by Nicole Helm
The Stallion had begun to nod the more Jaime complimented him. “You’re right. You’re right.”
He dropped the doll’s hand and Jaime nearly sagged with relief.
“You’ll have to go with me, Rodriguez.”
Jaime stilled. That was not part of his plan. “Tell Layne and Wallace they’re in charge of the girls. We’ll leave immediately.”
“Their injuries are severe. Shot. Both of them. Surely incapable of watching after anything. You must have other men you can take with you, and I’ll stay—”
“No.” The Stallion shook his head. “No, you’re coming with me. Wallace and Layne, no matter how injured, can keep a door locked. I’ll send for another man, and he can kill them and take over here. Yes, yes, that’s the plan. I need you. I need you, Rodriguez.” The Stallion took one of the dolls off the shelf. He petted the doll’s dark hair as though it were a puppy. “If you prove your worth to me on this, there is nothing that I wouldn’t give you, Rodriguez.” He held out the doll between them.
Jaime was afraid he looked as horrified as he felt, but he kept his hands grasped lightly behind his back. He forced himself to smile languidly at the unseeing doll. “Then I am at your service, senor.”
“Go tell them the plan,” The Stallion said, gesturing with the doll, thank God not making him take it. “Not the killing part, of course, just the watching-after-the-girls part. Pack all your weapons and all your ammunition. Pack up all the water in my supplies and put it in the Jeep. We’ll leave as soon as you’ve gotten everything together. Do you understand?”
Jaime nodded, trying to steady the panic rising inside him. “Sí, senor.”
It wasn’t such a terrible thing. He’d be there to stop The Stallion from getting any kind of hold on Gabby’s sister and Ranger Cooper. But it left Gabby here. Exposed.
And he only had limited time to figure out how to fix that.
Chapter Thirteen
Gabby tried to ignore how locked in she felt. She’d been a victim for eight years. A prisoner of this place. Being locked in her room and unable to leave was certainly no greater trial to bear.
But she hadn’t been locked in her room for any stretch of time since the very beginning. Mostly she’d been able to go to the common room or the kitchen whenever she wanted.
She’d gotten used to that freedom, and it was clawing at her to have lost some of it. That made it a very effective punishment all in all.
She wondered what the girls were doing. Had Alyssa calmed down? Was she ranting? Was she bringing reality to her threat to kill everyone in an effort to get out of there?
Gabby buried her face in her pillow and tried to block it all out, but when she inhaled she could smell Jaime and something in her chest turned over.
Oh, Jaime. That was part of why this locked-up thing was harder to bear, too. She’d felt almost real for nearly twenty-four hours. She and Jaime had spent the night, and most of today, having sex and talking and enjoying each other’s company. As though they lived in an outside world where they were themselves and not undercover agent and kidnapping victim.
It made it so much harder to be fully forced into what she really was. Victim. Captive. Not any closer to having any power than she’d been twenty-four hours ago.
Except she’d stolen a moment of it, and wasn’t that something worth celebrating?
She heard someone unlocking her door from the outside and sat bolt upright in bed. Jaime hadn’t been gone very long. If he was back already, it had to be bad news.
If it wasn’t Jaime on the other side, so much the worse.
But it was the man she’d taken as a lover who stepped into her room, shutting the door behind him with more force than necessary. His face reminded her of that first day. Rodriguez. The mask, not the man.
“Do you have anything in here you’d want to take with you?” he demanded.
“What?” She couldn’t follow him as he walked the perimeter of her room as if searching for something valuable.
“I don’t have time to explain. I don’t have time to do anything but get you out now.”
“What happened?” she asked, jumping off the bed.
His hand curled around her forearm, tight and without any of its usual kindness. “Is there anything you need to take?” he repeated, glaring at her.
“What’s happened?” she pleaded with him. Her heart beat a heavy cadence against her chest and she couldn’t think past the panic gripping her. “Is it Nattie? Is—”
He began pulling her to the door. “Your sister and the Ranger escaped.”
“Escaped? Escaped!” Hope burst in her chest, bright and wonderful. “So we’re...we’re just running?”
He looked up and down the hallway. “You are. I’ll get the other girls after.”
That stopped Gabby in her tracks, no matter how he pulled on her arm. “What?” she demanded.
“Layne and Wallace are hurt. I can get one of you out now without raising any questions because you’re supposed to be locked up, but I can’t get you all out. Not right this second. I have to go with The Stallion to track down your sister. Which is good,” he said before she could argue with him or ask him what the hell he was talking about. “Because I will obviously make sure that doesn’t happen. I have—” he glanced at his watch “—maybe five seconds to contact my superiors to let them know to raid this place, and then to try to find one just like it in the south.” He shoved her into the hallway, but she fought him.
“You can’t take me and not them.”
His gaze locked on hers. “Of course I can. And that’s what we’re doing.”
“No. You can’t. They’ll fall apart without me.”
“They won’t. And they’ll be saved in a day or two. Three tops.”
