This undercover Texas Ranger is her last, most dangerous chance

Jaime Alessandro fears he’s been undercover too long. Now his only shot at destroying one of Texas’s largest crime organizations is Gabriella Torres—a “gift” from The Stallion and his longest-held captive. Her inside info and inspired moves are helping Jaime take the gang apart. But what he’s starting to feel for the brilliant, tough-minded Gabriella could get them worse than dead…

Gabriella learned early to put her emotions on lockdown. She has no reason to trust Jaime. But every moment together, every stolen glance, kindles a desire she hungers to explore. And now trust is the only weapon they dare risk—even if it proves lethal.

“I will get you out of here, Gabriella. But I need to do my job, too.”

Jaime leaned forward, his mouth so close Gabriella inhaled sharply, drowning a little in his dark eyes, wanting to get lost in the warm strength of his body.

He pulled his face away from hers, shaking his head. “I shouldn’t—”

But Gabriella didn’t want his “shouldn’ts” and she didn’t want him to pull away, so she tugged Jaime closer and covered his mouth with hers.

Her tongue traced his mouth and she sighed against him. Melting, leaning. Crawling under all the defenses he wound around himself. False identities. Badges and pledges. Weapons and uniforms and lies. Even having dreamed of it, even in the midst of allowing it to happen in the here and now, Jaime knew it was wrong. Kissing Gabriella, drowning in it, was like taking advantage of her. It flew in the face of who he was as an FBI agent, as a law enforcement agent.

He should pull away. He should stop this madness. But he didn’t stop. Couldn’t. Because while it went against all those things he was, it didn’t go against who he was. Deep down, this was what Jaime wanted…

Stone Cold Undercover Agent

Nicole Helm

www.millsandboon.co.uk

NICOLE HELM grew up with her nose in a book and the dream of one day becoming a writer. Luckily, after a few failed career choices, she gets to follow that dream—writing down-to-earth contemporary romance and romantic suspense. From farmers to cowboys, Midwest to the West, Nicole writes stories about people finding themselves and finding love in the process. She lives in Missouri with her husband and two sons and dreams of someday owning a barn.

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The first romance novel I ever read was a romantic suspense, and I never thought I’d be able to write one.

Thank you, Helen and Denise, for helping me prove past me wrong.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Gabby Torres had stopped counting the days of her captivity once it entered its sixth year. She didn’t know why that was the year that did it. The first six had been painful and isolating and horrifying. She had lost everything. Her family. Her future. Her freedom.

The only thing she currently had was...life itself, which, in her case, wasn’t much of a life when it came right down to it.

For the first four years of her abduction, she’d fought like a maniac. Anyone and anything that came near her—she’d attacked. Every time her captor got up close and told her some horrible thing, she’d fought in a way she had never known she could.

Maybe if the man hadn’t so gleefully told her that her father was dead two years into her captivity, she might have eventually gotten tired of fighting. She might have accepted her fate as being some madman’s kidnapping victim. But every time he appeared, she remembered how happily he had told her that her father had suffered a heart attack and died. It renewed her fight every single time.

But the oddest part of the eight years of captivity was that, though she’d been beaten on occasion in the midst of fighting back, mostly The Stallion and his men hadn’t ever forced themselves on her or the other girls.

For years she’d wondered why and tried to figure out their reasoning...what their point was. Why she was there. Aside from the random jobs The Stallion forced her and the other girls to do, like sewing bags of drugs into car cushions or what have you.

But she was in year eight and tired of trying to figure out why she was there or what the point of it was. She was even tired of thinking about escape.

She’d been the first girl brought to the compound and, over the years, The Stallion had collected three more women. All currently existing in this boarded-up house in who knew where. Gabby had become something like the den mother as the new girls tried to figure out why they were there, or what they had done wrong, or what The Stallion wanted from them, but Gabby herself was done with wondering.

She had moved on. After she’d stopped counting every single day at year six, the past two years had been all about making this a reality. She kept track of Sundays for the girls and noted when a month or two had passed, but she had accepted this tiny, hidden-away compound as her life. The women were as much of a family as she was ever going to have, and the work The Stallion had them doing to hide drugs or falsify papers was her career.

Accepting at this point was all she could do. If sometimes her brain betrayed her as she tried to fall asleep, or one of the girls muttered something about escape, she pushed it down and out as far as it would go.

Hope was a cancer here. All she had was acceptance.

So when just another uncounted day rolled around and The Stallion, for the first time in all of those days, brought a man with him into her room, Gabby felt an icy pierce of dread hit her right in the chest.

