TWELVE
The few steps that delivered Hunter to the interrogation room seemed to stretch for miles. More than he could count, far more than he felt like he could stay upright through. Beneath him, his legs shook, inside his chest, his heart hammered. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think, and couldn't seem to move without the persistent pushes from Lydia Ortiz.
"You can do this," the agent whispered, as she gripped the door handle and gave it a twist, leaving the barrier to glide open. "You have to do it."
He could do it. He had to— He leaned back into the supportive hand pressing against his back, letting the task of supporting him fall on Lydia as his eyes locked with the emotionally dulled ones inside of the room. He found himself speeding through the tunnel of smoke again, the walls of the tiny room closing in around him. In front of him, seated at the end of the table, Dee Dee's eyes widened and lips gaped, tears instantly setting her eyes aglow. Oh, Jesus. He wanted to run to her. To touch her, feel her—anything she would give him just so he could convince himself that she was real.
Hunter stepped over the threshold, stopping abruptly as Dee Dee jumped to her feet. The chair shot out behind her, the metal tips on the legs squealing atop the tile floor. She staggered backwards, her arms twisting shakily across her chest as she shook her head, before turning her back to her attentive audience and hurrying to the back of the room. Rushing up to the wall, she slammed herself into it, thumping her forehead against the hard stone, whimpering, shattering what little remained of Hunter's hopefulness.
"Don't back out now," Lydia urged, giving another, harder push to Hunter's back. "I can't do this all by myself, and she sure as hell can't, either."
Hunter flattened a hand over his stomach, the swarm of wasps in his gut suddenly revolting violently. Bile sneaked up his throat, burning, causing his eyes to tear, and he fought down a swallow of pure fire as Lydia whispered against the side of his face, "If you give up on her, who else does she have?"
"Maybe she needs more time," he croaked around another, fiery swallow. "She probably needs…more…time…"
"More time? What, six years isn't enough?"
Hunter shook his head weakly, helplessly, and brushed away the tears that had dropped onto his cheeks. He didn't want to quit, not on Lydia, himself, especially not on Dee Dee. But he didn't know how to find the person he needed to find in the distrusting eyes across the room. The space inside of the damned tunnel he'd gotten stuck in had hollowed, making every breath echo and each one of Dee Dee's whispered whimpers reach his ears with deafening force. Hesitantly, he took another step forward, and another, his heart stopping as Lydia slid inside behind him and pushed the door closed.
"Dee Dee…" he managed to choke, his voice breaking as her dark stare swallowed him.
"There you go," Lynda coaxed. "That's it. You got this."
That was when Hunter noticed the differences; they were subtle but still surprising. Although he didn't know why they surprised him.
After all, people changed.
And they seemed to change the most when you weren't there to witness it taking place.
Her figure had a few more curves to it, and her skin was tanned—sun-kissed was the description that, oddly, came to mind. Her face looked older to him, but not in an aged sort of way, more tired. And her hair was longer than he remembered her ever wearing it. Hanging straight down her back, thick, and darker than his memory saw it.
Hunter looked her up, down, critically, with awe. She looked good, just like Porter had said. Physically, she looked healthy, and he supposed he should feel grateful to someone for that. It was her eyes, though, that kept drawing him in. Dark, frightened—haunted was the newest description that his mind settled on. They made it painfully clear that she wasn't healthy; she wasn't his old Dee Dee any more.
And he would make damn sure that someone paid for that.
xxx
She hadn't said his name in almost six years.
She'd tried not to think about him, because when she did, it was his death that played out in her mind. It was her guilt that kept it alive, vivid.
"Your family will die—your mother, your father! And there will be even more people if you don't learn to follow instructions! That partner of yours, he will be next!"
She couldn't see him. Part of her wanted to, part of her was happy that she couldn't. The tears were too thick, blurring her vision. But in her mind, his face was clear—deathly pale with empty, lifeless eyes.
"Dee Dee? Dee Dee, it's okay. Everything's going to be okay."
Her sight cleared with the sound of his voice, and he came into focus. Older than her mind remembered him, but alive—full of life. Still alive. And she'd spent so many years mourning him, burying him over and over in her guilty conscience.
"I want to help you," he said, his voice reaching her ears sounding rough, unsure. "Let me help you. Okay?"
