The hand holding my chin released me and grabbed around the back of my neck, bringing me into his chest so he could wrap his other arm around me. “I won’t let them get to you, Rachel. I swear I won’t.”
He held me as I cried, and when I could speak again, the questions came out all at once. “W-what is going on? Why am I here? Who were they talking about? Don’t give me your bullshit about not being able to answer! Who are you?”
When he didn’t respond for a few minutes, I thought he wouldn’t say anything at all. But with a heavy exhale that hinted at the stress he was carrying, he tightened his grip and whispered into my neck, “I’m just a guy who got caught up in a bad situation a long time ago.”
I pulled back and cradled his cheeks roughly as I pleaded, “Then get out of it! Get me out of here; you don’t have to be this guy. You’re not him. I don’t know what you did, but I know what you’ve done for me. I’ve told you, you’re not a bad person, Taylor.”
“Trent.” When I just sat there staring at him, he placed his large hands over mine and repeated, “Trent Cruz. That’s my name.”
I knew what this meant. I knew how big this was. He trusted me with that; and in giving me his name, he was letting me know again that I could trust him. As bizarre as that sounded. “You don’t like Taylor?” I asked and earned a somewhat-relieved smile from him.
“If it’s coming from you, then, yeah, I like Taylor.” Pushing me away gently, he stood from the bed and waited until I was lying down. “Go back to sleep, Rachel. It’s going to be practically impossible for them to get back in, but if they somehow do, I’ll always protect you.”
My body tensed up when he stepped away from me and was already shaking by the time he sat down next to one of the equipment benches in front of the bedroom door. I’d felt safest when Tay—Trent was in the room with me, but after waking up and realizing that two of the others had gotten in, and had guns with them, even having him in the room wasn’t enough.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to steady my breathing, but minutes passed and I was coming close to breaking down again, worse than I had when it had all been over. Not waiting to think about what I was doing or what it meant, since I was the captive and he was the captor, I flew out of the bed and over to where he was sitting before throwing myself onto his lap and burying my head in his chest as sobs tormented my body.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated over and over as he held me close and let me soak the front of his shirt with my tears. “I wish I could change everything, Rachel, I’m so damn sorry.”
There was nothing for me to say, I didn’t know why he’d taken me, and I knew I might never know. I also knew deep down that if he could take me away, he would do everything to make it happen. But he wasn’t, and he wouldn’t even attempt it. That told me everything—that whatever was happening was so much bigger than me being kept in this place.
When my sobs quieted, Trent gently pushed my shoulders back and spoke low, the warmth in his tone making my body shiver. “Go get back in bed, I’ll be here to protect you.”
I responded by throwing myself back at his chest and wrapping my arms around his neck. He didn’t hesitate, he just moved his legs under us and stood up, with me still in his arms, and walked us over to the bed. Laying me down on the bed, he grabbed my hands and unclasped them before placing them on top of my stomach. My hands shot out when he straightened, but he was already removing his shirt soaked with my tears, and climbed over me to the other side of the bed.
As soon as he was on his side, facing me, I curled my body up against his and pressed my head into his shoulder. It was ridiculous, but like when I was little and I felt like the monsters couldn’t get me if I was hiding under the covers, my body stopped shaking and relaxed into Trent when he pulled the comforter up over us.
I knew Jaime, the guy with him, and any of the others could still get in here; but with the comforter surrounding me, and Trent’s arms holding me close, I finally felt like the monsters couldn’t touch me.
Trent
KEEPING ONE ARM AROUND RACHEL, I brought my other hand up and ran it down my face, exhaling heavily into it when I reached my mouth. I couldn’t believe I’d fallen asleep and allowed them to get into the room before I’d woken back up. They hadn’t made a fucking sound; I’m still not even sure what woke me. They could have easily grabbed her, taken her, and I wouldn’t have known. It would have been my fault.
I couldn’t stop thinking that my reaction to Marco and Dominic tonight had been what led Jaime and Carson to break in.
My fault. All of it.
But, Jesus Christ. Rachel was asleep in my arms. The warmth of her breath on my bare chest should be insignificant, but right now it seemed like the most vital connection to this world. Her long hair tangled in the hand holding her close to me, and the heat of her body against mine was something I’d craved for months; and I felt like I was riding a high more extreme than any drug could ever give me.
The way she’d thrown herself into my arms tonight was playing in my mind on repeat; and even now with her pressed against me, I could still feel the way her head had felt buried into my neck, the way it had felt when she’d thrown her arms around me after I’d tried to push her back.
I’d known she’d been changing, but something had happened since the power had gone out tonight. The feisty Rachel I’d come to know over the last few weeks was gone. She was terrified, like she always should have been . . . but instead of retreating from me like I would expect her to, she was clinging to me. I didn’t understand it, but I wasn’t about to question it. Because nothing about my feelings had changed, even though everything about her had.
I’d already completely fallen in love with a girl who could never be mine. Only now, she was making it impossible for me to grasp ever letting her go.
13
Kash
MY HEAVY EYELIDS SLOWLY BLINKED OPEN when the warm body in my arms stirred, and I automatically tightened them around her waist. I buried my face in her hair and a lazy smile crossed my face.
