by B. J Daniels
“We’re going to use their injuries to our advantage, hurt them, and then tie them up so we can get away without fear of being followed.”
Alyssa scoffed. “I’m going to kill him.”
Gabby reached over and grabbed Alyssa’s hands, trying to catch her frenzied gaze. “Please. Understand. I don’t want to be haunted by this for the rest of my life. I want to leave here and leave it behind. No killing unless we absolutely have to. If we have a hope of getting out of here as unharmed as we are in this moment, we don’t kill them. We incapacitate them.”
“And then what? We’re just going to run? Run where?”
“I have a vague notion of where we are, and that will help get us out. We’ve survived this, we can survive walking until we find a town.”
Alyssa shook her head in disgust, but Gabby squeezed her hands tighter.
“I need you with me on this. We need to all be together and on the same page. Don’t you want to be able to go home and go back to your old life and not have that on your conscience?”
“Who said I have a conscience?” Alyssa retorted, and for a very quick second Gabby believed her, believed that coldness. She’d seen nothing but cold for eight years.
Until Jaime.
That made Gabby fight so much harder. “The four of us are in this together. The four of us. They can’t take that away from us. We have survived together, and when we get out, we will still be indelibly linked by that. We’re like sisters. They can’t make us turn on each other. You can’t let them. As long as we work together, as long as we’re linked, they can’t hurt us.”
Gabby wasn’t certain that was true. They had guns and weapons, after all. But they were hurt. She had to believe it gave her and the girls an advantage.
Alyssa was looking at her strangely. “Sisters,” she whispered. “I don’t... No one’s ever fought with me before.”
“We will,” Tabitha said, adding her hand to Gabby’s on top of Alyssa’s. Then Jasmine added her hand.
“We don’t get out of this without each other,” Gabby said, glancing back at Wallace and Layne. Wallace was still moaning, but Layne was glancing their way.
“We’ll slowly make excuses to go to our rooms, but you’ll all come to mine,” she whispered as she pulled her hand from the girls.
Jasmine brought her sewing back to her lap and Tabitha pretended to examine the next package they were supposed to hide in the stuffing of a toy dog.
Gabby got to her feet, but Layne was there and, with his good arm, he shoved her back down.
Well, crap. This wasn’t going to go well.
“Problem?” she asked sweetly, looking up at his suspicious gaze. She probably should avert her gaze and show some sort of deference to the man with a gun in his waistband and a nasty expression on his face.
“Aren’t you supposed to be locked up?”
“I was just going back to my room when you shoved me back to the couch so rudely.”
“I’d watch how you talk to me, little girl,” Layne seethed, getting his face into hers.
Gabby bit her tongue because what she really wanted to do was tell him to be careful how he talked to her, and then punch him in his bloody bandage as hard and painfully as she could.
Instead she slowly got to her feet, unfolding to her full height. Though he was still much taller than she was, she affected her most condescending stare, never breaking eye contact with him as she stood there, shoulders back.
She was more than a little gratified by the way he seemed to wilt just a teeny tiny bit. As if he knew he couldn’t break her.
“I’ll just be going to my room now. Feel free to lock my door behind me.”
“You little—” He lifted his meaty hand, she supposed to backhand her, and she probably should have let him hit her. She probably should let this all go, but whatever instincts to defend herself she’d tried to eradicate surged to life. She grabbed his hand before it could land across her face, and then put all her force behind shoving him, trying to make contact with his injury.
He stumbled back, though he didn’t fall. He let out a hideous moan as, with his bad arm, he pulled the gun from his waistband and trained it on Gabby.
She was certain she was dead. She stood there, waiting for the firearm to go off. Waiting for the piercing pain of a bullet. Or maybe she wouldn’t feel it at all. Maybe she would simply die.
But before another breath could be taken, Alyssa was in front of her, and then Tabitha and Jasmine at her sides.
“You’ll have to get through us to shoot her, and if you shoot all of us?” Alyssa pretended to ponder that. “I doubt The Stallion would be too pleased with you.”