Though she’d accepted her fate, she hadn’t accepted him. Perhaps because no matter how eight years had passed, or how he might disappear for months at a time, or the fact he never touched her, he seemed intent on making her break.

Quite honestly, some days that’s what kept her going. Making sure he never knew he’d broken her of hope.

So, though she had accepted her lot—or so she told herself—she still dreamed of living longer than him and airing all his dirty laundry. Outliving him and making sure he knew he had never, ever broken her. She very nearly smiled at the thought of him dead and gone. “So, who are you?”

The man who stood next to The Stallion was tall, broad and covered in ominous black. Black hair—both shaggy on his head and bearded on his face—black sunglasses, black shirt and jeans. Even the weapons, mostly guns, he had strapped all over him were black. Only his skin tone wasn’t black, though it was a dark olive hue.

“I told you she was a feisty one. Quite the fiery little spitball. She’ll be perfect for you,” The Stallion said, his smile wide and pleased with himself.

The icy-cold dread in Gabby’s chest delved deeper, especially as this new man stared at her from somewhere behind his sunglasses. Why was he wearing sunglasses in this dark room? It wasn’t like she had any outside light peering through the boarded window.

He murmured something in Spanish. But Gabby had never been fluent in her grandparents’ native language and she could barely pick out any of the words since he’d spoken them so quickly and quietly.

The Stallion’s cold grin widened even further. “Yes. Have lots of fun with her. She’s all yours. Just remember the next time I ask you for a favor that I gave you exactly what you specified. Enjoy.”

The Stallion slid out of the room, and the ominous click of the door’s lock nearly made Gabby jump when no sounds and nothing in her life had made her jump for nearly two years.

While The Stallion’s grin was very nearly...psychotic, as though he’d had some break with reality, the man still in her room was far scarier. He didn’t smile in a way that made her think he was off in some other dimension. His smile was... Lethal. Ruthless. Alive.

It frightened her and she had given up fear a very long time ago.

“You don’t speak Spanish?” he asked with what sounded almost like an exaggerated accent. It didn’t sound like any of the elderly people in her family who’d grown up in Mexico, but then, maybe his background wasn’t Mexican.

“No, not really. But apparently you speak English, so we don’t have a problem.”

“I guess that depends on your definition of problem,” he said, his voice low and laced with threat.

What Gabby wanted to do was to scoot back on the bed as far into the corner as she possibly could, but she had learned not to show her initial reactions. She had watched The Stallion get far too much joy out of her flight responses in the beginning, and she’d learned to school them away. So even though she thought about it, even though she pictured it in her head complete with covering her face with her hands and cowering, she didn’t do it. She stayed exactly where she was and stared the man down.

He perused the bedroom that had been her life for so long. Oh, she could go anywhere in the small, boarded-up house, but she’d learned to appreciate her solitude even in captivity.

The man opened the dresser drawers and pawed through them. He inspected the baseboards and slid his large, scarred hands up and down the walls. He even pulled at the boards over the windows.

“Measuring for drapes?” she asked as sarcastically as she could manage.

The man looked at her, still wearing his sunglasses, which she didn’t understand at all. His lips curved into an amused smile. It made Gabby even more jumpy because, usually, the guards The Stallion had watching them weren’t the brightest. Or maybe they’d had such rough lives they didn’t care for humor of any kind. Either way, very few people, including the women she lived with, found her humor funny.

He was back to his perusal and there was a confident grace about him that made no sense to her. He wasn’t like any of the other men she’d come into contact with during her captivity. He was handsome, for starters. She couldn’t think of one guard who could probably transfer from a life of crime into a life of being a model, but this man definitely could.

It made all of her nerves hum. It gave her that little tingle that mysteries always did—the idea that if she paid enough attention, filed enough details away, she could solve it. Figure out why he was different before he did her any harm.

She’d begun to wonder if she hadn’t gone a little crazy when she noticed these things no one else seemed to. She was pretty sure Tabitha thought she was out of her mind for having theories about The Stallion’s drug and human trafficking operations. For coming up with a theory that he spent three months there and split the other seasons at three other houses that would ostensibly be just like this one.

She’d been here for eight years and she knew his patterns. She was sure of it. Things puzzled together in her head until it all made sense. But the girls all looked at her like she was crazy for coming up with such ideas, so she’d started keeping them to herself. She’d started trying to stop her brain from acting.

But it always did and maybe she had gone completely and utterly insane. Eight years ago her life had been ripped away from her, but she didn’t even get to be dead. She had to be here living in this weird purgatory.

