by Nicole Helm
“Layne and Wallace,” Jaime confirmed, crossing to where she sat on her bed. He crouched in front of her and, after a moment, took her hands in his. “I tried to get him to send me, but he thinks Layne is leaking things to the cops.”
Gabby jerked her gaze up from where it had been on their joined hands. “He thinks there’s a leak,” she gasped. That meant Jaime was in danger. That meant once The Stallion figured out it wasn’t Layne, he’d figure out it was Jaime and then—
Jaime squeezed her hands. “I don’t actually think he thinks that because of anything I’ve done. He thinks it too convenient that Ranger Cooper and your sister outwitted those men, but he’s underestimating the Ranger.”
“Maybe he’s underestimating my sister.”
Jaime smiled, and not even one of those comforting ones. No, this seemed closer to genuine. A real feeling, not one born of this place. It smoothed through her like a warm drink on a cold day, which she barely remembered as a thing, but his smile made her remember.
“Maybe that is it. He certainly underestimates you.”
“But you don’t.” She touched his cheek, brushed her fingertips across his bristled jaw. Five seconds in his company and she’d forgotten all the admonitions she’d just made to herself. But in his presence—calm and strong and comforting—she forgot everything.
Her gaze dropped to the weapons strapped to his chest and she sighed. Well, not everything. Alyssa’s words were still there, scrambling around in her brain.
She dropped her fingers from his face to his holster of weapons. She traced her hand over a gun. She didn’t know anything about guns. He’d have to somehow teach her to fire one, and it wasn’t as if she’d be able to practice anywhere.
But maybe one of the other girls knew how to shoot. If she got one to them...?
She sighed, overwhelmed. This was why she’d given up making a plan. Too many variables. She could analyze a problem, remember a million facts and figures, puzzle together disparate pieces, but when it came to all the unknown fallout of her possible actions...
It made her want to curl up in her bed and cry.
“What’s wrong?”
She had to put it all away. Emotion had never gotten her anything in this place. Unless it was anger. Unless it was fight.
“Would they notice?” she forced herself to say strongly and evenly. “If you gave one of these to me, would anyone notice it missing?”
His expression changed into something she didn’t recognize. Into something almost like suspicion. “You want one of my guns?” he asked, moving out of his crouch and into a standing position. He folded his arms across his chest and looked down at her, and it was a wonder anyone who really paid attention didn’t see the way his demeanor screamed law enforcement.
“What do you want to do with it?” he asked carefully, the same way she thought he might interrogate a criminal.
She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but she didn’t like that. Trust was a two-way street, wasn’t it? Didn’t he have to trust her for her to trust him?
“What’s going on, Gabby?”
She looked away from his dark brown gaze, from the arms-crossed, FBI-agent posture. She looked away from the man she didn’t know. Hard and very nearly uncompromising.
She shouldn’t tell him about the girls’ plan. It felt like a violation of privacy, and yet, if she kept it from him he could just as easily be hurt, or accidentally hurt one of the girls.
It was a no-win situation, which should feel familiar. She’d been living “no win” for eight years.
Then his finger traced her cheek, so feather-light, before he paused under her chin, tilting her head up so she would look at him.
She was tired of hard things and no-win situations and this. But Jaime... It was as though he looked at her as neither just another kidnapping victim nor as the strong leader, not as anything but herself.
“What do you know about me, Jaime?” she asked, not even sure where the question came from but knowing she needed an answer. She needed something.
He cocked his head, but he didn’t ask her to explain herself. Instead he pulled her up into a standing position, gripping her shoulders and staring down into her eyes. Everything about him intense and strong and just...him.
“I know you’re brilliant. That you’re beyond strong. I know you love your family, and it eats at you that you can’t protect Natalie from this. I know you’ve been hurt, and you’re tired. But I also know you’ll endure, because there is something inside of you that cannot be killed. No matter what that man does. You’re a fighter.”
It was a torrent of words. Positive attributes she’d thought about herself, questioned about herself. All said in that brook-no-argument, no-nonsense tone, his gaze never leaving hers. She knew he had to be a good liar to have survived undercover for two years, and yet she couldn’t believe this was anything but the truth.
Jaime saw who she was—not what she’d done or how long she’d been here. He saw her. In all the different ways she was.
“The girls want to—” Gabby swallowed. She had to trust him. She did, because he was her only hope, and because he saw her like no one else had in eight years. “They want me to try to get a gun from you, and then go after The Stallion.”
Jaime’s forehead scrunched. “They can’t do that.”
“Why not?” she demanded, something like panic pumping through her. She wanted to be out of there. She wanted a life. Even if it wasn’t her old life, she wanted...
Him. She wanted him in the real world, and she wanted her.
“I’m here to take him down, Gabby. I’m here to make sure he goes to jail, not just for justice, but so we can put an end to all the evil this man is doing. We can’t shoot him in a blaze of glory. That just leaves a power vacuum someone else can take.”
