by Nicole Helm
“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 Four
Gabby looked at her hand, encompassed by a much larger one. She wondered if the small scars across his knuckles were from his 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.
But this was something. God, something to do. Something real. Something that wasn’t just pointless fighting but actually working toward a goal.
Freedom.
She settled herself at that word. It had come to mean something different in eight years. Or maybe it had come to mean nothing at all.
She shook those oddly uncomfortable thoughts away and looked around for a place to create her makeshift map. “I can’t explain it without props,” she said, setting a brush on the center of the floor.
“Let’s do it on the bed instead of the floor, so if anyone comes in we can...” He rubbed a hand over his unkempt if short beard. “Well, cover it up.”
Right. Because to The Stallion she was a gift. No, that was too generous. She was a thing to be traded for services. She shuddered at the thought but...the man kneeled at the bed. The man who hadn’t used her as payment but was using her as an informant.
The man whose name she didn’t know.
“What should I call you?” she asked suddenly. Because she was working with this man to free—no, not to free anything, but to bring down The Stallion—and she hadn’t a clue as to what to call him.
He glanced at her and she must be dreaming the panic she saw in his expression because it disappeared in only a second.
“They call me Rodriguez,” he said carefully. “But my name is Jaime A—I...” He shook his head as he focused, as he seemed to push away whatever was plaguing him. “Call me Rodriguez. It’s safest.”
She knelt next to him, biting back the urge to repeat Jaime. Just to feel what his name would sound like in her mouth.
Silly. “All right, Rodriguez.” She placed the b
rush at the center of the bed. “This is Austin. The bed is Texas. I don’t have a clue...” She trailed off, realizing this man would know where they were. He hadn’t been blindfolded or hooded. He actually knew if they were still in Texas, if they were close to home.
She breathed through the emotion swamping her. “Where are we?” she whispered.
“An hour east of El Paso. Middle of nowhere, basically. Only a few small towns around.”
She blinked. El Paso. She’d had theories about where they could be, and El Paso had factored into them, but theories and truths were...
“Take your time,” Jaime said gently.
“But we don’t have much time, do we?” she returned, staring into compassionate eyes for the first time in eight years. Because as much as all the girls felt sorry for each other, they felt sorry for themselves first and foremost.
Jaime nodded toward the bed. “Technically, I don’t know how much time we have. I only know the quicker we figure it out, the less chance he has of hurting people. More people.”
She took a deep breath and returned her focus to the bed. “The brush is Austin. I get the feeling that’s something like...the center. I don’t know if it’s a headquarters or...”
“Technically, he lives in Austin. His public persona, anyway.”
His public persona. Though it fit everything she knew or had theorized, it was hard to believe The Stallion went about a normal life in Austin and people didn’t see something was wrong with the man. Warped and broken beyond comprehension.
“So, we’ve got his personal center at Austin,” Jaime continued for her, taking one of the rubber bands she’d piled next to her. He reached past her, his long, muscular arm brushing against her shoulder. “And this is the compound close to El Paso.”
“Right. Right.” She picked up another rubber band. “He seems to work by seasons, sort of. I started wondering if he had a place in each direction. If this is west, he has a compound in the north, the south and the east. Unless Austin is his east.” She placed rubber bands in general spots that represented each direction, creating a diamond with Austin at the somewhat center.
“He has a compound in the Panhandle. Though I haven’t been there, he’s talked of it. I’ve been to the one on the Louisiana border. I didn’t think he had women there, but... Now that I’ve seen this setup, maybe he did and I just didn’t know about it.”
The idea that there’d been women to help and he hadn’t helped them clearly bothered him, but he kept talking. “But south... He’s never mentioned any kind of holdings in the south of Texas.” He tapped the lower portion of her bed. “It has to be south.”
“It would make sense. The access to drugs, people.”
“It would make all the sense in the world, and you, Gabriella, are something of a miracle.” He grinned over at her.
“It’s...Gabby. Everyone, except him, calls me Gabby.”
His grin didn’t fade so much as morph into something else, something considering or...
The door swung open and the next thing Gabby knew, she was being thrust onto the bed and under a very large man.
* * *
JAIME HADN’T HAD a woman underneath him in over two years, and that should not at all be the thought in his head right now. But she was soft underneath him, no matter how strong she was...soft breasts, soft hair.
And a kidnapping victim, jackass.
“Rodriguez. Boss wants you.” Layne’s cruel mouth was twisted into a smirk, clearly having no compunction about interrupting...well, what this looked like, not so much what it was.
Damn these men and their interruptions. He was getting somewhere, and he didn’t mean on top of Gabriella.
Gabby.
He couldn’t call her that. Couldn’t think of her like that. She was a tool, and a victim. Any slipups and they could both end up dead. He glanced down at her, completely still underneath him, and it was enough of a distraction that he was having trouble deciding how to play things in front of Layne.
She blinked up at him, eyes wide, and though she wasn’t fighting him, he’d scared her. No matter that she understood him, his role here, he didn’t think she’d be trusting him any time soon. How could he blame her for that?
