by D. C. Stone
“Brooke,” he began. She chose that moment to jump into his arms. He had no other choice but to grab hold to keep her from falling to the floor. And fuck him if he didn’t feel every curve of her sweet body pressed to him.
“Please.” Liquid bubbled up and spilled over the rims of her eyes. She clutched his shirt, pulled and tugged in an attempt to stay upright. “Please, Dwayne. Let me help. Don’t keep me out of this. I’ll go crazy not knowing what’s going on. She’s all I have.”
He fought for control. In the past two days Brooke had never been so close to him, never touched him as much. While he would give anything to have Hailey home, he also wished the woman he held was there for other reasons and of her own choosing.
“I’ll call you every hour.” His decision was already cracking.
“Please.” She pressed closer. He closed his eyes. She was too damn close. Her cheek laid against his and her breath shook. “Please, Dwayne. Not just for the sake of Hailey, not even for the point in making sure someone is there to help, but please, for me. I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to either of you.”
His chest caved and what air he had in his lungs came whooshing out. The clock behind them ticked, marking the passing time. She trembled in his arms and he shook with the hope that he wasn’t about to make a mistake.
He turned his head, kissed her temple, and held her close. “Okay, go pack a bag.”
Chapter Thirteen
The vehicle surged on I-287 east, heading out of the Village of Nyack limits and therefore away from Dwayne’s rightful jurisdiction. The chance he took with his career had a ball of unease coiling in his gut. He glanced at Brooke, who stared out the car window at the blur of colorful trees they passed. The risk of his job was nothing when compared to the risk he took with her life. That coiled ball clenched and burned through his stomach. He mused over everything that could go wrong or what they could find up north.
When he told Charlie and the chief he needed a few days off to take care of some personal business, he knew he hadn’t gotten anything over their heads. Charlie, acting as the great detective she was—and his best friend—looked at him as if she knew what he’d arranged. He hadn’t liked leaving her out of his plan, but damn if he wanted to bring anyone else in on what he was doing—which, depending on how much he got involved in up north, could be against the law. Charlie had thinned her lips but otherwise kept her mouth shut. The concern sitting in her eyes, though, said more than the silence she maintained.
Leaving Hailey to the local LEOs wasn’t an option, and after the phone call this morning to Rhode Island State Troopers, his decision to take matters into his own hands just reinforced his need to do something. He recognized bullshit, and the gruff man he had spoken to was spouting it out of his mouth by the second. Seemed RIST had a different thought process on juveniles crossing state lines than he did, despite the fact the asshole who possibly took her was her boyfriend.
They passed through the toll after the Tappan Zee Bridge, and he rested an elbow on the side panel. No turning back now. A glance at Brooke showed her sitting in the same position, legs tucked beneath her petite frame, tendrils of wavy desert-red hair falling around her shoulders, hands clasped in her lap. She wore a gray hoodie sweatshirt and black yoga pants, her black Uggs forgotten on the floor, no makeup, no perfume, but she was still as beautiful as the first day they met. They’d played hopscotch on the playground all those years ago—what seemed like a lifetime ago—and age had only drawn out sensuality in this remarkable woman.
“Whatcha thinking about?”
Her voice broke his gaze away from the steady rhythm of the road. She leaned against the door, watching him through piercing ice-blue eyes.
“When we first met.”
That drew a smile, one he hadn’t realized he missed.
“Ah, first grade, right outside Ms. Kladarky’s classroom. You were new, stood against the wall looking so lonely,” she said.
He grinned, then shook his head. “And you couldn’t let it go. Had to get the new guy to open up, didn’t you? Sometimes I think you should have been the detective with your nosy ways.”
She sighed and stared out his side window, trouble fleeting across her face. “You looked so sad. My heart, no matter how young I was, felt yours calling out for companionship.”
His mouth tightened and he turned his attention back to the road. “Well, my life prior wasn’t peaches and cream, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You haven’t talked about it. Why?”