“I don’t care,” she whispered, feeling too close to tears for even her own comfort. But she didn’t care in the least. The Stallion was going after her sister and she just wanted him dead.
“I understand that. I do. But—”
“My freedom isn’t your fight.” She sat back down on the bed, slipping through his strong grasp. He could see her. Maybe he even felt some of the things she felt, but her fight was not his fight.
He crouched again, not letting her pull into herself. He took her hands and he waited, silent and patient, until she raised her wary gaze to his.
“It’s part of my fight,” he said, not just earnestly but vehemently, fervently. “It’s a part I don’t intend to fail on. I will get you out of here. I will. But I need to do my job, too. It is why I’m here.”
A tear slipped out, and then another, and she felt so stupid for crying in front of him, but everything ached in a way she hadn’t let it for a very long time.
He brushed one tear off with his thumb then he leaned forward, his mouth so close she inhaled sharply, drowning a little in his dark eyes, wanting to get lost in the warm strength of his body.
“Don’t cry,” he said on a whisper before he brushed his mouth against another tear, wiping it from her jaw with his mouth.
He pulled his face away from hers, shaking his head. “I shouldn’t—”
But she didn’t want his shouldn’ts and she didn’t want him to pull away, so she tugged him closer and covered his mouth with hers.
* * *
HE’D DREAMED OF THIS. Gabby’s mouth under his again. Not because he was trying to be someone else. Not because he was trying to convince anyone he was taking what he wanted.
No, he’d dreamed of her mouth touching his because they’d both wanted it, not from anything born of this place. On the outside. Free. Themselves. He’d imagined it, unable to help himself.
Even having dreamed of it, even in the midst of allowing it to happen in the here and now, he knew it was wrong. Not just agains
t everything he’d ever been taught in his law-enforcement training, but against things he believed.
She was a victim. No matter how strong she was. No matter how much he felt for her. She was still a victim of this place. Kissing her, drowning in it, was like taking advantage of her. It was wrong. It flew in the face of who he was as an FBI agent, as a law-enforcement agent.
But he didn’t stop. Couldn’t. Because while it went against all those things he was, it didn’t go against who he was. Deep down, this was all he wanted.
Her tongue traced his mouth and she sighed against him. Melting, leaning. Crawling under all the defenses he wound around himself. False identities. Badges and pledges. Weapons and uniforms and lies.
He should pull away. He should stop this madness.
He curled his fingers into her soft hair. He angled her head so that he could taste her better. He ignored every last voice in his head telling him to stop. Because she was touching him. Tracing the line of his shoulders. Pressing her hand to his heart. She scooted closer, brushing her chest against his.
She whispered his name against his mouth. His real name. And he wanted to be able to be that. He wanted to be able to be the man who could give her everything she wanted and everything she deserved.
But he wasn’t that man. Not here. Not now. He couldn’t even let her have fantasies of ending The Stallion’s life.
He mustered all of his strength and all of his righteous rightness. Somehow...somehow he did the thing he least wanted to do and pulled away from her.
Her breath was coming in heavy pants, as was his. Her dark eyes were unfathomably warm, her lips wet from his mouth. He wanted to sink himself there again and again until they thought of nothing but each other.
“Jaime,” she said on a whisper.
“We can’t do this. I can’t...” He tried to pull away but her arms were strong around him.
“Do you know how long it’s been since someone’s kissed me? Since I wanted someone to kiss me?”
“Gabby,” he returned, pained. Desperate—for her and a way this could be right.
“I know it isn’t the time or the place. I know it isn’t prudent or whatever, but I have lived here for eight years without anything I wanted. I survived here without anyone touching me kindly, comfortingly or wanting to. Without anyone seeing me as anything other than a thing. If I’m going to believe in an end, I have to believe I can go back to being something real, not just this...ghost of a person.”
“Getting involved with the victim is not an acceptable—”
She pulled away from him quickly and with absolutely no hesitation. She turned her head away, shaking it. He’d stepped in it, badly.
“I know you don’t want to see yourself as a victim,” he began, trying to resist the impulse to reach for her. “But in my line of work—”
“I understand.”
But she didn’t understand. She was angry and she didn’t understand at all. “I do know how you feel,” he offered softly.
She rolled her eyes.
“It hasn’t been eight years, but two years is a long time to go without anyone seeing you for who you are. There aren’t a lot of hugs and nice words for the bad guy, Gabby. Even the other bad guys don’t like me because I’ve been slowly taking them down so that I could be the one next to The Stallion. It isn’t all fun and games over here.”
“Are you asking me to feel sorry for you?” she asked incredulously.
“Of course not.” He raked a hand through his hair, trying to figure out what he was trying to ask of her. “I’m saying that I understand. I’m saying that I would love to give you what you want. I would...”
“I’m just a victim. And you can’t get involved with the victim. I get it.”
“You don’t, because if you thought it was that simple... I have never in my entire career even considered kissing someone who was involved with a case I was part of. I have never once been unable to stop thinking about a woman who had anything to do with work. I have never been remotely—remotely—tempted to go against everything I believe. Until you.”