Wouldn’t that drive anyone to the brink of insanity? Maybe her patterns and theories were gibberish.

Finally the man had looked through everything in the room except her bed where she was currently sitting. He 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 noted that though Gabriella still fought his tight hold, she was tiring.

“Be still and I’ll let you go,” he said quietly, hoping that maybe his outer calm would rub off on her.

She tried to land a heel to his shin but when that failed she slumped in his arms. “Fine.”

Carefully and slowly, paying attention to the way she held herself and the pliancy of her body, Jaime released her from his grip. Since she didn’t renew her fight, he took a few steps away so she could see he had no intention of hurting her.

When she turned and looked at him warily, he held his hands up. Her breathing was labored and there were droplets of sweat gathered at her temples. She had a pretty face despite the pallor beneath her tan complexion. She had a mass of dark curls pulled back and away from her face, and he had to wonder how old she was.

She looked both too young and too world-weary all at the same time, but he couldn’t let that twist his insides. He’d seen way worse at this point, hadn’t he? “I’m not going to harm you, Gabriella. In fact, I want to help you.”

She laughed, something bitter and scathing that scraped against what little conscience he had left.

“Sure you do, buddy. And this is the Taj Mahal.”

Yeah, she’d be perfect for what he needed. Now he just had to figure out how to use her without blowing everything he’d worked for.

Chapter Two

Gabby was wrung out. Physically. Emotionally. It had been a long time since she’d had something to react so violently against. Her breathing was uneven and her insides felt scraped raw.

She wanted to cry and it had been so long since she’d allowed herself that emotional release.

She couldn’t allow it now. Not with the way this man studied her, intently and far too interested. She had become certain of her power in this odd world she’d been thrust into against her will, but she didn’t believe in that power in the face of this man.

She closed her eyes against the wave of despair and the need to give up on this whole surviving thing.

“Gabriella. I know you have no reason to trust me, but I’m going to say it even if you don’t believe it. I will not hurt you.”

The worst part was that she was so exhausted she wanted to believe him. No one had promised her safety in the past eight years, but just because no one had didn’t mean she could believe this one.

“I guess it’s my lucky day,” she returned, trying to roll her eyes but exhaustion limited the movement.

“I know. I know. I do. Don’t trust me. Don’t believe. I just need you to go along with some things.”

“What kind of things? And, more important, why?” She shook her head. Questions were pointless. The man was going to lie to her anyway. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Do whatever you’re going to do.”

“You fought me.”

“So?”

He stepped forward and she stumbled away. He shook his head, holding his hands up again, as if surrendering. “I’m sorry. I won’t. I’m not going to touch you.” He kept his hands raised as he spoke. Low, with a note to his voice she couldn’t recognize.

Panic? No, he wasn’t panicked in the least. But there was something in that tone that made her feel like time was running out. For what, she had no idea. But there was a drive to this man, a determination.

He had a goal of some kind and it wasn’t like The Stallion’s goals. The Stallion had a kind of meticulous nature, and he never seemed rushed or driven. Just a cold, careful, step-by-step map in his head to whatever endgame he had. Or maybe no endgame at all. Just...living his weird life.

But this man in her room had a vitality to him, an energy. He was trying to do something and Gabby hated the way she responded to that. Oh, she missed having a goal, having some fight in her. The weary acceptance of the past two years had given her less and less to live for. Helping the other girls was the only thing that kept her getting up every morning.

“What do you want from me?”

“Just some cooperation. Some information. To go along with whatever I say, especially if The Stallion is around.”

“Are you trying to usurp him or something?”

He released a breath that was almost a laugh. “N—” He seemed to think better of saying no. “Who knows? Right now, I need information.”

“Why should I give you anything?”

He seemed to think about the question but in the end ignored it and asked one of his own. “Is it true...?” He trailed off, giving her a brief once-over. “They haven’t touched you while you’ve been here?”

She stared hard at the man. “One time a guard tried to touch my chest and I knocked his tooth out.”

The man’s full mouth curved a little at that, something so close to humor in his expression it hurt. Humor. She missed...laughing. For no reason. Smiling, just because it was a nice day with a blue sky.

But she couldn’t think about all the things she missed or her heart would stop beating.

“What happened to the guard?”

Gabby shrugged, hugging herself against all this feeling. Thoughts about laughter, about the sky, about using her mind to put the pieces of the puzzle together again.

You gave that up. You’ve accepted your fate.

But had she, really, when the fight came so easily and quickly?

“I don’t know. I never saw him again.”

