to him that you weren’t.”
“I thought that for the longest time, but that isn’t it. Jasmine—she was brought here my second year—she didn’t fight him at all. She told him she’d do whatever he wanted as long as he would let her go. I was the only one who fought, but he hasn’t touched any of us. No matter what our reactions were, he found us lacking in some way, I guess.”
Gabriella shook her head. “So, he brought us here because we were a possibility, then he tests us and decides we’re not perfect, but then why does he keep us?” She looked up at him for answers.
Jaime hated that he couldn’t give them to her—and that hate kept him going. Because at least he still had a conscience. He’d started to worry. “That’s where I come in. I’ve been working my way up to get close to figuring out who he was. When I did that, it was decided I’d stay and get enough information on him that we can arrest and prosecute.”
“And you don’t have that yet?”
“Not to the extent my superiors would like. Which is why we came up with a plan.”
“Let me guess. You can’t tell me about the plan.”
“Actually, this one I can. A little. You’re a gift to me.”
She physically recoiled and he could hardly blame her.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve slowly become his right-hand man and as I learned about the girls he keeps locked up... I wanted to get close to one of you to figure out how I could get you out. How we could all work together to get you out. So I convinced him that a woman would be better payment than drugs or money. I mean, I get paid, too, bu—”
“Of course you do. I’m sure you get money and a horse and forty acres of land. The payment of a woman is simply pocket change, right?”
“Gabriella.”
She began to pace the tiny room, her irritation and anxiety so recognizable to him he started to feel the same build in his chest.
“This is insane,” she muttered. “This is so impossible. These things don’t happen! They don’t happen to people in my family. They don’t happen to people! This is movie craziness.”
“No. It’s your life,” Jaime returned firmly. He needed her to focus, to get past the panic. “There’s one of his compounds that has the most evidence on his whole operation, and it’s the only one that I don’t know where it’s located. So, as I work with him right now, that’s what I’m trying to figure out. If you’ve been watching, paying attention, listening...you might have the answer. But we have to pretend like...”
“Like I’m the gift to you. And you can do whatever you want with me,” she said flatly.
“Yes. But the key here is that it’s pretend. I’m not going to hurt you. I’ve done a lot of things that will stick with me for a very long time.” He stopped talking for a few seconds so he could regain his composure. He didn’t like to think back at some of the chances he’d had to take or some of the people he’d had to hurt. Though he hadn’t actively killed anyone, he had no doubt some of the things he’d been involved in had led to the death of someone else.
There were a lot of terrible things you could do to a person without killing them.
He had to get hold of himself, so he did. He forced himself to look at Gabriella. She was studying him carefully, as though she could see the turmoil on his face.
To survive, he had to believe this was a very special woman who could see things no one else could. Because if she could see these things and other people could, as well, they would probably both end up dead.
“I know it sounds crazy,” she said carefully, “but I know what it’s like. I’ve helped hide drugs that I’m sure have killed people. I’ve had to dig holes that I think were...so he could bury people. I’ve had to do terrible things, and sometimes I’m not even sure that I had to. Just that I did.”
“No.” He took a step toward her and though he knew he had to be careful so he didn’t startle her, he very slowly and gently reached out and took her hand in his. He gave it a slight squeeze.
“We’ve done what we had to do to survive. In my case, to bring this man to justice. We have to believe that. Above everything else.”
She looked down at their joined hands. He had no idea what she saw or what she felt. It had been so long since he’d been able to touch someone in a kind way, in a gentle way, it affected him a bit harder than he’d expected.
Her hand was warm and it felt capable. She squeezed his back as though she could give him some comfort. This woman who’d been abducted from her family for eight years.
When she raised her gaze to his, he felt an odd little jitter deep in his stomach. Something like fear but not exactly. Almost like recognizing something or someone, but that didn’t make sense, so he shook it away.
Chapter 4
Gabby looked at her hand, encompassed by a much larger one. She wondered if the small scars across his knuckles were from hi
s undercover work or if he’d got them before.
What would he have been like before his assumed identity?
And what on earth did that matter?
She forced her gaze back to him, his dark brown eyes somehow sure and comforting, when nothing in eight years had been comforting. It shouldn’t be potent. It was probably part of his training—looking in charge and compassionate.
She’d never been too fond of cops, though that may have been Ricky’s influence. Her first serious boyfriend. A poster child for trouble. Gabby had been convinced she could change him, that everyone saw him all wrong. Her parents had been adamant that she could not change what was wrong with that boy.
They’d barred him from their house. Insisted Gabby live at home through her coursework at the community college, and had been making noise about her not transferring to get her bachelors.
It had all seemed like the most unjust, unfair fate. They didn’t have enough money, they didn’t have any trust. The world had seemed cruel, and Ricky had been nice...to her.
She was twenty-eight now and that was the only relationship she’d ever had. A boy, really, and she’d only been a girl.
This man holding her hand was no boy, but she wasn’t sure what she was. Except a little off her rocker for having this line of thought.
She cleared her throat and pulled her hand away. “So. What is it you need from me?”
He was quiet for a moment, studying his hand, which he hadn’t dropped—it still hovered there in the air between them.
“My main goal is to find the last compound,” he finally said, bringing his hand down to his side. “It’s the one he’s the most secretive about. So much so, I’m not sure he takes any of his employees there.”
“I don’t know if I can help with that. I did have this theory...” She trailed off. “I wish I had something to write on,” she muttered. She searched her room for something...something to illustrate the picture in her head.
She opened one of her drawers and retrieved her brush, pins and ponytail holders, some of the few “extras” The Stallion afforded her. A giddy excitement jumbled through her and maybe she should calm it down.