“Morning, Sour Patch.”
She mumbled something unintelligible and I laughed as I moved her hair away to kiss her neck. “Where are you?” she asked suddenly as my hand made its way down her torso and stopped just at the edge of her underwear.
“Uh . . .” I forced out another laugh in an attempt to wash away the eerie feeling that hung in the air after her panicked question. “Should I be taking that as an insult, or—”
“Why aren’t you coming to find me, Kash!”
“What the hell?” I pushed away from Rachel at the same time her voice filled the entire room. But it wasn’t coming from the girl lying next to me. It was as if it were playing through speakers in the wall. Her screams and cries were all I could hear, all I could focus on. “Rachel!” I yelled and went to turn her body toward me, but the body was no longer there.
“Please! Somebody help me! Please!”
I struggled to get off the bed as a mass of Rachel’s bloody hair clung to my hands. My legs got caught in the sheets and I fell out of the bed, landing on my back. I crawled away on my hands and knees, the sheets still twisted around my legs; and gave up when her screams got to an ear-piercing level. On my knees, I pressed my forehead into the floor and put my hands to my ears. My own anguished cry joined hers as I listened to her screaming for help over and over again.
“No! Stop! Help me . . . please!”
The noise stopped suddenly and I opened my eyes to stare at the carpet as I slowly removed my hands from my ears. I put my hands to the floor to push my body up and froze when my fingers grazed something. Cries started back up in the room, and my body filled with dread at what I might find next to me. Looking to the left, all the blood drained from my head and my stomach churned. Rachel’s severed fingers lay there directly below mine. Dry heaves rocked my body as the auditory assault steadily grew louder again and a new visual one began.
“Get off me! Help!”
Like a movie being
played directly in front of me—even when I closed my eyes—my worst nightmares replayed over and over. Rachel being whipped, waterboarded, and beaten. Being raped by two men. Her struggling to get out of the chains binding her to a chair firmly anchored into the ground while blinding lights surrounded her and ear-piercing sounds and music filled the room and drowned out her screams.
I pounded my fists against the carpet and my voice boomed over everything else. “Rachel!”
I sat up quickly in bed and pulled in ragged breaths as my heart and mind raced. My hand hit the right side of the bed and touched nothing but cool sheets. Trip raised his head off his paws from where he’d been sleeping near my feet, and I fell back onto the pillows with a frustrated grunt as I gripped at my hair.
“Fuck!” I yelled toward the ceiling.
Almost every night I’d dreamed of waking up next to Rachel again. But those images that haunted my every waking thought hadn’t been torturing me in my dreams as well . . . until now. I couldn’t keep doing this, I couldn’t keep wondering what had and hadn’t been real anymore. I couldn’t keep living every moment being terrified that I wouldn’t see her again. The department had been testing things, like the hair and the blood. We knew the hair wasn’t hers and the blood wasn’t even human. Two of the videos of Rachel being tortured we’d already found were actual videos found on the Internet from years ago. But there were still countless other things that they hadn’t been able to figure out if they’d been real or not. And it was driving me insane.
I slapped my hand down on the nightstand when my phone rang, and I glared at the bright display before fumbling to answer.
“Hello?”
“K-money,” he said low, and then chuckled. “Rise and shine, cupcake, it’s almost dawn.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to steady my breathing. “Don’t call me if you’re just gonna sit there and mess with me, Sunny. Do you have something for me or don’t you? Because the days that she’s been gone have more than doubled since I saw you.”
“My men have been giving me strange looks and I’ve been getting questioned because I’ve been going out on a limb for you, you got me? I’m putting my life on the line for you and your woman, so I deserve some respect from you.”
My eyes shot back open and I growled, “Don’t forget I know who you are.”
“You know, I think I’ll keep my information to myself. Have a nice day, Detective.”
I growled and slammed my free fist onto the bed. “I will bring your entire operation to the ground, and your time undercover will be over, Sunny! Do not fuck with me on this one! We had a deal!”
He didn’t say anything for a long while, and I lay there, my breathing rapid as I waited for something . . . anything.
Sitting up, I looked over at my gun sitting on the nightstand. My next words were dark and full of promise. “This is my future wife’s life you’re screwing with. If you don’t tell me what you fucking know, your so-called crew will start turning up dead one at a goddamn time, and the only one who will have a clue will be you. Leaders come up dead all the time, Sunny, and if I’m using guns from your own house, no one will ever know once you’re gone.”
“Jesus, Kash.” He didn’t sound worried about my threat. He sounded disappointed. “Fuck, you’re so far gone. Man, you need to pull back, you can’t let this change you into this.”
I was about to lose it. I was so close to breaking from all this, and as the days went by, I was getting desperate. Having Sunny tease me with information was sure to push me over the edge. “No. What I need is my girl back. I told you before, I’d do anything to get her back.”
After a few silent moments, Sunny finally said, “He has a house.”
My eyebrows slammed down and I blinked slowly. “Who has a house?”
“Juarez.”