He cleared his throat, more than a little uncomfortable with this topic. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk about it. More so, it was the memories that came along. He shifted and wiped a hand down his face. “It’s not something real pretty. I mostly think that people don’t want to hear about the ugliness in life, so I keep to the pretty parts. You know, the family I have now, the life built from then on.”
“I didn’t mean to pry. I’ve upset you, sorry.”
He shook his head and cut in, “No, you didn’t. I just never talk about it, not even with my brothers.” He heaved a deep breath, fighting against the urge to remain quiet and squash the question between them. Hell, as much as he wrestled with them, the words hovered on his lips. He wanted to tell someone, maybe even this woman, just so he could have the empathy of a close friend. She would listen and understand.
“You know I’m adopted, right,” he began.
“Yeah. You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.” Her voice was so small and sad he couldn’t refuse it now.
“No, no, I think it’s time I get this out and besides, we have a few hours on the road.” He flashed a smile, one he didn’t quite feel.
“Well, the earliest memory I can remember is my birth mom coming and going at all hours, leaving me alone to fend for myself for periods that lasted sometimes days. There were even times I grew so hungry I’d eat the puppy food for the dog we didn’t have.”
She gasped. “But I met you when you were six.”
He turned and met her gaze. “Exactly.”
Her lips trembled. “How old were you when this happened?”
He refocused on the road, his mind lost in the past. “I had to of been three, maybe four, I’m not real sure. When she came home, she would bring a Happy Meal or something, apologize for being gone, but she’d stink to high heaven. Stale cigarettes clung to her, and the stench of alcohol seemed to seep from her pores. At the time, I didn’t know it wasn’t normal, so I associated the smell to her, to comfort.
“Sometimes she’d bring these guys home with her, too. And sometimes I’d be forced, seeing as we only had a studio apartment, to watch what the two of them would do in front of me. Being an open loft, there was not a lot of privacy, you see.
“A few of the guys would get rough with her, knock her around a bit.” Brooke gasped and he rushed on. “Never anything she didn’t just clean up. And there was only one time any of the men laid a hand on me, and it’s a lesson I’ll never forget.” He ignored her sound of outrage, and pushed on. “She’d take cash from them and set them on their ways.” Until that one fatal day.
Dwayne blinked hard, kept his gaze in front of the vehicle, but his mind was stuck in the past.
“One day this guy came over, screaming about his money. I remember her telling me to get in the closet and do not come out until she called for me. She gave me a kiss, pushed a sippy cup in my hands, told me she loved me like always, and then closed the door. A loud noise a few seconds later and something heavy had been pushed against the door.”
“Oh, Dwayne—”
He continued, unable to stop. “She screamed for hours. I pushed my hands over my ears in an attempt to block out the sound of something hitting flesh. It didn’t work.” A sound he’d never forget. “Her pleas for me to go get help, the uselessness when I couldn’t open the door, and then the sudden quiet have stayed with me as if it happened yesterday. It was deafening, and somehow I knew when som
ething wet entered beneath the crack on the door, that she was dead.”
Brooke sniffed beside him and reached across the console to take his hand. Her warm skin did nothing to heat the cold seeping inside his soul. Her gesture of comfort held it at bay, though. His emotions were in turmoil as the scared little boy rose to the surface.
“They found me several days later, and her body already started to rot. I was so dehydrated my heart stopped on the table. Twice. We had no family, no friends that wanted to take me. And my father was some nameless man who wasn’t even on my birth certificate, so I was placed with the state.”
“That’s horrible, oh my God, I’m so sorry.”
He squeezed her hand, gave a small smile. “Thank you. Seems my mother sold her body for the drugs she was addicted to. Gave her love and affection to men who only wanted her for a few moments. I realize now anything she gave me wasn’t real. The false words, the lies of comfort. She never gave anything real to her son. Her pimp killed her, and some scum on the street later killed him. Sort of like poetic justice, if you ask me.”
