“What?” he rumbled.
She realized that she’d been staring fixatedly at him for the last several minutes. Chagrined, she turned away and led him into the main living area of her loft. “I’m just not used to having such a—large—guy around. That’s all. Come in and have a seat.”
“What? On this pixie furniture? Are you afraid I’ll break it?” he teased.
She turned around, surprised at the lightheartedness of their exchange. Less than a minute ago he’d been trying to convince her to go break into a guy’s home to perform some kind of interrogation. Now he was being almost playful. The dichotomy wasn’t lost on her.
“You seem a little tense,” he said, settling himself on her sofa. “Tasha didn’t tell me any particulars about you. What is it that brought you into this case?”
Her inner defenses instantly went up. “Why?”
“Because so far, anyone who has gotten sucked down this rabbit hole has had a reason to be.” He shrugged. There was absolutely nothing but nonchalance and polite interest in his tone and countenance.
Marina forced herself to calm down. She had to remember that not everyone was a threat. And this man seemed to be less of a threat than anyone else she’d met so far, even the other men who he called teammates. She inhaled deeply and then exhaled. She felt the muscles in and around her ribs expand. Her shoulders dropped, and she finally felt herself begin to relax, for the first time in what felt like forever.
BONES FELT AS though he were watching Marina chill out right before his eyes. The amount of tension the woman carried around was incredible. He’d known other people just like her in the past. They were the ones who had been through a war zone. They had gone unprepared into a firefight or had been forced into battle with no preparation or understanding of what the cost might be.
“You know,” Bones began quietly, keeping his tone conversational, “the interesting thing about PTSD is that the latest research actually shows that susceptibility is related to the levels of cortisol in the mother’s blood during her pregnancy as much as how much cortisol the individual has in their blood after the trauma.”
“What do you mean?” Her dark eyes were hooded, but he could tell she was fascinated with what he was saying.
“Well.” Bones chose his words carefully. “I’ve seen two men go through the exact same circumstances in battle. Maybe they are in the same platoon, or they’re even riding in the same Humvee when the attack occurs. They suffer the same trauma. One guy comes out unscathed, and the other suffers from crippling PTSD for the rest of his life.”
She reached up absently and unwound her hair from the bun on top of her head. “Really?”
Bones struggled not to be completely thrown by the sight of all that long, dark, silky hair. The stuff was thick and lustrous, and the only thing he could think about was how amazing it would look spread out over his pillows.
“Really,” he murmured. Keep it together, Jackson! “I’m just saying that PTSD is body chemistry as much as anything else. We can’t help our chemistry. That means people suffer from it in all sorts of ways. Even if they don’t go to war, they might be exposed to a trauma that then manifests later in symptoms of PTSD. A car accident, even the mere sight of an accident, losing a loved one, being abused, or being held captive are all legitimate reasons for people to suffer from PTSD. And what people who don’t have PTSD can never really understand, is how crippling those symptoms can be.”
“I don’t like small spaces anymore,” she whispered. “Sometimes even the thought of a cage, or walking into a pet store, it just makes me want to run.”
“Because running makes you feel like you’re in control of your situation,” he guessed. “You’re moving and free, and when you’re running nobody is going to touch you.”
Her dark eyes widened. “Exactly. How did you know?”
“I saw what happened earlier.” Bones could not pinpoint the moment when he had realized that she was uncomfortable in that office, but looking back he knew that he had sensed her distaste for going in there from the beginning. “You ran away from that place because you’d been pushed as far as you were going to go for tonight.”
“Yes.”
He shrugged. “That’s fair.”
MARINA THOUGHT HER eyes were going to pop out of her skull. “That’s… That’s fair? That’s what you say?”
“It is fair,” he reiterated. “You were in a situation that pushed you mentally and emotionally. You held it together just fine until there was an additional threat. You were okay with being in the small space. But add the threat of retribution or some unknown player, and there was no way in hell you were going to remain vulnerable in that situation.”
Now her mouth was popping open. “How?”
“How do I get it?” He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. His expression was inscrutable. “How about we say that I get it because I know what it feels like to have PTSD.”
“You?” She was utterly incredulous. “No!”
“Yes.”
“Look at you!” She jumped up, cursing in Spanish before switching back to English. “You’re big and capable and all put together and shit. You can’t tell me you freak out and start shaking just because you smell something or hear something!”
“I can tell you that all day long, sweetheart, because it’s true.”
Marina stared at him as though he’d suddenly turned into something totally unexpected. “None of my family gets it,” she admitted. Wait. Why had she told him that? But her mouth kept moving and things kept pouring out. “They don’t understand. They keep telling me that I survived and that means I’m strong, so I should put it all behind me and just move on with my life. They want me to get married and have a house full of kids just like my brothers and sisters.”
“But none of them understand that you never really left that place,” he finished softly.