She immediately looked to the woman who'd made the same promise—"We'll get your daughter back, don't you worry, Ms. McCall," –and then Riley Porter promised her next. But it was only because none of them understood what they were up against. Power, influence and intimidation was what Elian subsisted on—frightening, bullying, hurting. His target was never a consideration. If he felt threatened or treated unfairly, they were the only excuses he needed to lash out, to hurt.
He was a predator, and to him, everyone else was acceptable prey.
"You shouldn't be naïve enough to believe that everything that could be taken from you has been, because if you force me to, I'll prove you wrong. I'll take everything—your parents, those friends you keep referring to. Anyone and anything that's ever mattered to you will be gone, and it will because of you—only you."
Dee Dee glanced at the ceiling, at each of the four corners in the room. Elian's voice was so loud, so damned consuming that she expected to find him there. Watching her, judging her, waiting for her to make her next mistake.
"Everything's okay."
He startled her, her breath hitched. In front of her, he was nodding, wanting her to believe him, she could tell.
"Charlie's here, too," he continued, his voice as shaky. "He's here, and we're, uh. We're going to help you. Okay? We're going to take you out of here, take you somewhere safe."
Dee Dee's eyes widened, her stare targeting Lydia. She shook her head, hard and fast, as afraid of the idea of leaving as opposed to it.
"I need you to listen to the man, Ms. McCall," Lydia interjected, nodding. "You stick around here, the only thing that'll happen is you'll get yourself stuck away in some cell. That's the plan right now, the plan that your old partner here and I are trying to make sure doesn't work out."
The plan. Riley Porter had said the plan was to find her daughter—it was what the woman originally said, too. So, she'd done what they asked and given them descriptions, detailing hair colors, eye colors, guessing at heights and weights. She even remembered Lily, the nearly worn out, threadbare rag doll that Avi always had with her. They couldn't forget Lily, she'd told Riley Porter. And she believed him when he said they wouldn't.
"No." Her voice emerged as a whisper, sounding strangled, weak, and his eyes instantly bugged, tears taking hold of them. "I have to… Elian. I need to talk to him." She breathed out shakily, her own tears heating her cheeks. "Please. Let me talk to Elian."
"Talk to Elian?" Lydia responded, sounding impatient. "And just what do you think that'll help?"
Talking to Elian never helped, Dee Dee silently answered, because, in his opinion, she never had anything important to say. He had said it to her over and over; enough times that she'd learned to believe it. "I have to talk to him," she repeated.
"That's not gonna be possible," the woman answered simply. "It can't happen." She pulled off her glasses, sticking one earpiece into her mouth. "The way it is, you only have two choices. You can keep sitting around here waiting until a few insensitive pricks get their way and someone finally hauls you to lockup, or you can trust your old partner here just like you used to do back in your heyday. You go with him, stay underground until things cool off a little, and in the end—God willing—you get your freedom back." She shook her head, shoving her glasses back onto her face. "I don't know about you, hon, but in my opinion? Door Number Two sounds like the better option."
Door Number Two. If there was one thing Dee Dee had had enough of it was doors. Doors that locked from the outside, doors that remained closed no matter how much she begged for them to open, doors that locked her in and the world out.
"Please, Dee Dee," he added. "There's nothing to be afraid of. Agent Ortiz and I have it all worked out. Everything's going to be okay. It's a promise."
xxx
"Ms. McCall, I know you're worried about your daughter…"
Hunter's mind shut down to the remainder of Ortiz's rambling, his focus becoming stuck on the last two words he'd expected to hear.
Your daughter.
Dee Dee's— A daughter? He wanted to throw up. He needed to throw up before the damned swarm of wasps stung him to death from the inside out. Swiping at his mouth with the back of his hand, he spun around. Staring at nothing in particular, with Ortiz's voice ringing in his ears.
Your daughter.
Stepping up to the two-way window, he stopped in front of it, ignoring his own pale image in the glass and focusing instead on Dee Dee's. She still stood against the back wall, arms knotted across her chest, her eyes wide, fearful, like a deer caught in headlights. Too surprised to know what to do; too stunned to be able to do anything at all.