“I’ll kill all of you without breaking a sweat, you miserable—”
“Isn’t it cute?” Alyssa said, looking back at Gabby. “He thinks he’s in charge, not his exacting, demanding boss. Well, I guess it takes some balls to be that stupid.”
Gabby closed her eyes, she didn’t think goading him was really the road to take here, but he hadn’t fired.
Yet.
There was a quiet standoff and Gabby tried to rein in the heavy overbeating of her heart. Jasmine’s hand slid into hers and Tabitha’s arm wound around her shoulders. Alyssa faced off with Layne as if she had no fear whatsoever.
Together, they couldn’t be hurt. God, she very nearly believed it.
“If you aren’t in your rooms in five seconds, I will shoot all of you,” Layne said menacingly.
Gabby didn’t believe him, but she didn’t want to risk it, either. The girls in front of her hurried down the hall first, and Gabby tried to follow, but Layne grabbed her arm as she passed, digging his heavy fingers into her skin hard enough to leave bruises.
“Tonight you’ll be screaming my name,” he hissed.
Gabby smiled. It was either that or throw up. “Maybe you’ll be screaming mine.” She yanked her arm out of his grasp.
She was pretty sure the only thing that kept Layne from shooting her at this point was Wallace’s sharp stand-down order.
When Gabby got to her room, she locked the door behind her. It wouldn’t keep her safe from Layne since he undoubtedly had a key, but it at least gave her the illusion of safety.
When she turned back to face her room, the girls were all there, Tabitha and Jasmine on her bed, Alyssa pacing the room.
“And now we plan,” Alyssa said, that dark glint in her eyes comforting for the first time.
* * *
Jaime stalked The Stallion. It wasn’t easy to carefully follow a man who was carefully following another man, especially through a weirdly arid desert landscape dotted by mountains and rock outcroppings. But then, when had any of this been easy?
The Stallion stopped as though he’d seen something, and Jaime waited a beat. He realized The Stallion was peering around a swell of earth, and when The Stallion didn’t move forward in the swiftly calculating pace he’d been employing, Jaime sucked in a breath.
On a hunch and a prayer, Jaime snuck around the other side of it. He kept his footsteps slow and quiet.
And then a shot rang out.
Jaime took off in a run, skidding to a halt when he saw The Stallion and Ranger Cooper standing off.
Jaime couldn’t hear their conversation, but both men were unharmed and The Stallion didn’t fire. Jaime dropped the small handguns he’d been carrying for ease of movement and unholstered his largest and most accurate weapon.
He trained it on The Stallion, only occasionally letting his gaze dart around to try to catch sight of the woman who remained hidden somewhere. The Stallion and Ranger Cooper spoke, back and forth, guns pointed at each other, lawman and madman in the strangest showdown Jaime had ever witnessed.
That gave Jaime the presence of mind to breathe. To watch and bide his time. Without knowing where Natalie Torres was, he couldn’t act rashly. He—<
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Something in The Stallion’s posture changed and Jaime sighted his gun, ready to shoot, ready to stop The Stallion before anything happened to Ranger Cooper. But before he could line up his shot and pull the trigger without accidentally hitting Cooper, Cooper fired.
The gun flew from The Stallion’s hand and he howled with rage. Why the hell hadn’t Cooper shot the bastard in the heart? Jaime was about to do just that, but the woman appeared from a crevice in one of the rocks, holding her own weapon up and trained on The Stallion.
She reminded him so much of Gabby it physically hurt. There wasn’t an identical resemblance, but it was that determined glint in Natalie’s dark eyes that had him thinking about Gabby. If she was safe. If any of them would make it through this in one piece.
He shook that thought away. They would. They all damn well would.
And then Natalie pulled the trigger. She missed, but before Jaime could step out from the outcropping, she’d fired again. Even from Jaime’s distance he could see the red bloom on The Stallion’s stomach.
“Rodriguez!” he screamed, followed by The Stallion’s sad attempt at Spanish. Jaime sighed. He could only hope Cooper recognized him, or that they wouldn’t shoot on sight. He could stay there, of course, but it would be worse if he waited for Ranger Cooper to find him.
