by B. J Daniels
Gabby hoped Natalie and her Ranger escaped The Stallion’s men once and for all, and quickly. Not just for her own sake, and for Jaime’s, but because she wasn’t certain Alyssa would last much longer.
If she didn’t last, if she kept being something of a loose cannon, then they were all in danger. Including Jaime.
* * *
Jaime didn’t go to Gabby that night. He knew it was cowardly to avoid her. He also knew it was for the best. For both of them. He wouldn’t be able to resist what she offered, and it wasn’t fair to take it. So he kept himself away, falling into a fitful sleep that was never quite restful.
The next day he busied himself outside. He fed The Stallion a story about wanting to come up with some new security tactics, but what he was really trying to do was to see if he could find any evidence of a shallow grave.
The Stallion was so obsessed with Layne and Wallace’s progress in finding Ranger Cooper and Gabby’s sister, Jaime felt pretty confident he could get away with a lot of things today.
Including going to see Gabby for only personal reasons.
He shook the thought away as he toed some dirt in the front yard. Unfortunately the entire area, especially in the front, was nothing but hardscrabble existence. Scrub brush and tall, thick weeds. It was impossible to tell if things had been dug, if things had grown over, if empty patches of land were a sign of a grave or just bad soil.
Being irritated with himself over his inability to find a lead didn’t stop him from continuing to do it.
Until he heard the scream. A howling, broken sound. Keening almost. Coming from inside. From a woman.
“Gabby,” he said aloud.
He forgot what he’d been doing and ran full-speed to the front door. He struggled with the chains on the doors and cursed them. It took him precious minutes to realize the door wasn’t just locked and chained, it had been sealed shut with something. There was no possible way of getting to her through this door. He swore even louder and rushed around to the back.
Was The Stallion inside or in his shed? Was he hurting them? Jaime grabbed one of the guns from his chest. If he was hurting Gabby—if he was hurting any of them—this was over. Jaime wasn’t going to let that happen. Not for anything. Not for any damn evidence to be used in a useless trial.
He’d just kill him and be done with it.
Nearly sweating, Jaime finally got all the locks and chains undone. He hadn’t heard another scream and didn’t know if that was a good or bad sign. He ran down the hall, looking in every open door. Gabby wasn’t in her room and it prompted him to run faster.
He reached the main room and skidded to a halt at the sight before him. Gabby was standing there in the center of the room looking furious, blood dripping down her nose.
“What the hell happened?” he demanded, searching the room and only seeing the other women.
Gabby’s gaze snapped to his and she widened her eyes briefly, as if to remind him he had an identity to maintain. It wasn’t Demanding FBI Agent. Or concerned...whatever you are.
Either way, he’d forgotten. He’d let fear make him reckless. He’d let worry slip his mask. He very well could have ruined everything if not for that little flick of a gaze from Gabby.
He took a breath, calming the erratic beating of his heart. He moved his gaze from Gabby’s bloody face, fighting every urge to grab her and pat her down himself to make sure she wasn’t hurt anywhere else.
“Well, senoritas?” he demanded, rolling his R’s in as exaggerated a manner as he could manage in his current state. He glared at the other three women. The two blondes were holding the brunette down on the couch.
The brunette was breathing heavily, her nostrils flaring as she glared at Gabby. Slowly, she took her gaze off Gabby and let it rest on him.
She sneered and then spat. Right on one of the girls holding her. The slighter blonde shrieked and jumped back, which gave the brunette time to throw off the other woman and jump to her feet.
It wasn’t wasted on him that Gabby immediately went into a fighter stance.
“First shot was free, but you hit me again, I will beat you,” she said, angry and menacing as the brunette stepped toward her.
Jaime stepped between them. “I will say this only once more. What is going on?” He realized he was still holding his gun and gestured it at the angry brunette threateningly.
The girl who’d been spit on squeaked and cowered while the girl who’d been flung off the brunette turned an even paler shade of white.
“Let’s have story time, Alyssa. Tell our captor here what you’re after,” Gabby goaded.
“I’m going to get out of here,” Alyssa yelled, whirling from Jaime to the blondes. “I don’t care if I kill all of you.” She pointed around him at Gabby. “I am going to get the hell out of here.”
Jaime didn’t want to feel sorry for the girl considering she was clearly at fault for Gabby’s bloody nose, but he looked at Gabby and watched her shoulders slump and the fury in her eyes dim.
Damn it. He couldn’t blame the woman for losing her mind here. Not in the least. But it was the last thing they needed if they were actually going to put something in motion that might get them out.
“You would be dead before you killed anyone, senorita. Calm yourself.”
She bared her teeth at him. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do this anymore. Shoot me.” She lunged toward him. “God, put me out of my misery.”
“Hush,” he ordered flatly, tamping down every possible empathetic feeling rising up inside him. “I’m not going to kill you. And you are not going to kill anyone. You’re going to calm yourself.”
“Or what? What happens if I don’t?” She got close enough to shove him, even reached out to do it, but Gabby was stepping between them.