Wordlessly he got off Gabby and the bed and straightened his clothes in an effort to make Layne think he was more rumpled than he really was.
“We’ll finish this later,” he said offhandedly to Gabby, hoping it sounded to Layne like a hideous threat.
Jaime sauntered over to the door, not looking back at Gabby to see what she was doing, though that’s desperately what he wanted to do. He grabbed his sunglasses from his pocket and slipped them on his face as he stepped out into the hallway with Layne.
“Awfully clothed, aren’t you?” Layne asked.
Jaime closed the door behind him before he answered. “Still trying to knock the fight out of her. Wouldn’t want to intimidate her with what’s coming.” Jaime smirked as if pleased with himself instead of disgusted.
“It’s a hell of a lot better when there’s still a little fight in them,” Layne said, glancing back at Gabby’s door as they walked down the hall.
Jaime’s body went cold, but he reined in his temper, curling his fingers into fists, his only—and most necessary—reaction.
“Do you think senor would be pleased with that world view?” he asked as blandly as he could manage.
Layne’s gaze snapped to Jaime and his threat. The man sneered. “Not every idiot believes your Pepe Le Pew act, buddy.”
Jaime flashed his most intimidating grin, one devoid of any of the humanity he was desperate to believe he still had. “Pepe Le Pew is French, culo.”
“Whatever,” the man said with a disinterested wave. “You know what I mean.”
“I know a lot of things about you, amigo,” Jaime said, enjoying the way the man rolled his eyes at every Spanish word he threw into the conversation.
Layne didn’t take the hint. “Maybe you want to pass her around a bit. Boss man’s been pretty strict about us getting anything out of these girls but you—”
Jaime stopped and shoved Layne into the wall. What he really wanted to do was punch the man, but he knew that would put his credibility in jeopardy, no matter how much dirt he had on Layne. He wrestled with the impulse, with the beating violence inside him.
No matter what this man might deserve, he was not Jaime’s end goal. The end goal was to make this all moot.
So, he held Layne there, against the wall, one fist bunched in the man’s T-shirt to keep him exactly where he wanted him. He stared down at the man with all the menace he felt. “You will not touch what is mine,” Jaime threatened, making his intent clear.
“You’ve already stepped all over what’s mine,” Layne returned, but Jaime noted he didn’t fight back against Jaime’s hold—intelligence or strategy, Jaime wasn’t sure.
“I ran this show before he brought you in,” Layne growled.
“Well, now you answer to me. So, I’d watch your step, amigo. I know things about you I don’t think The Stallion would particularly care to hear about. A hooker in El Paso, for starters.”
Layne blustered, but underneath it the man had paled. This was why Jaime preferred everyone think of him as muscle who could barely understand English. They underestimated him. But Jaime hadn’t walked in here blindly. He knew The Stallion’s previous head honchos wouldn’t take the power share easily. So he’d collected leverage.
Thank God.
“Now, are you ready to keep your disgusting tongue and hands to yourself?” Jaime asked with an almost pleasant smile. “Or do I have to make your life difficult?”
Layne ground his teeth together, a sneer marring his features, but he gave a sharp nod.
“Muy bueno,” Jaime said, pretending it was great news as he released th
e piece of garbage. “Let’s proceed, then.” He gestured grandly down the hall to the back door.
Layne grumbled something, but Jaime was relieved to see concern and fear on the man’s face. He could only hope it would keep the man in line.
They exited the house and Jaime waited while Layne chained everything up. The late summer sun shimmered in the green of the trees, and if Jaime didn’t know what lurked in the shed across the grass, he might have relaxed.
As it was, relaxing wasn’t happening any time soon.
Jaime let Layne lead the way to the shed. He preferred to touch as little as possible in that little house of horrors.
Both men stepped in to find The Stallion pacing, hands clutched behind his back, and Wallace looking wary in the far corner.
The Stallion looked up distractedly. “Good. Good. We’ve gotten news of Herman before Wallace even got anywhere.” The man’s hands shook as he brought them in front of him in fists, fury stamped across his face. The usual calm calculation in his eyes something darker and more frenzied. “With the Texas Rangers and a hypnotist.” The Stallion slammed a fist to the desk that made the creepy-ass dolls on the shelf above shake, their dead lifeless eyes fluttering at the vibration.
Jaime forced himself to look away and stare flatly at his boss. Fake boss, he amended.
“Luckily, Mr. Herman doesn’t know enough to give them much of a lead, but he certainly represents a loose end.” The Stallion took a deep breath, plucking one of the brunette dolls from the shelf. He cradled it like a child.
It took every ounce of Jaime’s control and training to keep the horror off his face. Grown men capable of murder cradling a doll was not...comforting in the least.
“I’ve sent a team to get rid of Herman. Scare the hypnotist. I don’t think I want to extinguish her yet. She might be valuable. But I want her scared.” He squeezed the doll so tight it was a wonder one of its plastic limbs didn’t break off.