by Nicole Helm
Jaime smiled. “Excellent.” He didn’t have to fake his excitement about that, because Jaime was almost certain Gabriella had exactly the information he’d need to pull the sting to end this whole nightmare of a job.
And then Jaime could go back to being himself and figuring out...who that was again.
Chapter Three
Gabby considered taking a nap in lieu of lunch. Her little visit, which she couldn’t begin to understand, however, had eradicated any appetite she’d had.
That man had acted like two different people. Even the way he talked when The Stallion was present and when he wasn’t was different. His voice, when he’d spoken with her, had only the faintest touches of Mexico, reminding her of her parents’ accents—a sharp, hard pang of memory.
But when he spoke to The Stallion, it was all rolled R’s and melodic vowels. Even his demeanor had changed. That goal or determination or whatever she thought she’d seen in him just...disappeared in the shadow of The Stallion. He was someone else. Something more feral and menacing.
But, despite the very disconcerting shirt-ripping, and the way his gaze had most definitely lingered on her chest, he had been honest with her thus far.
He hadn’t hurt her, but he’d let her hurt him. Blow after blow. Considering she’d gotten into the habit of exercising to keep her overactive mind from driving her crazy, she wasn’t weak. She had punched him with everything she had, and though he hadn’t made too much of an outward reaction, it had to have hurt.
She shook away the thoughts, already tired of the merry-go-round in her head. If she couldn’t nap or eat, she’d do the next best thing. Exercise until she was too exhausted to think or to move or to do anything but sleep.
She rolled to the ground, then pushed up, holding the plank position as she counted slowly. It had become a game, to see how long she could hold herself up like this. The counting kept her brain from circling and the physical exertion helped her sleep better.
A knock sounded at the door, which was odd. No one here knocked. Except the girls, but that was rare and only in case of emergency.
Before she could stand or say anything, the door squeaked open and in stepped the man from earlier.
She scowled at him. “I only have so many clothes, so if you’re going to keep ripping them, at least get me some duct tape or something.”
He pulled the door closed as he stepped inside. “I won’t rip your clothes again...unless I have to.” He studied her arms, eyebrows pulling together. “You’re awfully strong.”
“Remember that.”
“It could definitely work in our favor,” he muttered. “Now, where were we?”
She pushed into a standing position. “You don’t want to go back to where we were. I’ll hit you where it really hurts this time.” Why he smiled at that was completely beyond her.
“You might literally be perfect.”
“And you might literally be as whacked as Mr. Stallion out there.”
He shook his head in some kind of odd rebuttal. “Now—”
“You act like two very different people.”
He froze, every part of his body tensing as his eyes widened. “What?”
“You act like two completely different people. In here alone. With him. Two separate identities.”
He was so still she wasn’t even sure he breathed.
“Two separate identities, huh?”
“Your accent is different when he’s not here. The way you hold yourself? It’s more...relaxed when he’s with you. Rigid with me. No...almost...” She cocked her head, trying to place it. “Military.”
She knew she was getting somewhere at the way he still didn’t move, though he’d carefully changed his wide-eyed gaze into something blank.
Yeah, she was right. “You were military.”
“No.”
“Police then?”
“You’re an odd woman, Gabriella.” He said her name with the exaggerated accent, and it reminded her of her long-dead grandfather. He hadn’t been a particularly nice man or a particularly mean man. He’d been hard. Very formal. And while everyone else in her family had called her Gabby, he’d been the lone holdout.
He’d never appreciated the “Americanization” of his family, even though he’d immigrated as a young man.
“I’m right. You’re...” Her eyes widened as she put it all together. Him not hurting her. Him gathering information. Being someone else with The Stallion.
He gave a sharp head shake so she didn’t say anything, but she did step closer. “But you are, aren’t you?”
“No,” he returned easily, nodding his head as he said it.
Her heart raced, her breathing came too shallow. He was an undercover police officer. She had to blink back tears. “Tell me what it means, that you’re here. Please.”
He let out a long breath and stepped toward her. This time she didn’t scurry away. She needed to know more than she was afraid of him. He’d checked the room for bugs before, and she knew they were safe to talk in there, but she also understood how a man like him would have to be inordinately careful. Undercover. What did it mean? For her? For the girls?
He inclined his mouth toward her ear, so close she could feel his breath against her neck. “I can’t promise you anything. I can only tell you that I am trying to end this, so whatever information you can give me, whatever you can tell me, it’ll bring me closer to finishing out my job here.”
He pulled back, looking at her, his gaze serious and that determination back in his dark eyes.
She tried to repeat those first five words. I can’t promise you anything. It was important to remember, to not get her hopes up. Just because he was an undercover police officer...just because he wanted to take The Stallion down...it didn’t mean he would. Or that he’d get her out in the process.
“How did you put it all together?” he asked. “I’m not...”