“Was it only the one time?”

Gabby considered how much information she wanted to give a stranger who might be just as evil as the man who held her captive. She could help him boot The Stallion out...and then get nothing for her trouble. She wasn’t sure if she preferred to take the risk. The devil you knew and all that.

But there was something about this man... He didn’t fit. Nothing about his demeanor or mannerisms or his questions fit the past eight years of her experience. What exactly would be the harm in telling him what she knew? What would The Stallion do? He’d been the one to leave her with this man.

“As far as I know, they can knock us around as long as they don’t break anything or touch our faces. If they go overboard, or get sexual, they disappear.”

The man raised an eyebrow. “How many have disappeared?”

Gabby shrugged, still holding herself. “It was more in the beginning. Five the first year. Three the second. Only one in the third. Then five again the fourth. Two the fifth, then none since.”

Both his eyebrows raised at this point, his eyes widening in surprise. “You remember it that specifically?”

Part of her wanted to brag about all the things she remembered. All the specifics she had locked away in her brain. All the patterns she’d put together. None of the girls had ever appreciated them. She had a feeling this man would.

But it would be showing her hand a little too easily for comfort. “Not a lot to think about in this place. I remember some things.”

“Tell me,” he said, taking another one of those steps toward her that made her want to cower or run away to whatever corner she could find. But she stood her ground and she shook her head.

If she told him, it would be in her own time, when she thought telling might work in her favor in some way.

He stood there, opposite her, studying her face as though he could figure out how to get her to talk if he simply looked hard enough.

So she looked right back, trying to determine something about him.

He had a sharp nose and angular cheekbones, a strong jaw covered liberally with short, black whiskers. His eyes looked much less black close up, a variety of browns melding to the black pupil at the center.

He had broad shoulders and narrow hips and even the array of weapons strapped to him didn’t detract from the sexy way he was built. Sexy. Such an odd thing. She hadn’t thought about sex or attractiveness or much of anything in that vein for eight long years.

She didn’t know if she was glad she could still see it and recognize it or if it just made everything more complicated. Far more lonely.

The eerie click of a lock interrupted the moment and he looked back at the door, then at her. His expression was grave.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he whispered. “But this may scare you a little bit. That’s okay. Fight back.”

“Fight ba—”

He reached out and grabbed her by the shirt with both large hands. She screeched, but he had her shirt ripped in two before she landed the first punch.

* * *

JAIME PRETENDED TO laugh as Gabby pounded at him. He glanced at The Stallion, doing his best to stand between the man and his view of Gabby. He’d tried not to look himself, but he needed the illusion of a fight. A sexual one.

He couldn’t let his disgust at that show. “Senor?” The Stallion always got some bizarre thrill when Jaime called him that, so he’d done it with increasing regularity. Being the egomaniac that he was, The Stallion never got tired of it. “An hour, no?”

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I need you immediately. Your hour will have to wait.”

Jaime scowled. He didn’t have to fake it, either. He wanted more information from Gabriella. If the woman had remembered how many guards were dismissed every year...who knew what other kind of information she might have.

Jaime inclined his head as if he agreed, though he didn’t at all. He wanted to get information out of Gabriella as soon as possible. The more he got and the sooner he got it, the less he’d have to do for The Stallion.

He gave her a fleeting glance. Those big, dark eyes were edged with fury, and she crossed her arms over her chest. The bra she wore was ill-fitting and he couldn’t help but notice the way her breasts spilled over the fabric even under her crossed arms.

He quickly looked back at The Stallion. He handed Gabriella the remains of her shirt. “Perdón,” he offered, making sure he didn’t sound sorry in the least.

The Stallion chuckled as Jaime walked to meet him at the door. “You could be so much better at your job if you weren’t so easily distracted,” the man said, clapping him on the shoulder in an almost fatherly manner as he pulled the door closed, leaving Gabby alone in the room.

He didn’t lock the door this time and Jaime was surprised at how much freedom he allowed the women he kept there. Of course, the front and back doors were chained and locked even when The Stallion was inside, and all the windows were boarded up in a permanent, meticulous manner.

There were no phones in the house, no computers. Absolutely no technology of any kind aside from kitchen appliances. But even that was relegated to a microwave and a refrigerator. No stove and no knives beyond dull butter ones.

He wondered if the women inside knew that only a couple of yards away, in a decent-size shed, The Stallion kept all the things he denied the women. Computers and phones and an array of weapons, which was where The Stallion was leading Jaime now.