It wasn't that he'd expected her to be the same; he wasn't that delusional or optimistic. But damn it, he hadn't expected the changes to be so overwhelming, either.
Marriage. A child.
Jesus. Were they being selfish? Were they taking her away from something that she wanted more than she didn't? There was a child—she had a child. And no matter how immoral they might think the bastard down the hall was, he was her husband—Dee Dee's husband. The past was full of facts that couldn't be ignored, facts that Dee Dee had given him herself. It was the type of life she'd wanted, once, when he'd still known her—to have a family, be a part of a family so that she no longer had to be alone.
"What's happening here? You checking out on me, Hunter?"
Hunter cleared his throat, once again fighting down the sticky bile, as he shot a glance at Ortiz. Are we being selfish? he silently questioned her, getting only a glare from her in response. He didn't doubt Dee Dee, but he did doubt the assumptions that surrounded the past six years. There'd been a kidnapping, an assault—that they knew. But after that…
Scrubbing a hand over his face, he fought down another swallow, cringing. What if the bastard down the hall wasn't really a bastard? What if he'd managed to do what the damned FBI and LAPD hadn't been able to do—save her? What if he'd protected her, managed to win enough of her trust that she'd begun to overlook things that she would have found unable to ignore before Oscar Velasquez forced his way into her life? She would've been traumatized, scared, angry, and it all would've made latching onto the first person that made an attempt to actually help her easy to do, easier to do than if she'd been in the old Dee Dee's frame of mind.
So, how arrogant were they to think that they were the only ones who could save her, instead of acknowledging that Elian Sandoval might have already done their job for them?
"She's married…has…a…a kid…" he choked into the mirror. "She has a…life—"
"You want to know what she has?" Lydia hissed, jumping up beside him and shoving her face up to his. "Our agents have been through that house in Coral Gables. They found her room. It's a big room, from what I've been told. Decorated real nice, with a closet full of designer clothes. There're books, stereo equipment, even a state-of-the-art TV. And then you get to the window. You know what it has on it? Bars, that's what it has. And there's a lock on the outside of the door. Not the inside, got it? Just the outside. That's the kind of life the son of a bitch has given her—the life of a prisoner." She took a step back, her chest heaving. "So, go ahead, let her go back to it. Walk away and push her back into it. After all, if no one else cares where she ends up, why should she?"
Hunter dropped his gaze from Dee Dee's reflection. He cared, damn it. Christ, he cared so much that he hadn't gotten a full night's sleep in over six years. He'd let go of almost everything that had ever mattered most to him, subsisted in his job by working it half-ass, and spent most evenings holed up in a house that a ghost existed in more than he did. So, he cared. It was the only real thing he sometimes felt like he really had—the fucking caring. And it scared the hell out of him wondering if he would lose it, too, because this new version of Dee Dee wouldn't want him to care about her.
"Sandoval took the kid," Lydia continued, her voice low but unmistakably angry. "A little girl, and Ms. MCall has no idea where she is. The only thing she knows for sure is that Sandoval gave orders to get her out of the country."
"A little…girl…" he repeated, through a whisper.
Lydia nodded. "Just four-years-old. One more hold on her Sandoval has right now."
"So, what're you—"
"Porter's on it," Lydia said. "He's getting the sketches out into the field. Finding Ava Sophia Sandoval has become top priority, and that makes it even more important for us to get Ms. McCall out of here. Sandoval doesn't know she told us about the kid, and once he finds out…" She shook her head. "In our custody or not, we all know he's still calling the shots."
"We take Dee Dee and Porter finds the kid, then what? Stanton thinks she escaped, he'll make sure she never gets her hands on that little girl. He'll use her for an even bigger bargaining chip than Sandoval would."
"Can you let me work on one problem at a time?" Lydia sighed loudly, tiredly. "Somehow, we'll figure it out."
"Yeah?" Hunter asked. "Well. I don't think it's me you need to convince." He shot a conspicuous glance at Dee Dee, frowning. "Unless you can convince her, she's not gonna budge. Out of all the women I've known in my life, she's always been the most stubborn."
"Never would've guessed that," Lydia grumbled through a roll of her eyes. "I mean, considering what a peach she's been to work with so far." She sighed again, weightier, glancing at a stoic Dee Dee and then back at Hunter. "Okay. So, she wants to see the bastard, we tell her we're going to let her."