“You really expect me to leave Tabitha and Jasmine here with Alyssa? Alyssa will instigate something. You know she will. They’ll all be dead before...” She didn’t want to say it out loud, no matter how much he wasn’t being careful himself.
He grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a little shake, his eyes fierce and stubborn. “But you won’t be.”
It was her turn to look up and down the hallway. She didn’t know where the girls were, where Wallace and Layne or The Stallion were milling about. Jaime was losing his mind and it was her... Well, it was her responsibility to make him find it.
“You have to get it together,” she snapped in a low, quiet voice. “You have to be sensible about this, and you have to calm down.”
He thrust his fingers into his hair, looking more than a little wild. “Gabby, I do not have time. You have to do what I say, and you have to do it now.”
“Take Alyssa,” she said, though it pained her to offer that. A stabbing pain of fear, but it was the only option.
“Wh-what?” he spluttered.
“Take Alyssa. I can handle more days here. Tabitha and Jasmine... We can hack it, but Alyssa cannot take another day. You know that. Take her. Get her out, we’ll cover it up, and when the raid comes, you will come and get me.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
“No! You’ve lost yours.” Part of her wanted to push him, or reverse their positions and shake him, but the bigger part of her wanted to reach something in him. She curled her fingers into his shirt. “You know it isn’t safe to take me out. Why are you risking everything?”
“Because I love you,” he blurted, clearly antagonized into the admission.
She only stared up at him. It wasn’t... She...
Love.
“I do not have time to argue,” he said, low and fierce.
That, she was sure, was absolutely true. He didn’t have time to argue. He didn’t have time to think. But she knew the girls better than he did. She knew...
She reached her hands up and cupped hi
s face. She drew strength from that. From him. From love. “If you love me,” she said, low and in her own kind of fierce, “then understand that I know what they can handle. What they can’t. I couldn’t live with myself if I got out and they didn’t. Not like this.”
She wasn’t sure what changed in him. There was still an inhuman tenseness to his muscles and yet some of that fierceness in him had dimmed.
“What am I supposed to do if something happens to you?” he asked, his voice pained and gravelly.
“I can take care of myself.” She knew it wasn’t totally true. A million things could go wrong, but she had to trust him to leave and save Nattie, and he needed to trust her to stay and keep the girls alive.
That she’d have a much easier time of doing if he took Alyssa. No matter that it made her want to cry. No matter that she wanted to be selfish and take the spot. But she couldn’t imagine living the rest of her life if their deaths were on her head.
If there was a chance to get them all out, alive and safe, she had to take it. Not the one that only saved her. “You know I’m right.”
He looked away from her, though his tight grip on her shoulders never loosened. “You understand that I have to go. I don’t have a choice.”
“I want you to go. To save my sister.”
His gaze returned to hers, flat and hard. “I’m not taking Alyssa.”
“What? You have to.” She gripped his shirt harder in an attempt to shake him. “If you can get one of us—”
“Gabby, I could get you out. Because you’re supposed to be locked up, but more because I know you could do it. I could trust you to handle anything that came our way. I can’t trust Alyssa. I can’t trust her to keep her mouth shut when it counts. I can’t trust her to get home. Like you said, she can’t hack it. If I can’t leave her here, then I can’t take her, either.”
“Then take one of the other girls!”
“You said it yourself. Alyssa would blab someone was missing. She’d... You can’t trust her not to get you all killed. Don’t you understand? It’s you or no one.”
“Why are you doing this?” she demanded, tears flooding her eyes. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. He should take someone. Someone had to survive this.
“I’m not doing anything. I saw a chance for you—you, Gabby, to escape. If you won’t take it, there’s no substitute here. There is only you or nothing.”
“Why are you trying to manipulate me into this? If you love me—”
“Why are you trying to manipulate my love? I know what the hell I’m doing, too. I have been trained for this. I have—”
“Gabby?”
Gabby and Jaime both jerked, looking down the hallway to Jasmine standing wide-eyed at the end of it. “What’s going on?”
Jaime shook his head. “I can’t do this. I don’t have time to do this.” Completely ignoring Jasmine, he got all up in Gabby’s face, pulling her even closer, his dark eyes blazing into her. “I can save you now, but you have to come with me now. This is your last chance.”
“It’s your last chance to think reasonably,” she retorted.
He looked to the ceiling and inhaled before crushing his mouth to hers, as though Jasmine wasn’t standing right there. He seemed to pour all his frustration and all his fear into the kiss, and all Gabby could do was accept it.
“Goodbye, Gabby,” he said on a ragged whisper, releasing her. “I love you, and I will get you safe.”
She started to say his name as he walked away, but stopped herself as she looked at Jasmine. She couldn’t say his real name. Even if she trusted Jasmine, she couldn’t... This was all too dangerous now.
She wanted to tell him to save her sister. She wanted to tell him she loved him. She wanted to tell him he was being unfair and wrong, and yet none of those words poured out as he started to walk away. She wanted to tell him to be safe. That it would kill her if he was hurt.
But Jasmine was watching and she had to let him walk away. To save her sister. To save them all.