“We have a situation I want you briefed on. Then you may go back to our Gabriella and finish your...” He trailed off and shook his head as he locked and chained the back door they’d exited into an overgrown backyard. “Sex is such a base instinct, Rodriguez. Women are a worthless expense of energy. I’m fifty-three, for over half my life I have searched for the perfect woman and failed time and time again. Though, I will admit the women I’ve kept are of exceptional quality. Just not quite there...”

The man got a far-off look on his face as they walked through the long grass toward his shed. It was the kind of far-off look that kept Jaime up at night. Void of reason or sense, completely and utterly...incomprehensible.

The Stallion patted his shoulder again, tsking. “I know this is all going over your head. You really ought to work on your English.”

Jaime shrugged. It suited his purpose to be seen as not understanding everything that went on because of a language barrier, and at times it had been hard to remember he was supposed to barely understand.

But when The Stallion started going on and on about women, Jaime never had any problems keeping his mouth shut and his expression confused. It was broken and warped and utter nonsense.

The Stallion unlocked the shed and stepped inside. Two men were sitting on chairs around The Stallion’s desk, which was covered in notes and technology. The man strode right to it and sat on his little throne.

“Herman’s gone missing,” he said without preamble, mentioning The Stallion’s most used runner in Austin. “He didn’t deliver his message today, and so far no one has figured out where he disappeared to. Wallace, I’m giving you the rest of today to find him. He can’t have gone too far.”

The fair-haired man in the corner nodded soundlessly.

“If he somehow gives us the slip that long...” The Stallion continued. “Layne, you’ll take him out.”

Layne cracked his knuckles one by one, like he’d seen too many mobster movies. “Be my pleasure. What happens to him if Wallace finds him, though? I wouldn’t mind getting some information out of him.”

The Stallion’s mouth curved into a cold, menacing line that, even after two years, made Jaime’s blood run cold. “Rodriguez will be in charge if we find him. I’d like to see what he can do with a...shall we say, recalcitrant employee. ¿Comprende?”

“Sí, senor.”

“Wallace, you’re dismissed. Report every hour,” The Stallion said with the flick of his wrist. “Layne, have the interrogation room readied for us, please.”

Both men agreed and left the shed. Jaime stood as far from The Stallion as he could without drawing attention to the purposeful space between them. The man steepled his hands together, looking off at some unknown entity Jaime was pretty sure only he could see.

Jaime stood perfectly still, trying to appear detached and uninterested. “Did you need me, senor?”

The Stallion stroked his forehead with the back of his thumb, still looking somewhere else. “Once we figure out what’s going on with Herman, I’ll be moving on to a different location.” His cold, blue gaze finally settled on Jaime. “You’ll stay here and hold down the fort, and Ms. Gabriella will be yours to do whatever you please with her.”

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 to...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 wanted 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.”

“And you don’t have that yet?”

“Not to the extent my superiors would like. Which is why we came up with a plan.”

“Let me guess. You can’t tell me about the plan.”

“Actually, this one I can. A little. You’re a gift to me.”

She physically recoiled and he could hardly blame her.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve slowly become his right-hand man and as I learned about the girls he keeps locked up...I wanted to get close to one of you to figure out how I could get you out. How we could all work together to get you out. So I convinced him that a woman would be better payment than drugs or money. I mean, I get paid, too, bu—”

“Of course you do. I’m sure you get money and a horse and forty acres of land. The payment of a woman is simply pocket change, right?”

“Gabriella.”

She began to pace the tiny room, her irritation and anxiety so recognizable to him he started to feel the same build in his chest.

“This is insane,” she muttered. “This is so impossible. These things don’t happen! They don’t happen to people in my family. They don’t happen to people! This is movie craziness.”

“No. It’s your life,” Jaime returned firmly. He needed her to focus, to get past the panic. “There’s one of his compounds that has the most evidence on his whole operation, and it’s the only one that I don’t know where it’s located. So, as I work with him right now, that’s what I’m trying to figure out. If you’ve been watching, paying attention, listening...you might have the answer. But we have to pretend like...”

“Like I’m the gift to you. And you can do whatever you want with me,” she said flatly.

“Yes. But the key here is that it’s pretend. I’m not going to hurt you. I’ve done a lot of things that will stick with me for a very long time.” He stopped talking for a few seconds so he could regain his composure. He didn’t like to think back at some of the chances he’d had to take or some of the people he’d had to hurt. Though he hadn’t actively killed anyone, he had no doubt some of the things he’d been involved in had led to the death of someone else.

There were a lot of terrible things you could do to a person without killing them.