“How did you—I mean, how have you survived this, to, you know, grow into who you are now?”
He smiled, lifted her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles. “Aw, sweetheart, I didn’t know you cared.”
She blushed, and wasn’t that just friggen adorable? “My mom and dad, the Gonzalezes, adopted me a year later, brought me here to Nyack. My mom had been on the initial crew that found me, one of the paramedics.
“Pops spent countless hours showing me what having a family was supposed to be. Hell, if it weren’t for those two, I don’t think me or any of my brothers would have made it this far in life.”
She took his arm, scooted closer, and set it between her breasts, then brushed a sweet-as-sin kiss against his knuckles. “I’m so glad they found you.”
He glanced down before returning his focus to the road. “Me, too.”
“I imagine half of Nyack’s female population is glad, as well. Where are you from originally?”
Was that a hint of jealousy in her tone? The two statements were so far away from one another, it took him a second to answer. “I’m from Baltimore, Maryland. And what does the female population have anything to thank for?”
She laughed, the sound strained. “Oh, don’t play coy. You are very much a ladies’ man, Dwayne.”
He shifted again, uncomfortable for an entirely new reason. “I enjoy the company of a woman, yes. I won’t deny that.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re here and that I approached you that day on the schoolyard.”
“Me, too.” While things had not turned out the way he hoped, he still had her in his life and it was enough. For now… “I thought you were the most beautiful girl I had ever met.”
She gasped and covered it with a laugh. “You were six. Were you even old enough to know what such a word meant?”
“Of course,” he said immediately. Her eyes widened. “It’s something I never had a problem with. Don’t you remember the first Valentine I gave you?”
She smiled, hugging his arm closer. He tried not to think about where his skin lay, but it was really fucking hard—which was exactly what he was trying not to become. A comfortable affection, though, nothing sexual, and wasn’t that just a damn shame?
“I do,” she answered.
“I told you, you were beautiful and I meant every word. You still are, Brooke. You could have asked me to do anything and I would have.”
She laughed low, the sound deep, sultry. “Are you saying I was your first crush?” she teased.
He flashed a grin. “Yes.” And the longest, still.
His phone broke through the speakers, and she released his arm so he could answer with the click of a button from his steering wheel. “Gonzalez here.”
“Dwayne.” Trent’s voice filled the vehicle and he felt the air freeze around Brooke. She went still.
“Yeah, you’re on speaker.” Her gaze snapped to him, bore holes in the side of his head, but he ignored it. He didn’t want Trent saying something to upset her. She had been through enough.
“That area we were talking about? Where the phone signal ended?”
“What’s happened?”
“Nothing.” Trent sighed and Dwayne braced. Shit, when the agent was worked up, you knew it wasn’t good. “But the area has ties to human trafficking.”
Brooke cried out, and he cursed.
“Fuck, I’ll call you back, Rossi.”
“Sure thing, D. Hey, I’m sorry I had to tell you like this, but I have a damn good feeling, especially after talking to Charlie, that I know where you’re going. Let me warn you now, you do not want to be buried under something this big without backup. You understand what I’m saying?”
Dwayne pushed down the irritation, fought to keep his composure cool, his voice calm. “I got it.”
“Good, don’t forget either. And don’t forget your jurisdiction.”
He didn’t say anything, just hung up and wished like hell he had more he could offer. The sound of her crying reached him.
“Brooke, preciosa, don’t cry,” he said, trying to calm her.
She curled closer to the door, farther from him, and waved a hand in the air. “Don’t,” she said. “I don’t…just let me be for a bit. God, my poor baby girl!”
He sighed and slumped his shoulders. The road stretched out like a long line before him, an endless distance between where he needed to be, and just how far they had to go until he could figure out what the hell was going on.
