Stone Cold Undercover Agent

Chapter Four (#ua443a2e0-39b1-5b8e-9c7c-2ae6decd0d50)

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.