He had to get hold of himself, so he did. He forced himself to look at Gabriella. She was studying him carefully, as though she could see the turmoil on his face.

To survive, he had to believe this was a very special woman who could see things no one else could. Because if she could see these things and other people could, as well, they would probably both end up dead.

“I know it sounds crazy,” she said carefully, “but I know what it’s like. I’ve helped hide drugs that I’m sure have killed people. I’ve had to dig holes that I think were...so he could bury people. I’ve had to do terrible things, and sometimes I’m not even sure that I had to. Just that I did.”

“No.” He took a step toward her and though he knew he had to be careful so he didn’t startle her, he very slowly and gently reached out and took her hand in his. He gave it a slight squeeze.

“We’ve done what we had to do to survive. In my case, to bring this man to justice. We have to believe that. Above everything else.”

She looked down at their joined hands. He had no idea what she saw or what she felt. It had been so long since he’d been able to touch someone in a kind way, in a gentle way, it affected him a bit harder than he’d expected.

Her hand was warm and it felt capable. She squeezed his back as though she could give him some comfort. This woman who’d been abducted from her family for eight years.

When she raised her gaze to his, he felt an odd little jitter deep in his stomach. Something like fear but not exactly. Almost like recognizing something or someone, but that didn’t make sense, so he shook it away.

Chapter Four

Gabby looked at her hand, encompassed by a much larger one. She wondered if the small scars across his knuckles were from his undercover work or if he’d got them before.

What would he have been like before his assumed identity?

And what on earth did that matter?

She forced her gaze back to him, his dark brown eyes somehow sure and comforting, when nothing in eight years had been comforting. It shouldn’t be potent. It was probably part of his training—looking in charge and compassionate.

She’d never been too fond of cops, though that may have been Ricky’s influence. Her first serious boyfriend. A poster child for trouble. Gabby had been convinced she could change him, that everyone saw him all wrong. Her parents had been adamant that she could not change what was wrong with that boy.

They’d barred him from their house. Insisted Gabby live at home through her coursework at the community college, and had been making noise about her not transferring to get her bachelors.

It had all seemed like the most unjust, unfair fate. They didn’t have enough money, they didn’t have any trust. The world had seemed cruel, and Ricky had been nice...to her.

She was twenty-eight now and that was the only relationship she’d ever had. A boy, really, and she’d only been a girl.

This man holding her hand was no boy, but she wasn’t sure what she was. Except a little off her rocker for having this line of thought.

She cleared her throat and pulled her hand away. “So. What is it you need from me?”

He was quiet for a moment, studying his hand, which he hadn’t dropped—it still hovered there in the air between them.

“My main goal is to find the last compound,” he finally said, bringing his hand down to his side. “It’s the one he’s the most secretive about. So much so, I’m not sure he takes any of his employees there.”

“I don’t know if I can help with that. I did have this theory...” She trailed off. “I wish I had something to write on,” she muttered. She searched her room for something...something to illustrate the picture in her head.

She opened one of her drawers and retrieved her brush, pins and ponytail holders, some of the few “extras” The Stallion afforded her. A giddy excitement jumbled through her and maybe she should calm it down.

But this was something. God, something to do. Something real. Something that wasn’t just pointless fighting but actually working toward a goal.

Freedom.

She settled herself at that word. It had come to mean something different in eight years. Or maybe it had come to mean nothing at all.

She shook those oddly uncomfortable thoughts away and looked around for a place to create her makeshift map. “I can’t explain it without props,” she said, setting a brush on the center of the floor.

“Let’s do it on the bed instead of the floor, so if anyone comes in we can...” He rubbed a hand over his unkempt if short beard. “Well, cover it up.”

Right. Because to The Stallion she was a gift. No, that was too generous. She was a thing to be traded for services. She shuddered at the thought but...the man kneeled at the bed. The man who hadn’t used her as payment but was using her as an informant.

The man whose name she didn’t know.

“What should I call you?” she asked suddenly. Because she was working with this man to free—no, not to free anything, but to bring down The Stallion—and she hadn’t a clue as to what to call him.

He glanced at her and she must be dreaming the panic she saw in his expression because it disappeared in only a second.

“They call me Rodriguez,” he said carefully. “But my name is Jaime A—I...” He shook his head as he focused, as he seemed to push away whatever was plaguing him. “Call me Rodriguez. It’s safest.”

She knelt next to him, biting back the urge to repeat Jaime. Just to feel what his name would sound like in her mouth.