Chapter Fourteen
Lured to sleep by the rhythmic thump, thump, thump of the road, Brooke roused from a nap when the car slowed and pulled to the right. She lifted her head, winced at the crick in her neck, and rubbed the aching muscle. Her entire body felt laden, heavy under exhaustion, and out of sorts. The world moved around them as if in slow motion, like they were slowly working their way toward the light at the end of a long tunnel.
Said light in this case was a large sign rising out of the ground reading “Motel 8” and a dreary building that rose two stories and was dotted with various doors of orange and brown.
Still trying to blink away the slumber and the fog from her mind, she turned to Dwayne. He stopped the vehicle in front of a sizable glass-enclosed office.
“What are we doing?” she asked.
Tight lines around his eyes, he scrubbed his face, shook his head as if clearing his mind, and pointed in the general direction of the motel. “Getting us a room. I’m exhausted. We need to rest and think over the next step.”
“Wait, where are we? Maybe we’re close and can go get her now?”
His lips thinned and he faced her. “Sweetheart, look, we can’t get her now. It’s close to eight o’clock, we’ve been on the road all day, and even if we hadn’t hit that traffic, I still wouldn’t have acted on anything tonight. We don’t know what situation we’re walking into. And I’m not willing to risk Hailey’s life charging in there unprepared. No one knows I’m here. We need to think before we do anything. I need to get a gauge on the situation.”
Feeling like a child scolded, she sucked in a harsh breath. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
His face softened and he ran the back of his knuckles along her cheek. “I know you didn’t. We really need some sleep. In the morning we can work out the details. And to answer your question, we’re right outside Providence. Still a good fifty miles away from where we think Hailey might be.” He glanced over at the clerk who sat inside behind a desk, watching TV. “I’m going to get us a room and then we’ll get something to eat, talk a bit more about what’s going to happen next, okay?”
She nodded, her mind still screaming for her to keep moving. The shadows sitting beneath Dwayne’s eyes stopped her from making a deal out of it. He did look exhausted.
He got out of the car, stretched his arms and when they dropped, so did his shoulders. This entire time he hadn’t stopped to take a breath, much less sleep. Gratitude gr
ew inside her chest. Here was a man who had no blood ties to Hailey, no obligations, and yet he risked his life, his career, everything, trying to help her out. Chastising herself, she waited until he returned. Without a word, he backed out of the parking spot, drove around to the rear of the building and parked at the far end, then turned the car off.
“I didn’t realize this place was so hopping, but apparently some rodeo is in town. You’re not going to like this, but they only had one room, one bed, and we got it.”
Without waiting for a response, he got out of the car and disappeared to the back of the vehicle.
One bed… Sure, it was uncomfortable, but she was more than willing to put up with a night in the same room with him in order to sleep. That thought didn’t stop trepidation from spreading at the intimacy they would share tonight. She had never been in such a close setting with Dwayne, or such a vulnerable one.
Her car door opened and she glanced up to see Dwayne, both duffel bags slung over his shoulder. His face had lines of exhaustion, but his eyes were focused on her.
“Do you plan on sleeping out here all night?”
Heat rose in her cheeks, quick like a whip. “Of course not. Sorry, I guess I’m a little out of it still.”
She stood and followed him to the door, number 150, then stepped inside.
The room, furnished in your basic hotel setting, had lines running vertical in orange and beige strips along the walls. Two tan side tables sat at the head of and outlined a king-size bed covered in a typical almost blinding, definitely unpleasant floral design only found in these establishments. Next to them, sitting beneath a window unit air-conditioner was a silver table and a pair of chairs. Across from the bed remained a large dresser, six drawers, and a black television on top.
Dwayne brushed by her and dropped their bags to the bed. He rubbed a bulky palm over the top of his head and looked around, avoiding her gaze. “Well, it’s not much, but it’ll do the trick.” He pivoted and opened a drawer on one of the side tables, then withdrew a binder, which held multiple takeout menus. “Anything in particular you want to eat?”