“Yeah, and I already checked it. It’s still vacant from when we did the bust in it.”
“Uh-uh.” Sunny clicked his tongue three times. “He has another house. Ya feel?”
“House . . . do you have the address? But that still doesn’t make sense. Who would take her, the department has interviewed everyone!”
“Kash, listen.” He paused for a few moments before repeating, “Juarez has another house.”
“He has another operation?”
“Not exactly. Where you were, was the other operation. This other place—”
“Home base,” I guessed.
“Smart man.”
“Holy shit, how did Mason and I not know? There was never any talk, no word about another house.”
Sunny made some sort of affirmative noise. “From what my men could gather, no one knows about this place. One of them knows a guy, that knows a guy, that’s fucking this chick, who belongs to Juarez. She’s been to both places; she’s the one that spilled about the other house. Said something about not knowing why she couldn’t live at the main op while he was locked up, but that Juarez was locking it down so no one could get in or out. Locking down a house from prison . . . now if that doesn’t sound like a man hiding something—or someone—I don’t know what does.”
I was already out of bed and grabbing at the nearest clothes I could find.
“So we brought the girl to our place, got her high, and waited for her to start talking. Looks like the reason no one knows about this place is because if they’ve been privileged to learn about it, they can live there. But if they’ve been told about it, they don’t ever make it out of the crew to tell about it.”
“Where is it, Sunny? Did she tell you where it is?”
“She did, but I’m going to tell you to cool your ass, because you’re not going in right now.”
I straightened from grabbing a shirt and pulled it over my head. “Why the hell not?”
“I told you, they’re locked down, which means they’re waiting for you or the department to show. And this isn’t just some house, it’s a warehouse turned into a fully functioning house and office for his business. Juarez’s princess looked like the type that was well taken care of, and she wanted to live there. So it’s not going to be as simple as busting down the door and running out with her. It’s going to be big, they’re going to be waiting for you, and it’s going to probably be locked up good. You need to go do some surveillance, sit on it for a while, and make sure you know what you’re doing first.”
My head dropped back and I groaned. I hated it when Sunny was right.
“Hey, K-money.”
“What?”
“I’m not taking offense to what you said, because I’d probably be in the same state you’re in now. But I’m telling you . . . don’t let this change you into that person. It’s one thing when you’re on assignment, it’s another when it’s just you. Ya feel?”
“I’m sorry, man. I just—fuck. I don’t even know.” I didn’t know how I felt about the fact that I’d just threatened an entire crew, but I hated that I’d just threatened another officer . . . especially one putting his career and life on the line to help me.
“I’d go in with you if I could, but you know I can’t. Don’t go in it alone. And make sure no one at the department is watching you, because if they are, you know they’ll stop you before you can take action.”
“Got it.”
Sunny rattled off an address and grunted in confirmation when I repeated it back to him. “Be safe, go get your bitch.”
I huffed lamely and sucked hard on my lip ring. “Hey, uh, thanks, man. I really do appreciate everything you did for me on this. I’d send you an invite to the wedding whenever I get her back, but I know you wouldn’t show.”
He laughed, and suddenly the Street Sunny was gone, and the Cop Sunny was there. “Just love her man, take care of her. And maybe send me a picture of you two on the day so I can feel like I was there, yeah?”
“Yeah, man, I’ll do that.”
“Later.”
I pressed the END button and sat on the bed as I pulled up the address on the map and memorized the location, as w
ell as a handful of ways to get there. Pulling up my contacts, I hit Mason’s name and waited.
“Mmm?” Mason groaned when he answered his phone.
“Get up, get over here . . . we need to go. I got info, Sunny just called me. I know where she is, man. Come on, let’s go.”
“Kash? The hell—do you know what time it is?”
I looked around me until I found the clock. Just as I started to apologize out of habit for calling him at three in the morning, I stopped and huffed. “Do you think I give a shit? She’s been gone for thirty-four days now! Who cares what time it is? My fiancée was snatched and I think I know where she is, so we need to get her back, you asshole!”
He grunted a couple of times like he was sitting up, and yawned. “I know, sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Kash, man, you know they’re not going to let you go anywhere without watching you. Wait, did you say Sunny called you? When?”
“I haven’t seen any units sitting on my house since the beginning of this. Do you know something I don’t?”
“They aren’t sitting. But there are a few in your district that are doing close patrol on you. They’re afraid with what’s happening, and your expertise in this, that you’re gonna do something bad.”
I laughed sadistically and got off the bed again to begin pacing. “Obviously they know me well.”
“Okay, now that I’m somewhat awake, start over. You said Sunny called?”
“Yes, Mason. He called and I’m ninety-nine percent positive that the location he gave me is where she is.”
“And why would you think that? Have you checked it yet?”
“No, we need to go check it!” I yelled. “Which is why I’m calling you to get your ass out of bed!”
“Tell me why you think she’s there.”
“Because apparently this is Juarez’s other house. His main house. Like main operation, home base, whatever the fuck you want to call it, and his orders from prison are for it to be locked down. No one other than his men are to get in or out.”
There were a few beats of silence before Mason asked, “When are we going in?”