Jaime was certain the woman would throw another punch at Gabby and he would have to intervene, but Gabby did the most incomprehensible thing. She pulled the woman into a hug.
And the woman began to sob.
The others started, too. All four of them crying, Gabby with her nose still bleeding.
Jaime had to clench his free hand into a fist and pray for some kind of composure. It was too much, these poor women, taken from their lives and expected to somehow endure it.
“What is all this?” The Stallion demanded and Jaime was such a fool he actually jumped. Where had all his instincts gone? All his self-preservation? He’d lost it, all because Gabby had gotten under his skin.
Jaime steeled himself and turned to face The Stallion.
“Your charges were getting out of hand. I had to do some knocking around,” Jaime offered, nodding at Gabby’s nose. If any of the girls wanted to refute his story, it would possibly end his life.
But none of them did.
“She is mine, no?” Jaime continued, hoping the fact Gabby was a gift meant he’d forgive him for the supposed violence that had shed blood.
The Stallion was staring oddly at Gabby, and it took everything in Jaime’s power not to step between them. In an obvious way. Instead he simply angled his body and hoped like hell it wasn’t obvious how much he wanted to protect her.
“Crying,” The Stallion said in a kind of wondering tone. “Well, I am impressed, Rodriguez. No one has ever gotten her to cry.”
Gabby flipped him the finger and Jaime nearly broke. Nearly ended it all right there.
“I trust our friend has told you that your sister will be joining us soon,” The Stallion said, watching her far too carefully no matter how Jaime tried to angle himself into the picture.
“And yet she isn’t here yet. Why is that?” Gabby returned in an equally conversational tone.
Jaime might have fallen in love with her right there.
The Stallion, however, snarled. “You’re lucky I don’t want to touch your disease-ridden body. But I have found someone who will. Take
her away from me, Rodriguez. I don’t want to see that face until her sister is here. Make sure to lock her room once you’re done with her. She’s done with outside privileges.”
“And these?” Jaime managed to ask.
The Stallion snapped his fingers. “To your rooms. Don’t make me turn you into gifts, as well.”
The girls, even the instigator, scattered quickly.
The Stallion squinted at Gabby and maybe it was her unwillingness to cower or to jump that made her a target.
If Gabby cared about that, she didn’t show it. So Jaime took Gabby by the arms, as gently as he could while still appearing to be rough to The Stallion. “I will take good care of her, senor,” he said, donning his best evil smile.
“I’m glad you’re willing to soil yourself with this,” The Stallion said. “I should have had someone do this long ago. I don’t care what you have to do to make her cry. Just do it.”
Jaime gave a nod since he didn’t trust his voice. He nudged Gabby toward the hallway and she fought him on it, still staring at The Stallion.
“You’re a disgusting excuse for a human being. You aren’t a human being. You’re a monster.” And then, apparently taking a page out of Alyssa’s book, she spit at him.
The Stallion scrambled away and then furiously scowled at Jaime.
“Are you going to let her get away with that?” he demanded, fury all but pumping out of him.
Oh, damn, Gabby and her mouth. How the hell was he going to get out of this one?
Chapter 11
Gabby had gone too far. She realized it a few seconds too late. She’d wanted to make sure The Stallion didn’t think she was happy to go with Jaime. She wanted The Stallion to think she hated Jaime as much as she hated him, and she didn’t know how to show it considering she didn’t hate Jaime even a little bit.
But she’d put Jaime in an impossible position. The Stallion expected Jaime to hurt her now. In front of him.
And how could he not?
Jaime’s jaw tightened and Gabby knew it wasn’t because he was getting ready to hurt her. It was because he didn’t want to and he was having a hard time figuring out how to avoid it. But he didn’t need to protect her.
She lifted her chin, hoping he would understand. “Hit me with your best shot, buddy,” she offered.
Much like when he’d come into the room, guns blazing, not using his accent at all, she gave him a little open-eyed glance that she hoped would clue him in.
He had to hit her. There was no choice. She understood that. She wouldn’t hold that against him. Besides, he’d pull the punch. It’d be fine.
He raised his hand and she had to close her eyes. She didn’t want the image in her head even if she knew he had to do it. She braced herself for the blow, but it never came.
Instead his fingers curled in her hair, a tight fist. Not comfortable, but still not painful, either.
“It appears you need to be taught some respect, senorita. Let’s go to your room where I can give you a thorough lesson. I teach best one-on-one.”
Gabby opened her eyes, ignoring the shaking in her body. She didn’t dare look at The Stallion—she didn’t want to know if he’d bought that ridiculous tactic or not. She couldn’t look at Jaime, because she didn’t want anything to give him or her away.
So she sucked in a breath as though Jaime’s fingers in her hair hurt and stared at the floor as if he was forcing her. She stumbled a little as he nudged her forward, trying to make it appear as if he’d pushed her. She put everything into the performance of making it look like he was being rough with her when he was being anything but.
“I will come to give you a full report when I’m done, senor.”
“Excellent.” The Stallion sounded pleased with himself. Satisfied.