The low timbre of his voice was the most soothing thing she had heard since escaping that hellhole where she had expected to die. Now Marina felt tears pricking her eyes. “I was held for almost six months in a warehouse near the harbor here in Baltimore.”
She expected to see pity in his eyes, but it never happened. There was something so different instead. The only word that came to mind was empathy. He sucked in a deep breath and held it before exhaling raggedly.
“I’m so sorry you had to go through that, baby girl,” he whispered. “So sorry.”
Marina swallowed the lump in her throat. “Every day in that place I thought that it was my turn to die. I never understood why I was still there. Why would they keep me for so long? What purpose did it serve? I knew that my family must be looking for me, but I didn’t understand why nobody had found me. Each day dawned, and I saw other women come and go. Some died right there in that cage beside me. I saw them—their bodies—and knew that they were dead.” She saw the horror of their flat, lifeless bodies all over again and shuddered. “Sometimes they were thrown in and never woke up. Other times they would cry and scream until they grew weaker and weaker, until one day they would just not wake up at all. Others would come and go quickly. It made no sense.”
“Sometimes there is no sense in life,” he told her.
BONES COULD NOT sit there one second longer and watch her suffer. Without even considering his actions or how they might be interpreted, he opened his arms and waited.
There was hesitation at first, and then she came to him willingly. Her curves seemed to fit so perfectly against the angular lines of his body. He folded her close and held her. She tucked her head beneath his chin as though they were already familiar with this embrace. No words could express the satisfaction he felt in that moment.
“How do you understand so perfectly?” she whispered. “You’re not asking me why I’m stuck in that prison, or why I can’t just be happy that I lived.”
Bones snorted. “The people who say those things are the ones who have never experienced the guilt of survival. They’ve never looked at
themselves in the mirror and wondered, ‘Why me?’”
“I should have died.”
Her agonized words cut him deeply. He identified with her more strongly than he had ever identified with anyone else—man or woman. She had come out of a horrific situation. He could well understand her feeling guilty for her very survival. So many other women had not survived, yet here she was. And because she possessed empathy and a conscience, she was tortured by this knowledge every day. And instead of letting that guilt and horror weigh her down, she was struggling to right the wrong and end the injustice of what was being done to others. That was strength.
“You are strong,” he told her. “You are worthy. And the fact that you haven’t given up even though you had every right to do so is evidence of your character.”
“I should have moved on,” she lamented softly, rubbing her cheek against his T-shirt. “My mother says I’m wasting my survival. She says that God preserved me so that I could live a good life for his purposes.”
Bones could not even muster up the energy to be civil in his response. “Pardon me, baby girl, but your momma is a moron. God might have spared you for a purpose. I’m not arguing that. But maybe that purpose wasn’t to go on as if nothing had happened. Maybe your purpose was to kick ass and find a way to make this right.”
She drew back, staring up at him with dark eyes filled with wonder. “Do you really think so?”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing?”
“I’m trying.”
Bones grunted in satisfaction. “Then nobody could ever ask for more.”
Chapter Five
It felt incredibly good to huddle in the embrace of this man. It shouldn’t have. Or maybe it should have. Maybe it was all right to feel the way she did. Marina couldn’t decide. The people in her life who should have understood her never had. Instead, this total stranger seemed to grasp exactly what she was feeling. He had validated her in ways that no one else ever had.
“We can talk about this new mission tomorrow,” Bones murmured. He started to get up. “You need some rest. All of this turmoil is bound to take a toll on you.”
“No!” She struggled to disentangle her legs from his. “Don’t go. Please?”
“I would think you want your space.” He glanced around. “And I have to compliment you on your taste. The place is nice.”
“I moved here—you know—after. I couldn’t stand the closed in feeling of my old apartment. My brother helped me move. It’s the last time I talked to him. I think he’s given up on me. They all have.”
“Why do you say that?” He put a little more distance between them on the couch.
“You said you think my purpose might be to make this right. They’ve been trying to convince me to let it go. I got an inheritance from my abuela. The money has been enough to help me get by. My mother was so mad. She said that money was supposed to help me start a household with a family. I think my grandmother would have been proud of me. I’m using the money to help other women. I don’t want anyone else to suffer like I did.”
“So what does that have to do with me going or staying?” He raised an eyebrow.
“I want you to help me.” She licked her lips nervously. Why did she feel as if so much depended on his answer? “I need your help. You and your friends have gotten more information in the last few weeks than I have in a year. My money is going to run out soon. I don’t want to give up, but…” She let her sentence hang.
Something fleeting touched his expression. She didn’t know what to think. Then he nodded. “I’ll help you. We can go compare notes in the morning.”
“Don’t go.” The whispered plea left her lips before she could stop it. “I don’t want to be alone. Please? Not tonight.”
“Marina,” he began in a low voice. “I don’t know what you’re asking me, baby girl.”
“I want you to stay with me,” Marina said quickly. “I don’t. I mean—I guess if you want to—I don’t know! I just know I don’t want you to go.”