Hunter's eyes widened as he spun his back to face Dee Dee again, Lydia turning with him. "Let her talk to him? Are you crazy—"
"I think we've already established that," Lydia returned. "But telling her we're going to take her to Sandoval will at least get her moving. And once we have her in motion, we just keep going. Smooth sailing right out the door, into the car and then off to her cozy, new digs in Coconut Grove."
"She's gonna fight us," Hunter argued, shaking his head.
"Yeah? Well, you ask me, it looks like she's pretty accustomed to losing. I don't think we're getting ourselves into a WWF match here."
Hunter wanted to laugh, and might have if his throat hadn't still been closed off. Ortiz was a good size woman, that was stating the obvious, but what she didn't understand was that Dee Dee—the old McCall—had taken down jackasses twice her size in the past. With an uppercut to the nose, a knee to the groin, a couple times that he remembered piggybacking them until they dropped, exhausted. Appearances were deceiving, he wanted to remind the agent, and she shouldn't make the same mistake hundreds of California State Prison's finest residents had made by counting out Dee Dee because of hers.
"Whatever you say," he conceded, sighing. "I'll follow your lead."
"A man who can follow a woman's lead," Lydia muttered. "Out of all this mess, running across that man would surprise me more than anything else has so far." She landed a hard slap against Hunter's shoulder. "All right, Ms. McCall. Looks like you win. You want to talk to Sandoval? Come on, let's go talk."
xxx
Something wasn't right.
They'd made two turns so far and gone down three different hallways. The woman had said that Elian was just two doors down, hadn't she? Dee Dee thought she remembered her saying it.
So, something wasn't right.
The woman seemed nervous, and he hadn't left the interrogation room with them. After they'd made it halfway down the corridor, Dee Dee glanced back and saw him going in the opposite direction—before getting stopped. It'd been another woman, a blonde, and she hadn't looked happy. She hadn't looked particularly angry, either. Mainly, from what Dee Dee had been able to tell through the distance, she'd looked worried. Sad, even.
"Where are we going?"
"Hopefully, forward," the woman mumbled almost too low for Dee Dee to hear. She kept her hand tightened around Dee Dee's upper arm, tugging on her, forcing her to walk faster than normal.
"But you said I could see—"
The woman came to a quick stop, causing the front of Dee Dee's shoulder to slam into the back of hers. Spinning around to face her, with her expression tensed, like she were on the verge of getting angry, she leaned in close. "I get the feeling you're more than a little used to people lying to you," she whispered. "So, don't act like it's some kind of surprise this time."
Dee Dee glanced behind them, the long corridor empty and silent. In front of them, less than ten feet away, was a steel door marked Exit. Quickly, anxiously, she ripped her arm out of Lydia's hold, jumping backwards a step. "No. No, I'm not leaving unless you let me talk to him first," she said, for the first time since being dragged into the Federal Building, her shoulders squaring and defiance making a noticeable emergence in her voice. "I have to talk to him. Because Avi is gone…and Marcus and Isabel…and, and…Hunter is, he's…alive, and I…I—"
"Do you have a death wish? Is that it?"
"Do you?" Dee Dee snapped in return. "Because I'm not the one he'll kill. Because with me, that's never been his intention."
She watched the woman's curiosity peak, saw it filter into her eyes and darken them. "I've got to admit, you have me more than a little confused right now," Lydia said, shaking her head. "What is it with you two? Huh? Are you his victim, Ms. McCall, or are you his accomplice? Because you know, my ass is sitting smack dab on the proverbial line right now. The second I open that door and walk you through it, my job, pension and freedom will be at risk. So see, I'm going all in here, betting the whole kit and caboodle. And the thing is, I don't have a single qualm about doing it to help out a victim, to help someone start putting her life back together. But to do it to help someone who's even half as sleazy as Elian Sandoval, well…" She shook her head again, hard. "Gotta say, I'm going to have more than a little problem with that."
What did they want from her? Dee Dee wanted to ask, but instead took another step backwards, another step further away from the help that was being offered. Did they want details? Was that it? A blow-by-blow account of everything the son of a bitch had done to her? And if that was it, where was she supposed start—at the beginning when it had been the bastard Oscar she'd lost against, or maybe she should start with waking up in the backseat of Elian's plane, or go right to the juiciest part and jump in to the night when he'd dressed her up to suit his taste and then stripped her down to her last vulnerability?
