advanced on her with easy, relaxed strides that did nothing to calm the tenseness in her muscles or the heavy beating of her heart. She couldn’t remember the last time in her captivity she’d felt so afraid.
He didn’t say anything and she couldn’t see his eyes underneath the sunglasses, so whatever he was thinking or feeling was a blank-expressioned mystery.
Finally, after a few humming seconds, he lifted a long finger up to the ceiling. She frowned at him and he made the gesture again until she realized he wanted her to get off the bed.
Since most of the guards’ preferred way of getting her to do something was to grab her and throw her around, she supposed she should feel more calm with this man who hadn’t yet touched her.
But she wasn’t calm. She didn’t trust him at all.
She did get up off the bed and, instead of scurrying away, tried to measure her steps and very carefully move to the farthest corner from him.
The man lifted every single blanket on her bed and then, in an easy display of muscles, the heavy mattress and box spring, as well. He got down on all fours and looked under the bed and, finally, she realized he was searching for something in particular.
She just had no idea what on earth he could be looking for.
“No bugs?”
She stared at him. What, did he have some weird fear of ladybugs or ants or something? Then she realized the intensity with which he was staring at her and recalled how carefully he had looked through every inch of this little room. Yeah, he wasn’t looking for insects.
“I’ve been here for eight years. As far as I know, he’s never bugged or videotaped individual rooms.”
The man raised his eyebrows. “But he films other rooms?”
Gabby trusted this man almost less than she trusted The Stallion, which was not at all. She offered a careless shrug. The last thing she was going to do was to share all of her ideas and information with this stranger.
“Tell me about your time here.”
There was a gentleness to his tone that didn’t fool her at all. “Tell me who you are.”
He smiled again, an oddly attractive smile that was so out of place in this dire situation. “The Stallion told me you’d be exactly what I was looking for. I don’t think he knew just how perfect you’d be.”
“Perfect for what?” she demanded, trying to keep the high-pitched fear out of her voice.
“Well, he thinks you’d be the perfect payment. A high-spirited fighter—the kind of woman who would appeal to my baser instincts.”
This time Gabby couldn’t stop herself from pushing back into the corner or cowering. For the first year she’d been held captive, she’d been sure she’d be sexually assaulted. She’d never heard about an abduction that hadn’t included that, not that she’d had any deep knowledge of abductions before.
But no one had ever touched her that way and she’d finally gotten to a point where she didn’t think it would happen. That was her own stupid fault for thinking this could be her normal.
The man finally took off his sunglasses. His eyes were almost as dark as his hair, a brown that was very nearly black. Everything about his demeanor changed; the swagger, the suave charm, gone.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said in a low voice.
Maybe if she hadn’t been a captive for eight years, she might have believed him. But she didn’t, not for a second.
“You’re just going to need to play along,” he continued in that maddeningly gentle voice.
“Play along with what?” she asked, pushing as far into the corner as she could.
“You’ll see.”
Gabby wanted to cry, which had been an impulse she’d beaten out of herself years ago, but it was bubbling up inside her along with the new fear. It wasn’t fair. She was so tired of her life not being fair.
When the man reached out for her, she went with those instincts from the very first time she’d been brought there.
She fought him with everything she had.
* * *
JAIME ALESSANDRO HADN’T worked his way up “The Stallion’s” operation by being a particularly nice guy. Undercover work, especially this long and this deep, had required him to bend a lot of the moral codes he’d started police work with.
But thus far, he’d never had to beat up or restrain a woman. This woman was surprisingly agile and strong, and she was coming at him with everything she had.
He was very concerned he was going to have to hurt her just to get her to stop. He could stand a few scratches, but he doubted The Stallion was going to trust him with the next big job if he let this woman give him a black eye—no matter how strong and “feisty” she was.
God, how he hated that word.
“Ma’am.” He tried for his forceful FBI agent voice as he managed to hold one of her arms still. He didn’t want to hurt the poor woman who’d been here eight years—a fact he only knew because she’d just told him.
He shouldn’t have been surprised at this point. He’d learned very quickly in his undercover work that what the FBI had on Victor Callihan, a.k.a. The Stallion, was only the tip of the iceberg.
If he thought about it too much, the things The Stallion had done, the things Jaime had done to get here... Well, he didn’t, because he’d had to learn how to turn that voice of right and wrong off and focus only on the task at hand.
Bringing down The Stallion.
That meant if she didn’t stop flailing at him and landing some decent blows, he was going to have to restrain her any way he could, even if it caused her some pain.
Though he had her arm clamped in a tight grip, she still thrashed and kicked at him, very nearly landing a blow that would have brought him to his knees. He swore and, though he very much didn’t want to, gave her a little jerk that gave him the leverage he needed to grab her from behind with both arms.
She still bucked and kicked, but with his height advantage and a full grip on her upper body, he could maneuver her this way and that to keep her from landing any nasty hits.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to help you, I promise.”
She spat, probably aiming for him but missing completely since he had her from behind. It was only then he realized he’d spoken in Spanish instead of English.
He’d grown up speaking both, but his work for The Stallion and the identity he’d assumed required mostly speaking Spanish and pretending he struggled with English.
It was slipups like that—not realizing what language he was speaking, not quite remembering who he was—that always sent a cold bolt of fear through him.
He needed this to be over. He needed to get out. Before he lost himself completely. He could only hope that Gabriella Torres would be the last piece of the puzzle in getting to the heart of The Stallion’s operation.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Jaime said in a low, authoritative tone. Certain, self-assured, even though he didn’t feel much of either at this particular moment.
“Then let go of me,” she returned, still bucking, throwing her head back and narrowly missing head-butting him pretty effectively.
He tried not to think about what might have happened to her in the course of being hidden way too long from the world. It was a constant fight between the human side of him and the role he had to play. He wouldn’t lose his humanity, though. He refused. He might have to bend his moral code from time to time, but he wouldn’t lose the part of him that would feel sympathy. If he lost that, he’d never be able to go back.
Jaime