Jaime continued to nudge her all the way to her room, and she let out a little squeak of faked pain. When Jaime finally gave her a light push into her room, she could only sag with relief.
Jaime closed the door and flicked the lock. Before she had a moment to breathe, to say a thing, she was being bundled into his arms and gently cradled against his hard chest and the weapons there.
She relaxed into him, letting him hold her up. She was shaking more now, oddly, but it was such an amazing thing to be cradled and comforted after everything that had just happened, she couldn’t even wonder over it.
“We need to get you cleaned up,” Jaime said, his voice low and sounding pained.
She waved him away, wanting to stay right there, cradled against him. “Leave it. Maybe it’ll convince him you were suitably rough with me if we let it bleed more.”
“He’s not going to see you again,” Jaime said fiercely, his arms tightening around her briefly. “You’re under lock and key now, and if he tries to come in here, I will kill him myself.”
She looked up at him curiously. He was... He’d avoided her for days, and Gabby couldn’t blame him because she knew he was trying to do something noble. Still, she didn’t quite understand his anger.
Frustration or fear, maybe even annoyance, she might have understood, but the beating fury in his eyes, completely opposite to the gentle way he held her, was something she couldn’t unwind.
“What was the other woman’s problem?” he asked, studying her nose.
“She hit the two-year mark,” Gabby stated with a tired sigh.
“What does that mean?”
Gabby sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. It just seems that around two years in here you start to realize how stuck you are. How no one’s going to come and save you. I think we all have a little bit of a meltdown at two years.”
“Did your two-year meltdown include punching another woman in the face?”
“No. I was alone. I did try to use a butter knife to stab a guard,” she offered almost cheerfully.
His mouth almost...almost quirked at that.
“I was desperate,” she continued. “With that desperation comes a kind of insanity. Alyssa’s hitting that same wall. Losing it. Wondering what it’s worth being stuck in this horrible place. Of course, she has the worst possible timing, but what can we do? We just have to try and end it as soon as we can.”
“You hugged her.” Jaime’s voice was soft, awe-filled.
Gabby turned away from him and his comforting, strong arms, uncomfortable with the way he said it as though she’d done something special. But she hadn’t. Not really.
“You forget sometimes, when you’re in here, that a simple hug can be reassuring. She needed someone to be kind. You...you reminded me of that. Humanity. Compassion. So, I did what you’ve done to me.”
“You did it after she punched you in the nose,” he pointed out.
“I let her punch me. I thought it would help her get some of the rage out of her system. I’m hoping getting some of it out will stop her from just...losing it completely.”
“You are a marvel,” he said, like she was some kind of genius superhero. It shouldn’t have warmed her. She should tell him she wasn’t.
But she wanted to believe there was something marvelous about her.
“I’m washing you up,” he said, taking her arm and pulling her into the little nook that acted as a bathroom. There was a toilet and a sink, but no door, no privacy. Still, Jaime grabbed a washcloth from the little pile she kept neatly stacked in the corner.
He flicked on the tap and soaked the cloth in warm water. He squeezed it out before holding it up to her face gently. Ever so gently, he wiped away the blood that had started dribbling out of her nose after Alyssa had hit her.
“You’re lucky she didn’t break it,” he muttered.
Gabby rolled her eyes. “I let her hit me, and I pulled back a bit. I’m a lot stronger than all that bluster.”
He cupped her face with his hands, long fingers brushing at her hairline. “That you are,” he said with a kind of ferv
ency that had a lump burning in her throat.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” she rasped.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m trying to do the right thing.”
“What about instead of doing the right thing, you do what I want? How about you give me something I want?”
He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know how I ever thought I’d resist you.” Then his mouth was on hers.
Potent and hot. Not quite so gentle. Gabby reveled in the fact that he could be both. That he could give her everything and anything she wanted.
“Tell me if I hurt your nose,” he murmured against her mouth, never breaking contact. His hands trailing through her hair, his body pressed hard and tight against hers.
She could barely feel the ache in her nose. Not with Jaime’s tongue sliding against hers. Not with the smell of him and leather and what might be outside if she even remembered what outside smelled like.
She realized whatever this was, it was frantic and needy. It was also something that could be temporary all too easily. The chances she’d have to touch him, to be with him...
She needed to grasp and enjoy and lose herself in this moment, in the having of it. She molded her hands against his strong shoulders, slid them down his biceps and his forearms. Everything about him was honed muscle, so strong. He could’ve been brutal with someone else’s heart, but Jaime was anything but that.
His hands smoothed down her neck and, for the first time, he dared to touch more than just her face or her shoulders. The fingers of one hand traced across her collarbone over her T-shirt. His other hand slid down her back, strong as he held her against him.
She could feel him, hot and hard against her stomach. It had been a long time since she’d done this, and it was possibly the most inappropriate moment, but there wasn’t time to think.
She didn’t want to think. She wanted to sink into good feelings and let those take over for once.
She arched against him and the fingertips tracing her collarbone stilled. Then lowered. He palmed one of her breasts and she moaned against his mouth.