Silly. “All right, Rodriguez.” She placed the brush at the center of the bed. “This is Austin. The bed is Texas. I don’t have a clue...” She trailed off, realizing this man would know where they were. He hadn’t been blindfolded or hooded. He actually knew if they were still in Texas, if they were close to home.

She breathed through the emotion swamping her. “Where are we?” she whispered.

“An hour east of El Paso. Middle of nowhere, basically. Only a few small towns around.”

She blinked. El Paso. She’d had theories about where they could be, and El Paso had factored into them, but theories and truths were...

“Take your time,” Jaime said gently.

“But we don’t have much time, do we?” she returned, staring into compassionate eyes for the first time in eight years. Because as much as all the girls felt sorry for each other, they felt sorry for themselves first and foremost.

Jaime nodded toward the bed. “Technically, I don’t know how much time we have. I only know the quicker we figure it out, the less chance he has of hurting people. More people.”

She took a deep breath and returned her focus to the bed. “The brush is Austin. I get the feeling that’s something like...the center. I don’t know if it’s a headquarters or...”

“Technically, he lives in Austin. His public persona, anyway.”

His public persona. Though it fit everything she knew or had theorized, it was hard to believe The Stallion went about a normal life in Austin and people didn’t see something was wrong with the man. Warped and broken beyond comprehension.

“So, we’ve got his personal center at Austin,” Jaime continued for her, taking one of the rubber bands she’d piled next to her. He reached past her, his long, muscular arm brushing against her shoulder. “And this is the compound close to El Paso.”

“Right. Right.” She picked up another rubber band. “He seems to work by seasons, sort of. I started wondering if he had a place in each direction. If this is west, he has a compound in the north, the south and the east. Unless Austin is his east.” She placed rubber bands in general spots that represented each direction, creating a diamond with Austin at the somewhat center.

“He has a compound in the Panhandle. Though I haven’t been there, he’s talked of it. I’ve been to the one on the Louisiana border. I didn’t think he had women there, but... Now that I’ve seen this setup, maybe he did and I just didn’t know about it.”

The idea that there’d been women to help and he hadn’t helped them clearly bothered him, but he kept talking. “But south... He’s never mentioned any kind of holdings in the south of Texas.” He tapped the lower portion of her bed. “It has to be south.”

“It would make sense. The access to drugs, people.”

“It would make all the sense in the world, and you, Gabriella, are something of a miracle.” He grinned over at her.

“It’s...Gabby. Everyone, except him, calls me Gabby.”

His grin didn’t fade so much as morph into something else, something considering or...

The door swung open and the next thing Gabby knew, she was being thrust onto the bed and under a very large man.

* * *

JAIME HADN’T HAD a woman underneath him in over two years, and that should not at all be the thought in his head right now. But she was soft underneath him, no matter how strong she was...soft breasts, soft hair.

And a kidnapping victim, jackass.

“Rodriguez. Boss wants you.” Layne’s cruel mouth was twisted into a smirk, clearly having no compunction about interrupting...well, what this looked like, not so much what it was.

Damn these men and their interruptions. He was getting somewhere, and he didn’t mean on top of Gabriella.

Gabby.

He couldn’t call her that. Couldn’t think of her like that. She was a tool, and a victim. Any slipups and they could both end up dead. He glanced down at her, completely still underneath him, and it was enough of a distraction that he was having trouble deciding how to play things in front of Layne.

She blinked up at him, eyes wide, and though she wasn’t fighting him, he’d scared her. No matter that she understood him, his role here, he didn’t think she’d be trusting him any time soon. How could he blame her for that?

Wordlessly he got off Gabby and the bed and straightened his clothes in an effort to make Layne think he was more rumpled than he really was.

“We’ll finish this later,” he said offhandedly to Gabby, hoping it sounded to Layne like a hideous threat.

Jaime sauntered over to the door, not looking back at Gabby to see what she was doing, though that’s desperately what he wanted to do. He grabbed his sunglasses from his pocket and slipped them on his face as he stepped out into the hallway with Layne.

“Awfully clothed, aren’t you?” Layne asked.

Jaime closed the door behind him before he answered. “Still trying to knock the fight out of her. Wouldn’t want to intimidate her with what’s coming.” Jaime smirked as if pleased with himself instead of disgusted.

“It’s a hell of a lot better when there’s still a little fight in them,” Layne said, glancing back at Gabby’s door as they walked down the hall.

Jaime’s body went cold, but he reined in his temper, curling his fingers into fists, his only—and most necessary—reaction.

“Do you think senor would be pleased with that world view?” he asked as blandly as he could manage.