He stared at her for a long time. “Tell me what happened.”
“To me?”
“Yes.”
“Why does it matter?”
She couldn’t read his expression when he answered. “Because it does.”
DID SHE REALLY know what she was asking? Hell. Did Bones know what she was asking? He needed to know how much baggage he was dealing with here. The last thing he wanted to do was scare her, but he was a red-blooded male. He wasn’t a eunuch. He was attracted to this woman, dammit. If there were things he needed to know, he needed to know them.
“I wasn’t raped,” she whispered. “If that’s what you’re worried about. I’ve even had sex since it all happened.” She looked a little uncomfortable. “It wasn’t great, but that was more because I just felt off, you know?”
“Trust is a little difficult to establish when you’ve been through something like this,” he agreed.
“I can’t come.”
It was readily apparent that she had blurted that out without intending to, because she clapped her hands over her mouth after she said it. Bones tried to be sensitive about the confidence, but inside he was reeling from shock. That was serious. That was a huge trust issue. He wasn’t qualified to deal with this. Worse, she had tapped into that protective part of his personality, and there was a great big part of him that wanted to put her in his pocket and keep her safe from all of the crap that seemed so determined to batter her down.
“All right,” Bones said softly. “Now that we’ve cleared that up, how about you just take me through it from the beginning? What happened, baby girl?”
“Oh.” She looked faintly surprised. “People always want to know what happened to me.”
“Personally.”
“Yes.”
“I want to know the chronology of events,” he clarified. “I want to know what it was that occurred that ended up with you being held against your will.”
She sank back into the corner of the sofa. He wasn’t sure if she was even aware that she had pulled an afghan over herself, but she huddled there and finally seemed to relax a little. Then she began to speak.
“So I don’t go out very much,” she began. Her voice was low and pleasing. The songlike quality of her words made him feel as though he could listen to her forever. “I’m more of an introvert, and my family is so overwhelming and overprotective that dating has always been a pain in the ass. They like to push men at me. The sort of guys that are preapproved, you know?”
He nodded, but just so she would continue. The only family Bones had were his military brothers, and nobody gave a shit who he dated.
“So my girlfriend Tyra was turning twenty-three. We all went together to this club in downtown Baltimore. It was a really hip place. Tons of people. I think the only reason we got in had to do with the girls I was with. They were gorgeous. There were five of us.” She got a faraway look on her face. “I remember there was this guy at the door with a clipboard. He saw Chessy and Tyra and waved us in. We went to the front of the line and got inside. We made a pact to stay together all night long. And believe me, we kept it.”
MARINA WAS SINKING deep into her story. She thought about that night. The man with the clipboard. The bartender who had let them into the VIP room. The guys they met there.
“It all felt contrived,” she said out loud. “The club, the VIP room, everything. Then the guys we met all decided to go upstairs. Tyra and Chessy wanted to go. The other two didn’t. I went with Tyra because she was my best friend. The three of us went up those stairs, and I knew it was going to be bad. But there were three of us, right? We figured there was safety in numbers. Then they started smoking a joint, and the next thing I knew, we were waking up in a cage.”
Marina was clutching the afghan like a lifeline. The horror all came back, although now she felt more and more distance between her and the events. Her therapist had helped her to start building a glass wall in her mind. Something that helped her gain perspective ove
r what had happened without it overwhelming her emotionally each and every time.
“Go on,” Bones murmured.
His voice was comforting somehow. She clung to that and continued talking. “At first the three of us were in that cage together. It was a big place. I don’t know how big, but there were lots of us. And it rocked, like a ship. Like that ship the Brazen Belle. It was awful. The smell was awful. Then they came and took Chessy. I think we’d only been there two days. We woke up one morning and she was just gone.” Marina still felt that ripple of fear as she remembered waking up and finding that she and Tyra were huddled together alone. “They wouldn’t tell us where she was. I don’t even know who they were. Just men, I guess. Big, burly men who walked around with masks. If a woman got out of hand they would stick a cattle prod in the cage and zap you. There was so much crying and screaming. I can’t even describe it.”
He seemed to stir. “This was on the boat?”
“Yes. Then two days later they took Tyra. We were clinging to each other, and they ripped her away. I cried and cried, until they zapped me. Then I woke up, and I wasn’t on the ship anymore. I was in a warehouse. The cages were different. They were more like containers. We were in there maybe five or six people to a cage. Sometimes women would disappear, but mostly we were just there.”
“How did you escape?”
“There weren’t guards in this place. It was as though we were filed away because we were no longer needed. I can’t really explain it. It just was.” She reconsidered that fact. “They came once a day and took us one at a time to do our business and eat. They stuck us in a little pen. I don’t know what it was. Just a space between the containers. I climbed out. I don’t know that I planned it really. I just climbed. Once I was on the other side, I got down and walked out. Just walked out, as if nothing had happened.”
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