“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