Stone Cold Undercover Agent. Nicole Helm

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.”