That seemed to dilute at least some of her anger. She still didn’t look at him, which was maybe for the best. He wasn’t sure if she looked at him that he’d be able to stay noble.
Because her soft lips tempted him. And the defiant look in her eyes... Everything about her was very near impossible to resist.
He hadn’t been lying that he’d never wanted someone the way he wanted her. Even if he took the police part out of it. No woman, no matter how short or long a period of time they had been in his life, had made him feel the way Gabby made him feel.
He wondered if that wasn’t why she was upset. Not that he’d stopped the kiss, but that she thought he didn’t see her the way he did.
She’d asked what he knew about her, and he’d been completely honest and open about all the things he knew she was. Maybe he shouldn’t have been, but she was everything he’d said, and he knew being attracted to her, caring about her, wasn’t as simple as whatever label a therapist would likely put on it.
It was Gabby, not the situation, that called to him. But the situation was what made everything far too complicated.
“I can’t give you a weapon,” he offered into her stubborn silence.
“All right,” she said, and she didn’t sound angry. She sounded tired. Very close to giving up. But then she straightened her shoulders and inhaled and exhaled slowly. Then she met his gaze, fierce and strong.
“I have to have a story for the girls... I have to... They want out, Jaime.” Something in her face changed, a kind of empathetic pain. “I used to be able to tell them it wasn’t any use to think about getting out, but we can’t keep doing this. Alyssa is right. Staying here isn’t worth being alive for.”
“So what kept you alive for so long?” he asked because he couldn’t imagine. He couldn’t fathom.
“My family, I guess. Daddy died because of his guilt over me. The least I could do was still be alive. The least I could do was get back somehow.” She looked down at her hands, clenched in her lap. “I thought I’d given up that hope, but I don’t know. Maybe I just convinced myself I had.”
He covered her clenched fists with his own. “I’m going to get you back to your family.” God, he’d do it. Come hell or high water. If he had to die first, he would do it.
“Not so long ago you said you couldn’t promise me that.”
“Not so long ago I was doing everything by the book.” He believed in the book, but he also...he also believed in this woman. “You’re right. Things can’t stand. It’s been too long. We can’t keep waiting around. We have to make something happen.”
She finally looked at him, eyebrows raised. “Really?”
“As soon as we get word that your sister has escaped Layne and Wallace, we’ll...” It was against everything he’d been taught, everything he was supposed to do, but he couldn’t keep telling Gabby to wait when he could be getting her out.
“Once we know your sister is safe, we’ll figure out an escape plan. You can’t tell the others who I am but... Maybe you can tell them I’m sympathetic, if you trust them to keep that to themselves. Tell them that if you work on me for a few days, you might actually be able to get a weapon from me. If anything slips up to The Stallion or anyone else, I’ll tell him it’s part of my plan. If you get the girls to stand down a few days. I don’t want to risk getting out and something happening to your sister.”
“Why?” she asked, still studying him, her forehead creased.
“Because you love her.”
Something in her face changed and he couldn’t read it. But she moved. Closer to him. No matter that he should absolutely avoid it, he let her kiss him again.
Slow and leisurely, as if they had all the time in the world. As if it was just the two of them.
Gabby and Jaime. As if that were possible.
And because the thought was so tempting, so comforting in this world of dark, horrible things, he let it linger far too long.
Chapter Ten
Gabby had kissed four men in her life. Ricky, of course. Corey Gentry on a dare in eighth grade. A guy at a frat party—she didn’t know his name—and now Jaime.
In the past eight years she would’ve considered this part of her dead. The part that could care about kissing and touching. The part of her brain that could go from that to sex.
It was a miracle and a joy to still have the same kind of desire she’d had before. It was a miracle and a joy to be kissing Jaime, his lips so soft, his touch nearly reverent. As though she were something of a miracle to him.
Ricky had never kissed her like this and she’d been convinced she loved him. But he’d been a boy and she’d been a girl. They’d been selfish and Jaime... Jaime was anything but selfish. A good man. A strong and honorable man.
That somehow made the kiss more exciting, knowing he thought it was wrong but couldn’t quite help himself. Knowing he felt the same simmering feelings and that he didn’t think it was because of their situation. It was because of who they were.
Gabby. Jaime.
She thought she hadn’t known who she was anymore, but she was learning. Jaime was showing her pieces of herself she’d forgotten. He was bending his strict moral code for her and that, above all else, spoke to a feeling most people wouldn’t believe could happen in three days. She herself wasn’t sure she’d believed something like this could grow in three days.
But here she was feeling things for a man that she’d never felt before. She wanted to be able to make sacrifices for him, and she wanted him safe, and she wanted him hers.
He pulled away slightly and it was another wondrous thing that every time he pulled away she could feel how hard it was for him to do so.
“I have a meeting with The Stallion,” he said, his voice very nearly hoarse. “I can’t be late again or things could get ugly.” He tried to smile, probably to make it sound less intimidating, but it didn’t work.