He stepped out from behind the land swell and walked slowly and calmly toward his writhing fake boss.
Ranger Cooper watched him with the dawning realization of recognition, but Natalie clearly didn’t have a clue as she kept her gun trained on him.
Jaime thought maybe, maybe, there was a chance he could maintain his identity and get back to Gabby, so he nodded to Cooper. “Tell your woman to put down the gun,” he said in Spanish.
Cooper looked over at the woman. “Put it down, Nat,” he murmured, an interesting softness in the command. One Jaime thought he recognized.
Wasn’t that odd?
“I won’t let anyone kill us. Not now. Not when that man has my sister,” Natalie said, her hands shaking, her dark eyes shiny with tears. The Torres women were truly a marvel.
The Stallion made a grab for Jaime’s leg piece, but Jaime easily kicked him away. No, he wasn’t Rodriguez anymore. He had to be the man he’d always been, and he had to do his duty.
He wasn’t Rodriguez, a monster with a shady past. He was Jaime Alessandro, FBI agent, and regardless of who he was, he’d find a way to get Gabby to safety as soon as he got out of there.
“Ma’am, I need you to put your weapon down,” Jaime said, steady and sure, making eye contact with Natalie. “I’m with the FBI. I’ve been working undercover for Callihan.” Jaime ignored The Stallion’s outraged cry, because he saw the way the information tumbled together in Natalie’s head.
She didn’t even have to ask about Gabby for him to know that’s what she needed to hear. “I know where your sister is. She’s...safe.”
Natalie didn’t just lower her gun, she dropped it. She sank to the rocky ground and Jaime had to raise an eyebrow at Ranger Cooper sinking with her.
He couldn’t hear what they said to each other, but it didn’t matter. He turned to The Stallion. Victor Callihan. The man who’d made his life a living hell for two years.
He was still writhing on the ground, bloody and pale, shaking possibly with shock or with the loss of blood. He might make it. He might not. Jaime supposed it would depend on how quickly they worked.
Jaime slid into a crouch. “How does it feel, senor,” Jaime mused aloud, “to be so completely outwitted by everyone around you?”
“You think this is over?” The Stallion rasped. “It’ll never be over. As long as I breathe, you’re mine, and it will never, ever, be over.”
Jaime had been through too much for those words to have any impact. The Stallion thought he could intimidate him? Make him fear? Not in this lifetime or the next.
“There’s already an FBI raid at all four of your compounds.” He was gratified when the man’s eyes bulged. “Oh, did you think I didn’t put it together? The southern compound? You know who helped me figure out its location? Ah, no, I don’t want to ruin the surprise. I’ll let you worry about that. You’ll have plenty of time to ruminate in a cell.”
The Stallion lunged, but he was weakened and all Jaime had to do was rock back on his heels to avoid the man’s grasp.
“Everyone should be out by the time I get back, and you know what my first order of business will be? Burning every last doll in that place,” he whispered in the man’s ear, before standing.
Jaime turned to Cooper who’d gotten Natalie to her feet. He ignored The Stallion’s sputtering and nodded in the direction of the Jeep. “I have rope in my vehicle. We’ll tie him up and take him to the closest ranger station.”
And then he’d find a way to get to Gabby.
Chapter 15
Gabby stood at the door to her room, Jasmine slightly in front of her. Alyssa and Tabitha had already gone back into the common room, plan in place.
Gabby felt sick, but she pushed it away. The girls were counting on her and so was... Well, she herself. She was the architect of this plan, the leader, and if she wanted them all to survive, she had to be calm and strong.
Jaime was out protecting her sister, and no matter how mad he might be at her for not leaving, she knew he’d do everything to keep Natalie safe.
And she hadn’t even told him...
She forced it all away as Alyssa’s cue blasted through the house. Gabby exchanged a look with Jasmine. Alyssa was supposed to yell at Tabitha, not scream obscenities at her.
