Deadly Secret

by B. J Daniels

  “It wouldn’t shock me.”

  “Have you seen the dolls?”

  Gabby could only blink in Jaime’s shadow’s direction. “Dolls?”

  “He has a shelf of dolls in his office. They sit in a row. I’d always thought they were creepy, but today...” Jaime laughed again, this one wasn’t quite as bitter as the one before, but it certainly wasn’t true humor. “You should get some rest. I didn’t mean to interrupt you. We can talk in the morning.” He got to his feet.

  She didn’t analyze why she bolted off the bed to follow him. Even if she gave herself the brain time to do it, she wouldn’t have come up with an answer.

  He was a lifeline. To what, she didn’t know. She didn’t have a life—not one here, not one to go back to.

  “I wasn’t sleeping.” She scurried between him and the room’s only exit. “What about the dolls?”

  He was standing awfully close in his attempt to leave, but he neither reached around her for the door nor pushed her out of the way. He simply stood there, an oppressive, looming shadow.

  Gabby didn’t know what possessed her, why she thought in a million years it was appropriate to reach out and touch a man she’d only met today. But what did it matter? She’d been here eight years and worrying about normal or appropriate had left the building a long time ago.

  So she placed her palm on his chest, hard and hot even through the cotton of his T-shirt. Such a strange sensation to touch someone in neither fight nor comfort. Just gentle and...a connection.

  “Tell me about the dolls,” she said in the same tone she used with the girls when she wanted them to listen and stop whining. “Get it off your chest.”

  * * *

  His chest. Where Gabby’s hand was currently touching him between the vee of straps that kept his weapons at hand. Gently, very nearly comfortingly, her hand rested in the center of all that violent potential.

  Jaime was not in a world where that had happened for years. His mother had hugged him hard and long that last meal before he’d gone undercover, and that had been it. Two years, three months and twenty-one days ago.

  He had known what he was getting himself into and yet he hadn’t. There had been no way to anticipate the toll it would take, the length of time and how far he’d gotten.

  That meant bringing The Stallion to justice was really the only thing that could matter, not a woman’s hand on his chest.

  And yet he allowed himself the briefest moment of putting his hand over hers. He allowed himself a second of absorbing the warmth, the proof of beating life and humanity, before he peeled her hand off his chest.

  “He cradled the doll like a baby. Talked to it. Damn creepiest thing I’ve ever seen—and I’ve seen some things.” He said it all flippantly, trying to imbue some humor into the statement, but it felt good to get it out.

  The image haunted him. A grown man. A doll. The threat on a man who would most certainly be dead even if Jaime’s secret message to his FBI superiors made it through.

  Dead. Herman, a man he’d never met and knew next to nothing about, was dead. Because he hadn’t been able to stop it.

  “Dolls.” Gabby seemed to ponder this, and though her hand was no longer on his chest, she still stood between him and the door, far too close for anyone’s good.

  “If there are identical dolls in every compound, I’ll never be able to sleep again after this is all over.”

  Even in the dark he could see her head cock, could feel her gaze on him. “Do you think of after?”

  “Sometimes,” he offered truthfully, though the truth was the last thing they should be discussing. “Sometimes I have to or I’m afraid I’ll forget it isn’t real.”

  “I stopped believing ‘after’ could be real,” she whispered, heavy and weighted in the dark room of a deranged man’s hideout.

  He wanted to touch her again. Cradle her small but competent hand in his larger one against his chest. He wanted to make her a million promises he couldn’t keep about after.

  “I... I can’t think about after, but I can think about ending him. If we’re an hour west of El Paso, give or take, and the western compound is an hour west of Houston, then what would the southern compound be? San Antonio?”

  “If we’re going from the supposition it’s the closest guarded one because it’s closest to the border, I think it’d be farther south.”

  “Yes.” She made some movement, though he couldn’t make it out in the dark. Likely they could turn on the lights and no one would think anything of it, she had been a gift to him, after all, but he found as long as she didn’t turn on the lights, he didn’t want to, either.

  There was something comforting about the dark. About this woman he didn’t know. About the ability to say that a man’s life wasn’t saved probably because of him. Because who else could he express that remorse to? No one here. No one in his undercover life.

  He finally realized she had moved around him. She wasn’t exactly pacing, but neither was she still in the pitch-black room.

  He couldn’t begin to imagine how she’d done it. This darkness. This uncertainty. For eight years she had been at someone else’s mercy. As much as he sometimes felt like he was at someone else’s mercy, it was voluntary. It was for a higher purpose. If he really wanted to, if he didn’t care about bringing The Stallion down, he could walk away from all this.

  But she was here and said she couldn’t even think about after. Instead she lived and fought and puzzled things together in her head. Remembered things no one would expect her to.

  She was the key to this investigation. Because she’d been that strong.

  “Loredo, maybe?” she offered.

  “It’s possible,” Jaime returned, reminding himself to focus on the task at hand rather than this woman. “Doesn’t quite match the pattern of being close to bigger cities like Houston and El Paso.”

  “True, and he does like his patterns.” She was quiet for a minute. “But what about the northern compound? There isn’t anything up there that matches Houston or El Paso, either. Maybe whatever town in the south it’s near matches whatever town is north.”