“You’re very good. Very convincing. I’m probably the only person you let your guard down for, right?”
He nodded, still clearly perplexed and downright worried she’d figured it out.
“I don’t know, ever since I got here...I remember things, and I can see...patterns that no one else seems to see. I thought I was going crazy. But...I don’t know. I was always good at that. Observing, remembering, figuring out puzzles and mysteries. It just works in my head.”
“Clearly,” he muttered. “Hopefully you’re the only one around here with that particular talent or I’m screwed.”
“How long?” she asked. Was he just starting out? He was so close to The Stallion, surely...
“Two years.”
She let out a breath. “That’s a long time.”
“Yes,” he said, a bleak note in his voice that softened her another degree toward him. He’d voluntarily held his own identity hostage, separated himself from his life. He’d probably had no idea the things he’d end up missing or wanting.
God help her, she hadn’t had a clue in that first day, week, month, even year. She’d had no idea the things that would grow to hurt her.
She felt a wave of sympathy for the man and, even if it was stupid or ill-advised, she had to follow it. She had to follow this first possibility in ages that there might be an end to this. “How can I help?”
“So, you trust me?”
“I don’t trust anyone anymore,” she returned, feeling a little bleak herself. “But I’ll try to help you. Because I believe you are what I think you are.”
“That’ll work. That’ll work. But there’s something you have to understand. Being a different person means being a different person. The ripping-your-shirt thing...”
“It was for him to think that you were...having your way with me.” She shuddered a little at the thought, at how close they might have to come t
o...proving that.
“Yes. There may be times I have to push that a little bit. Because he is...” He cleared his throat. “What do you understand about your position here? Is there a reason you were kidnapped? Is there a reason he’s kept you girls...untouched?”
“I’m not really sure. I have no idea why I was taken. I was waiting at my dad’s work for him to get off his shift and all of a sudden there were all these people and men talking and I was grabbed and thrown into a van with some other people. They took us somewhere that I don’t know anything about. It was all dark and sometimes we were blindfolded or there were hoods put on our heads.”
Gabby felt ill. She didn’t relive the kidnapping anymore. She’d mostly gotten beyond that horror and lived in the horror of her continual imprisonment. Going back and thinking about coming here brought up all sorts of horrible memories.
How awful she’d been to her mother that night when she’d had to cancel her date to pick up Dad. All that fear she hadn’t known what to do with or how to survive with when she’d been taken, moved, inspected. But she had. She had survived and lived, and she needed to remind herself of that.
“Eventually, after I don’t know how long... Actually that’s not true.” She didn’t have to lie to this man about her memory or pretend she didn’t know exactly what she knew like she did with so many people. “It was two days. It was two days from the time they took me and put me in the van to the time they took me to this other place, kind of like a warehouse. They took me—and all the people from that first moment—there and then we were sorted. Men and women went to different areas. And then The Stallion came.”
“Keep going,” he urged, and it was only then she realized she’d stopped because she could see it. Relive every terrifying detail of not knowing what would happen to her, or why.
“I didn’t know that’s who he was at the time, but he walked through and he asked everyone if we knew who he was. One woman in my group said yes and she was immediately taken away.”
“Did he say his name or offer any hints about who he was beyond The Stallion?”
“No. I’ve gone over it a million times in my head. He must’ve...he must be someone, you know? He had to be someone with some kind of profile?”
“Yes, he is.”
“He is?” She stepped toward the man who could mean freedom, a scary thought in and of itself. “Who? What’s his name? Why is he doing this?” she demanded, losing her cool and her calm in an instant.
“I can’t answer those questions.”
She grabbed his shirtfront, desperate for an answer, a reason, desperate for those things she’d finally given up on ever getting. “Tell me right this second, you miserable—”
“I’m sorry,” he said so gently, so emotionally, she could only swallow a sob.
“He kidnapped me. He brought me here. He separated me from my family for eight years, and you can’t tell me who he is?” she demanded, her voice low and scratchy but measured. She was keeping it together. She would keep it together.
“Not now. There are a lot of things I can’t tell you, because everything you know jeopardizes what I’m doing here. You deserve the answers, you do, but I can’t give you what you deserve right now. But if you help me, you’ll have the answers, and you’ll have your life back.”
Odd that prompted a cold shudder to go through her body. “You can’t promise me that.”
“No, I can’t, but I promise to put my life on the line to make it so.”
She didn’t know what to do with that or him, or any of this, so she turned away from him, hugging herself, trying to calm her breathing.
There were no promises. There were no guarantees. But she had a chance. She had to believe in it. She had to fight for it. With everything she had. If not for herself, for the three girls she shared this hell with. For their family’s, and hers, even if they probably thought she was dead.
She owed it to a lot of people to do what this man said he would do: put her life on the line to make it so.