“What’s happening?” Jasmine asked in a shaky voice. “I don’t understand anything that I just saw.”
Gabby slumped against the wall. “I don’t know. I don’t...”
“Yes, you do,” Jasmine snapped, her voice sharp and uncompromising.
Gabby felt the tears spill unbidden down her cheeks. What was happening? She didn’t understand any of it. But she knew she had to be strong. If they were going to be saved, she had to be strong.
She reached out for Jasmine, gratified when the girl offered support.
“We need to make a plan,” Gabby said, sounding a lot stronger than she felt.
* * *
JAIME WASN’T SURE he could hide his dark mood if he tried. He was furious. Furious with Gabby for not coming with him. Furious at The Stallion for being the kind of fool who needed him to be there to do all the dirty work. Furious at the world for giving him something beautiful and then taking it all away.
Or are you just terrified?
He ground his teeth together and slid a look at The Stallion. The man sat in the passenger seat of the Jeep, typing on his laptop, swearing every time his Wi-Fi hotspot lost any kind of signal. He had a tricked-out assault rifle sitting precariously on his lap.
Jaime drove fueled on fear and anger. He’d had to leave the compound before he’d been able to be certain his message to his superiors had gone through. For all he knew, he could be out there alone with no backup. Gabby could be alone with no backup.
He wanted to rage. Instead he drove.
They were in the Guadalupe Mountains now, having driven through the night. Apparently, Gabby’s sister and Ranger Cooper had run this way. Jaime was skeptical, considering how isolated it was. How would they be surviving?
But it didn’t really matter. If they were on the wrong track, all the better.
What would actually be all the better would be reaching down to his side piece and ending this once and for all. It would put an end to two years of suffering. Eight for Gabby. Who knew how much suffering for everyone else.
But no matter how much anger and fury pumped through his veins, he knew he couldn’t do it. Those same people who had been victims deserved answers and they deserved justice. In an operation like The Stallion’s, so big, so vast, taking the big man out would produce perhaps a confused few days, but someone would quickly and easily usurp that power. Taking over as if The Stallion had never existed. It would create even more victims than already existed.
He couldn’t overlook that. His duty was his duty. Intractable no matter how unfair it seemed. No matter what Gabby would think of it.
Gabby had implored him to trust her and, in the moment, he hadn’t. He’d been too blinded by his fear and his anger that she wouldn’t go with him.
In the quiet of driving through these deserted mountains, Jaime could only relive that moment. Over and over again. Regret slicing through him. He’d ended things so badly, and there was such a chance—
No. He wouldn’t let himself think that way. There was no chance he wouldn’t see Gabby again. No good chance they didn’t escape this. He would find a way and so would she.
“Drive up there.” The Stallion pointing at, what seemed to Jaime, a random mountain.
“There is no road.”
The Stallion gave him a doleful look. “Drive to the top of that mountain,” he repeated.
Jaime inclined his head. “Sí, senor.” He drove, adrenaline pumping too hard as the Jeep skidded and halted up the rocky incline. He gripped the wheel, tapping the brakes, doing everything he could to remain in control of the vehicle.
Finally, The Stallion instructed him to stop. The man pulled out a pair of high-tech binoculars and began to search the horizon.
Jaime watched the man. He looked like any man, hunting or perhaps watchin
g birds. He appeared completely sane and normal, and yet Jaime had seen him fondle dolls like they were real people.
“Senor, may I ask you a question?” It was a dangerous road to take. If The Stallion read anything suspicious into his questioning, Jaime could end up dead in the middle of this mountainous desert.
But The Stallion nodded regally as if granting an audience with the peasants.
“If you believe women are diseased, so you say, why do you keep so many of them?”
The Stallion seemed to ponder the line of questioning. Eventually he shrugged. “Waste not, want not.”
Jaime didn’t have to feign a language barrier for that to not make sense at all. “I... Come again?”
“Waste not, want not,” The Stallion repeated. “I find them hideous creatures myself, as the perfect woman remains elusive. But some men, like yourself, require certain payments. Why should I waste the work they can do for the possible insurance they can offer me? It only makes sense to keep them. To use them. In fact, it’s what women were really meant for. To be used. Perhaps the perfect woman is just a myth. And my mother was a dirty liar.” The Stallion’s fingers tightened on his gun, though he still held the binoculars with his other hand.
Jaime said nothing more. It was best if he stopped asking for motives and started focusing on what he was going to do if they found Natalie and Ranger Cooper. Focus on thwarting The Stallion’s plans without tipping him off to it.
Or you could just kill him.
It was so tempting, Jaime found his hand drifting down to the piece on his left side without really thinking about it.
“There!” The Stallion shouted, pointing.
Jaime blinked down at the bright desert and mountain before them.
“I saw something down there. Get out of the Jeep. Remember, I don’t care what happens to the Ranger, but I want the girl alive.”
The Stallion jumped out of the Jeep, scrambling over the loose rock, his gun cocked, laptop and binoculars forgotten in the passenger seat.