  “I haven’t been to the northern one, so I don’t know for sure, but one would assume Amarillo. Based on what I know.”

  “Laredo and Amarillo would be similar. Was the place west of Houston similar to this?”

  It was something Jaime hadn’t given much thought to, but now that she mentioned it... “I never went in the house, but there was one. It didn’t look the same from the outside, but it’s very possible that the layout inside was exactly the same.”

  “If you didn’t go in the house, where did you go there?”

  It confirmed Jaime’s suspicion that the girls didn’t know anything about the outside world around them. “He has a shed for an office outside.”

  “It must be in the back. He had us dig holes in the front.”

  It shouldn’t shock him The Stallion used the women he kidnapped for manual labor, and yet the thought of Gabby digging shallow graves for that man settled all wrong in his gut. “Did you ever see...?”

  “We just dug the holes and were ushered back inside,” she replied, her tone flat. Though she had brought it up yesterday when they’d first met, so clearly it bugged her. “It’s the only time I’ve been out...” She shook her head. “The office shed. Is the one here the same as the one in the west?”

  He wanted to tell her she’d make a good cop—focusing on the facts and details over emotions—but that spoke of an after she couldn’t bring herself to consider. So he answered her question instead.

  “The one he has here is a little bit more involved than the one he had there. And no dolls.”

  “The doll thing really bothers you, huh?”

  “Hey, you watch a grown man cradle and coo at a doll the way a normal person would an infant and tell me you wouldn’t be haunte
d for life.”

  Though it was dark and Jaime had no idea if his instincts were accurate without seeing her expression, he thought maybe she was teasing him. An attempt at lightening things a little. He appreciated that, even if it was a figment of his imagination.

  “As long as I’m on lockdown, I can’t share any of this information with my superiors. It would be too dangerous and too risky, and I’ve already risked enough by trying to warn them about...” He trailed off, that inevitable, heavy guilt choking out the words.

  “If the man ends up dead, it has nothing to do with you,” Gabby said firmly.

  “It’s hardly nothing. I knew. And I didn’t stop it.”

  “Because you’re here to bring down The Stallion. Doing that is going to save more men than saving one man. Maybe I wouldn’t have thought about it that way years ago, but... You begin to learn that you can’t save everyone, and that some things happen whether it’s fair or not. I hate the word fair. Nothing is fair.”

  That was not something he could even begin to argue with a woman who’d been kidnapped eight years ago.

  “Do you know who this man was?” she demanded in the inky dark.

  “He delivered messages for The Stallion.”

  “Then I don’t feel sorry for him at all.”

  “You don’t?” he asked, surprised at her vehemence for a man she didn’t know.

  “No. He worked for that man, and I don’t care who you are or how convincing he is in his real life, if you work for that man, you deserve whatever you get.”

  She said it flatly, with certainty, and there was a part of him that wanted to argue with her. Because he knew things like this could make you hard. Rightfully so, even. She deserved her anger and hatred and her uncompromising views.

  But he could not adopt them as his own. He was afraid if he did that he would never find his way out of this. That he would become Rodriguez for life and forget who Jaime Alessandro was. It was his biggest fear.

  He felt sorry for Gabby, but it made him all the more determined to make sure she got out. He would make sure she had a chance to find her compassion again.

  “Until I can get more intel to my superiors, the next step is to keep gathering as much information as we can. The more I can give them when the time comes, the better chance we have of ending this once and for all.”

  “End.” She laughed, an odd sound, neither bitter nor humorous. Just kind of a noise. “I’m not sure I know what that word means anymore.”

  “I’ll teach you.” That was a foolish thing to say, and yet he would. He would find a way to show her what endings meant. And what new beginnings could be about.

  Because if he could show her, then he could believe he could show himself.

  Chapter 6

  Gabby was tired and bleary-eyed the next day. Jaime had stayed in her room for most of the night and they had talked about The Stallion, sure, but as the night had worn on, they’d started to veer toward things they remembered about their former lives.

  She’d kept telling herself to stop, not to tell yet another story about Natalie or not to listen to another about the birthday dinners his mother used to make him. And yet remembering her family and the woman she’d been years ago—which had never been tempting to her in all these years—had been more than just tempting in a dark room with Jaime.

  She should think of him as nothing but Rodriguez. She shouldn’t be forming some odd friendship with a man whose only job was to bring down The Stallion. Knowing those things seemed to disappear when she was actually in a room with him.

  He was fascinating and kind. She missed kindness. In a way she hadn’t been able to articulate in the past eight years. The other kidnapped girls were mostly nice. Alyssa was a little hard, but Gabby had spent many a night holding Jasmine or Tabitha as they cried. She had reassured them they wouldn’t be hurt and hoped she wasn’t lying. She had given them all kindness and compassion, but there was something about being the first—the older member, so to speak—that meant none of the girls offered the same to her.

  Gabby was the mother figure. The martyr to them. Everyone thought she was strong and fine and somehow surviving this. But she wasn’t. She was broken.