* * *
GABRIELLA WAS CLEARLY BRILLIANT. The way she described remembering things and figuring out patterns no one else did, to the point she thought she was crazy... It sounded like a lot of the analysts he knew. Because when you saw things no one else saw, it was very easy to convince yourself you were wrong.
But she wasn’t wrong, and she had so much information in that pretty head of hers... Jaime was nearly excited even though she now had the power to end his life completely.
He didn’t care because he was so close now. So damn close to the end of this.
She might be brilliant, but he was a trained FBI agent, after all. He wasn’t going to let her figuring him out be the end. No way in hell.
“Tell me about what happened after the woman who knew who he was disappeared.”
Gabriella nodded. “She was taken away from the room. She had no chance to say anything at all. After that, the rest of us women were separated into groups, and I tried to find a rhyme or reason for these groups, but I really couldn’t. Except that all of the women in my group were young and reasonably fit. Dark hair, though none of the same shade—it ranged from black to light brown.”
Jaime thought back to The Stallion’s odd statement about searching half his life for the perfect woman. He couldn’t make sense of it, but that had to be connected to this.
“At that point, it was just six of us. The Stallion lined us up and, one by one, he inspected us.”
“Inspected you how?”
Gabriella visibly shuddered, and Jaime hated that she had to relive this, but she did. If they were going to put The Stallion away, she’d probably have to relive it quite frequently.
“He touched our hair and...smelled it.” She audibly swallowed, hugging herself so tightly he wished he could offer some comfort, some support.
But he was nothing to her.
“He had one of his cronies measure us.”
“Measure you?”
“You know, like if you’ve ever been measured for clothes?” She turned to face him again, though her dark eyes were averted. But she gestured to her body as she spoke. “Shoulders, arms, chest, hips, legs, inseam, and the guy yelled out each number and The Stallion wrote it all down on this little notepad.”
She was quiet for a few seconds and instead of pushing this time, he let her gain her composure, let her take the time she needed.
Time wasn’t on his side, but he couldn’t...lose the humanity. That was his talisman. Don’t lose your humanity.
“He dismissed everyone except me.”
Jaime didn’t know how to absorb that. He could picture it too easily after everything he’d done with and for The Stallion. The fear she must have felt having been taken for no reason, having been chosen for no reason that she understood.
It was dangerous to fill her in on the things he knew. But he had already entered dangerous territory when he had allowed himself to behave differently enough with her for her to figure out who he was. What he was.
“He’s a sick man,” Jaime offered.
“A sick man who is very, very smart or very, very lucky since he hasn’t gotten caught in eight years. Probably more than that.”
“Yes. Listen, there are a lot of things The Stallion does. But this thing you’re involved in... He told me something just now about how he spent over half his life looking for the perfect woman. That women are basically stupid and you shouldn’t dirty yourself with them unless you find this perfect specimen.”
“Oh, how lovely. I’d love to show him how stupid I can be. With my fists.”
He smiled at the irritation in her tone because it was life. A spark. It wasn’t that shaky fear that had taken over as she had relived her kidnapping experience.
“Let him have his delusions. They might get us out of this mess.” He wa
nted to reach out and take her shoulders or...something. Something to cement this partnership, but he was still a strange man in her room who’d ripped her shirt. He had to be careful. Human. “Between what you said and he said, I think that’s what he’s been doing with this arm of things. Searching for the perfect woman.”
“So that’s what the measuring was, then. He has a perfect size, I just bet.” Gabriella rolled her eyes. “Disgusting pig. And then when we got here he, like, tested me. He would ask these questions, and I never answered. I only fought. For weeks, every time he opened his mouth, I’d just attack. I thought maybe that’s why...”
She took in a shaky breath, still hugging herself. Jaime hadn’t been lying when he’d said she might be perfect. She was smart, she was strong—not just physically. Strong at her core.
“I thought for sure I would be raped, but I never have been, and I’ve never understood why.”
“He thinks women are dirty. At least, in this context of looking for the perfect woman. I can’t rationalize a madman, but the point is that you were brought here because he thought you could be the perfect woman. The fighting, I guess, proved to him that you weren’t.”
“I thought that for the longest time, but that isn’t it. Jasmine—she was brought here my second year—she didn’t fight him at all. She told him she’d do whatever he wanted as long as he would let her go. I was the only one who fought, but he hasn’t touched any of us. No matter what our reactions were, he found us lacking in some way, I guess.”
Gabriella shook her head. “So, he brought us here because we were a possibility, then he tests us and decides we’re not perfect, but then why does he keep us?” She looked up at him for answers.
Jaime hated that he couldn’t give them to her—and that hate kept him going. Because at least he still had a conscience. He’d started to worry. “That’s where I come in. I’ve been working my way up to get close to figuring out who he was. When I did that, it was decided I’d stay and get enough information on him that we can arrest and prosecute.”
