Читать книгу Stone Cold Undercover Agent - Nicole Helm - Страница 12

Chapter Five

Gabby couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t an uncommon affliction. Even in the past two years, exercising herself to exhaustion, giving up on things ever being different, avoiding figuring out the pieces of The Stallion puzzle, insomnia still plagued her.

Because no matter how she tried to accept her lot in life, she’d always known this wasn’t home.

But what would be home? Her father was dead. Her sister would be an adult woman with a life of her own. Would Mom and Grandma still live in the little house on East Avenue or would they have moved?

Did they assume she was dead? Would they have kept all her things or gotten rid of them? The blue teddy bear Daddy had given her on her sixth birthday. The bulletin board of pictures of friends and Ricky and her and Nattie.

Her heart absolutely ached at the thought of her sister. Two years apart, they hadn’t always gotten along, but they had been friends. Sisters. They’d shared things, laughed together, cried together, fought together.

Tears pricked Gabby’s eyes. She hadn’t had this kind of sad nostalgia swamp her in years, because it led nowhere good. She couldn’t change her circumstances. She was stuck in this prison and there was no way out.

Except maybe Jaime.

That was not an acceptable thought. She could work with him to take down The Stallion, and she would, but actually thinking she could get out of there was... It was another thing altogether.

She froze completely at the telltale if faint sound of her door opening. And then closing. She closed her hands into fists, ready to fight. She couldn’t drown that reaction out of herself, no matter how often she wondered if giving in was simply easier.

“Gabby.”

A hushed whisper, but even if she didn’t remember people’s voices so easily, she would have known it was Jaime—Rodriguez—from a man calling her Gabby.

Gabby. She swallowed against all of the fuzzy feelings inside her. Home and Gabby and what did either even mean anymore. She didn’t have a home. The Gabby she’d been was dead.

It didn’t matter. Taking The Stallion down was the only thing that mattered. She sat up in the dark, watched Jaime’s shadow get closer.

The initial fear hadn’t totally subsided. She wasn’t afraid of him per se or, maybe more accurately, she wasn’t afraid he would harm her. But that didn’t mean there weren’t other things to be afraid of.

She had sat up on the bed, but he still loomed over her from his standing position. She banked the edgy nerves fluttering inside her chest.

He kneeled, much like he had earlier today when they’d been putting together her map. Except she was on the bed instead of her makeshift markers.