As Gabby and Jasmine slid into the room, Alyssa attacked, stabbing one of her butter knives into Wallace’s leg with a brutal force Gabby had to look away from.
Jasmine threw the cords they’d gathered at Tabitha. Wallace screamed in a kind of agony that made Gabby’s blood run cold, but she couldn’t think about that now. Layne was her target.
His eyes gleamed with an unholy bloodlust and his gun was in his grasp far too fast. But somehow everything seemed to move in slow motion. Before Gabby could even flinch, Jasmine was throwing her body at Layne’s legs.
The impact surprised Layne enough that he fell forward, on top of Jasmine, who cried out, mixing with Wallace’s screams.
Gabby scrambled forward, pushing Layne off Jasmine so he hit the hard floor on his injured shoulder. He howled in pain, but he didn’t let go of the gun as Gabby grabbed it.
She jerked and pulled, but Layne didn’t let go. He screamed, but she couldn’t wrestle the weapon from his grasp.
Until Jasmine got to her feet and started stomping on his bad shoulder, a wholly different girl than the woman who’d, pale-faced and wide-eyed, told Gabby she wasn’t strong enough. Gabby finally wrested the gun free of his hand, trying to think past the high-pitched keening from both men.
“Rope,” she gasped then yelled louder. She glanced at Alyssa and Tabitha. Wallace thrashed, groaning in pain as he swung his hands out, but Tabitha had tied his legs tightly to the chair and Alyssa had already wrestled the gun out of his hands.
Alyssa kicked one of the cords Gabby’s way and Gabby grabbed it as Layne tried to scuttle away from Jasmine, cursing and, Gabby thought, maybe even sobbing.
Jasmine stomped another time on his wound, which had now bled completely through his bandage and shirt. His face went white and his eyes rolled back in his head, and it was only then that Gabby realized Jasmine was crying and that Wallace had gone completely silent.
Feeling a sob rise in her throat, Gabby knelt next to Layne and jerked his arms behind his back, doing her best to tie the cord around his thick forearms and wrists. She pulled it as tightly as she possibly could and tied as many knots as the length of cord would allow.
She breathed through her mouth, because something about the smell of Layne—him or his wound—nearly made her woozy.
“I�
�ve got his legs,” Tabitha said, moving to the end of Layne’s lifeless body. Gabby could see the rise and fall of his chest, so he wasn’t dead.
She almost wished he was, which was enough to get her to her feet. She glanced back at Alyssa who had ripped off half her shirt and tied it around Wallace’s face like a gag. The man still wiggled, but the cords and knots were holding and if he tried to escape too much longer, he’d likely knock the whole chair over.
Alyssa held the gun far too close to Wallace’s head.
Gabby crossed to her, holding her hand out for the gun. “Tabitha is going to guard them.”
Alyssa didn’t spare Gabby a glance. “My suggestion of just killing them stands,” she said, her hands tight on the gun, sweat dripping down her temple.
“I need your help to gather evidence.”
“They can,” Alyssa said, jerking her chin toward Jasmine, who stood with Layne’s gun trained on his unmoving form and Tabitha finishing up the knots at his ankles. She never looked at them, just gestured toward them.
“No, I need you,” Gabby said firmly.
Alyssa’s gaze finally flickered to Gabby. “You need me?”
“Yes. You’re the strongest next to me. We’ll be able to break down the doors easiest and carry the most stuff. I need you.”
Gabby didn’t really know if Alyssa was stronger, but it was certainly the most plausible. Clearly it also got through to her since she’d looked away from Wallace.
Maybe it would be easier to kill the men, but Gabby... She didn’t want to have to relive that for the rest of her life, and she didn’t want the other girls to have to, either.
Alyssa waved the gun a bit. “We might need this to bust the lock off.”
Gabby remained steadfast in holding her hand out, palm upward. “Give me the gun, Alyssa. We need to do this as a team.”
The woman’s mouth turned into a sneer and Gabby thought for sure she’d lost the battle. Any second now Alyssa would pull the trigger and—
She slapped the gun into Gabby’s palm. “Let’s go get those doors open,” she muttered.