  Jaime saw the victim in her, though. It should be awful, demoralizing, and yet it was the most comforted she’d felt in eight years.

  But it would weaken her. It was weakening her. There was this war in her brain and her heart whether that weakening mattered.

  Maybe she should be weak. Maybe she should lean completely on this strange angel of a man and let him take care of everything. If it all worked out in the end and The Stallion was brought down, and she was free—

  She wasn’t going to go that far. She’d save thinking about freedom for after.

  So she sat at the kitchen table with Jasmine, Tabitha and Alyssa eating breakfast and wondering what Jaime would be up to this morning. Would he be as exhausted as she was? Would he be thinking of her?

  Foolish girl. But it nearly made her smile—to feel foolish and stupid. It was somehow a comfort to know she could be something normal. Stupid felt deliciously normal.

  At Jasmine’s sharply inhaled gasp, Gabby glanced up from her microwaved oatmeal. All the girls were looking wide-eyed at the entrance to the hallway.

  Jaime stood there in his dedicated black, weapons strapped against his chest. Those sunglasses on his face. Gabby wondered if there was a purpose to always wearing them. So no one could see the kindness in his eyes. Because even in the dark she had to think that kindness would radiate off a man like him.

  Since the girls seemed scared into silence, she nodded toward him. “Rodriguez.”

  “You know him?” Jasmine squeaked under her breath.

  “He’s The Stallion’s new right-hand man.” She looked back at Jaime and tried to work on the sarcastic sneer she sent most of the guards. “Right?”

  Jaime’s lips quirked and she could almost believe it was in pride, but she saw the disgust lingering underneath it.

  Was she the only one who saw that? Based on the way Jasmine scooted closer to her, as though Gabby could protect her from the man, Gabby wondered.

  “Senorita.”

  It took everything in her not to roll her eyes at him and smile at that exaggerated accent.

  “You’re wanted privately, Gabriella,” he said with enough menace she should have been scared. She didn’t think the little fissure of nerves that went through her was fear.

  “But, please, finish your desayuno. I am nothing if not gracious with my time.”

  Gabby began to push her chair back, the crappy packet oatmeal completely forgotten. But Jasmine’s fingers curled around her arm and held on tight.

  “Don’t go, Gabby. Fight.”

  Gabby looked down at Jasmine, surprised that none of the women seemed to see the lack of threat underneath Jaime’s act. But then, they didn’t know what she knew. Maybe that made all the difference.

  “It’s all right. When have I ever not been able to handle myself?” She smiled reassuringly at... Sometimes she thought of the girls as her friends. Sometimes as her charges. And sometimes simply people she didn’t really know. She didn’t know what she felt today. But she patted Jasmine’s arm before peeling the woman’s fingers off her wrist. “I’ll be back for lunch.”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, senorita.”

  She shot Jaime a glare she didn’t have to fake. He didn’t have to make these women more scared. They already did that themselves.

  She walked over to where Jaime stood in the entrance to the hallway. He made a grand gesture with his arm. “After you, Gabriella.”

  Again she had to fight to mask her face from amusement. He should go into acting once this was all over. The stage where his over-the-top antics might be appreciated.

  As she began to walk down the corridor to her room, Jaime�
��s hand clamped on her shoulder. Hot and hard and tight. She didn’t have to feign the shiver or the wild worry that shot through her.

  It wasn’t comfortable that he could turn himself on and off so easily. It wasn’t comfortable that, though she was intrigued by the man and convinced of his kindness, she didn’t know him at all. Anything he’d told her so far could be lies.

  When he acted like this other man, she could remember she shouldn’t trust him. She couldn’t believe everything he said. He could be as big a liar as The Stallion, and just as dangerous.

  But they walked to her room with his hand clamped on her shoulder and somehow in the short walk it became something of a comfort. A calming presence of strength. She missed someone else having strength. True courage. Not the strength The Stallion or his guards exerted. Not that physical, brute force.

  No, Jaime was full of certainty. Confidence. He was full of righteous goodness and she wanted to follow that anywhere it would lead.

  She wanted to believe in righteous goodness again. That it was possible. That it could save her.

  And what will happen after you’re saved?

  Jaime closed the door behind them, taking off his sunglasses and sliding them into his pocket. Immediately his entire demeanor changed. How did he do it? She opened her mouth to ask him but he seemed suddenly rushed.

  “We don’t have much time. There’s a meeting in ten minutes and Layne will be sent to fetch me. I need...when he comes...”

  She cocked her head because he didn’t finish his sentence. He studied her and then he swallowed, almost nervously. “I’ll have to, uh, do what I did the other day.”

  “The other day?”

  “I’ll try not to rip your shirt, but I’m going to need to...er, well, grab you.”

  “Oh.” She let out a shaky breath, the white-hot fear of that moment revisiting her briefly. “Right. Well, okay. But, uh, you know, not ripping my clothes would be preferred, if only because I don’t have many.”

  His lips almost curved, but mostly something heavily weighted his mouth and him. She supposed he could play the part of Rodriguez easily enough in front of whoever walked through, but demonstrating the physical force expected of him? No. She couldn’t imagine Jaime ever getting comfortable with that.