Layne’s gaze snapped to Jaime and his threat. The man sneered. “Not every idiot believes your Pepe Le Pew act, buddy.”

Jaime flashed his most intimidating grin, one devoid of any of the humanity he was desperate to believe he still had. “Pepe Le Pew is French, culo.”

“Whatever,” the man said with a disinterested wave. “You know what I mean.”

“I know a lot of things about you, amigo,” Jaime said, enjoying the way the man rolled his eyes at every Spanish word he threw into the conversation.

Layne didn’t take the hint. “Maybe you want to pass her around a bit. Boss man’s been pretty strict about us getting anything out of these girls but you—”

Jaime stopped and shoved Layne into the wall. What he really wanted to do was punch the man, but he knew that would put his credibility in jeopardy, no matter how much dirt he had on Layne. He wrestled with the impulse, with the beating violence inside him.

No matter what this man might deserve, he was not Jaime’s end goal. The end goal was to make this all moot.

So, he held Layne there, against the wall, one fist bunched in the man’s T-shirt to keep him exactly where he wanted him. He stared down at the man with all the menace he felt. “You will not touch what is mine,” Jaime threatened, making his intent clear.

“You’ve already stepped all over what’s mine,” Layne returned, but Jaime noted he didn’t fight back against Jaime’s hold—intelligence or strategy, Jaime wasn’t sure.

“I ran this show before he brought you in,” Layne growled.

“Well, now you answer to me. So, I’d watch your step, amigo. I know things about you I don’t think The Stallion would particularly care to hear about. A hooker in El Paso, for starters.”

Layne blustered, but underneath it the man had paled. This was why Jaime preferred everyone think of him as muscle who could barely understand English. They underestimated him. But Jaime hadn’t walked in here blindly. He knew The Stallion’s previous head honchos wouldn’t take the power share easily. So he’d collected leverage.

Thank God.

“Now, are you ready to keep your disgusting tongue and hands to yourself?” Jaime asked with an almost pleasant smile. “Or do I have to make your life difficult?”

Layne ground his teeth together, a sneer marring his features, but he gave a sharp nod.

“Muy bueno,” Jaime said, pretending it was great news as he released the piece of garbage. “Let’s proceed, then.” He gestured grandly down the hall to the back door.

Layne grumbled something, but Jaime was relieved to see concern and fear on the man’s face. He could only hope it would keep the man in line.

They exited the house and Jaime waited while Layne chained everything up. The late summer sun shimmered in the green of the trees, and if Jaime didn’t know what lurked in the shed across the grass, he might have relaxed.

As it was, relaxing wasn’t happening any time soon.

Jaime let Layne lead the way to the shed. He preferred to touch as little as possible in that little house of horrors.

Both men stepped in to find The Stallion pacing, hands clutched behind his back, and Wallace looking wary in the far corner.

The Stallion looked up distractedly. “Good. Good. We’ve gotten news of Herman before Wallace even got anywhere.” The man’s hands shook as he brought them in front of him in fists, fury stamped across his face. The usual calm calculation in his eyes something darker and more frenzied. “With the Texas Rangers and a hypnotist.” The Stallion slammed a fist to the desk that made the creepy-ass dolls on the shelf above shake, their dead lifeless eyes fluttering at the vibration.

Jaime forced himself to look away and stare flatly at his boss. Fake boss, he amended.

“Luckily, Mr. Herman doesn’t know enough to give them much of a lead, but he certainly represents a loose end.” The Stallion took a deep breath, plucking one of the brunette dolls from the shelf. He cradled it like a child.

It took every ounce of Jaime’s control and training to keep the horror off his face. Grown men capable of murder cradling a doll was not...comforting in the least.

“I’ve sent a team to get rid of Herman. Scare the hypnotist. I don’t think I want to extinguish her yet. She might be valuable. But I want her scared.” He squeezed the doll so tight it was a wonder one of its plastic limbs didn’t break off.

“There we are, pretty girl,” The Stallion cooed, resettling the doll on the shelf and brushing a hand over its fake hair.

Jaime shuddered and looked away.

“Until this mess is taken care of, you are all on lockdown. No one is leaving the premises until Herman is taken care of.”

“Then, boss?” Layne asked a little too hopefully.

The Stallion smiled pleasantly. “And then we’ll decide what to do about the hypnotist.”

Lockdown and death threats. Jaime tried to breathe through the urgency, the failure, the impossibility of saving this man’s life.

He’d try. Somehow, he’d try. But he had the sinking suspicion Herman was already gone.

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