What in the hell did they want from her?
Sighing, she slumped against the wall. It was a rhetorical question, because she knew exactly what they wanted. She knew because she remembered it being the only thing she had wanted from the victims who'd been dragged into her precinct a lifetime ago when she'd been in the woman's place—willing to put her job, pension and freedom on the line just to be able to hand over justice to someone who deserved it. She hadn't forgotten; she remembered how to play the game. It was just that she didn't know how to play for the losing team.
"You don't know him," Dee Dee finally said, her voice broken, soft. "I didn't end up with him on accident. So at this point, I really don't know if that makes me his victim or his accomplice. I don't even care. All I do care about is my daughter."
"And the thing is, the FBI cares about both of you. So, why don't you make it a little easier for us to do our job?"
Dee Dee shook her head forcefully, with belief. "You said Elian's been with his attorneys, talking with them in private. I know for a fact that no one tells Elian what to do, he tells them. All this time, he's been in that room giving them orders, telling them who to contact and what orders to pass on. And I can guarantee you, getting rid of our daughter and me is at the top of his list."
It was a no-brainer, wasn't it? Dee Dee wanted to ask in follow-up, but once again didn't. She remained quiet, relaying the dark truth through her stare. Obviously, there were skeptics but what they thought didn't matter, only what Elian thought did—what Elian was planning. His business dealings weren't something Dee Dee had ever been exposed to outright, but eavesdropping and watching when no one thought she was had provided her with more than enough information to bury him if the opportunity ever arose. There were drugs and women brought into the country on Elian's ships and planes, neither of which ever left again once they arrived. There was his brother's murder, and most damning of all, there was her. Six years missing, six years worth of stories to tell, and a child whose DNA would make the abuse that currently lived only in Dee Dee's memories impossible to deny if she ever made it as far as the witness stand.
"Doubt me all you want," she said. "But I do know how Elian works. What he's thinking is that my daughter is his only tangible link to me, and he has to make her disappear as quickly as possible."
"It might be what he's thinking, but I told you, we're going to find her first."
"In Colombia?" Dee Dee spit. "If he gets her there, you'll never get her back out."
"And if you get locked up, my hands will be tied. I'll never get you out. Then what happens to your daughter?"
Dee Dee slumped against the wall. She just needed five minutes with Elian. Just enough time to make sure he wouldn't become another one of her doubters. She would promise him that she hadn't talked—that she wouldn't. She would promise to keep behaving, to follow orders, not to mess up. If he could just make one promise to her—the only promise that mattered.
Dee Dee cocked a brow, looking the woman up and then down. All things considered, she wasn't exactly intimidating. Maybe a little short tempered, patience definitely didn't seem to be her forte, but with her rumpled clothes, hair that looked like she'd forgotten to comb it for a few days and wearing two-day old makeup, intimidating was the last description that came to Dee Dee's mind. The word that did come to mind was nuisance, but then again, she was a necessary one. Or at the very least, a possible means to the end Dee Dee needed.
"You want to know who shot your agent, don't you?" she asked, beginning to nod as the woman did. "I can tell you who pulled the trigger. I can also tell you that one of the men who beat Thomas Landry was Marcus Rivera, the man who's with my daughter, and the others…" She spiked a brow again, forcing a deep frown. "I'll give you their names and the shooter's after I talk to Elian."
"Odds are in my favor that all these men are already in Federal custody," Lydia sighed, unimpressed by Dee Dee's newest attempt to make a deal. "We did haul in seventeen of Sandoval's employees, you know." She shrugged a shoulder and then crossed her arms. "No deal. I'll take my chances that some jackass that's ready to wheel and deal for a lighter sentence will tell us what we need to know."
"None of them will talk against Elian," Dee Dee shot back, determination having settled on her face. "It's a death sentence if they do, and they know it."
"Yeah? Then why are you ready to jump into the role of eager beaver?" Lydia scoffed. "Twelve hours ago I couldn't even get you to make eye contact with me. Now, I can't shut you up. So, what? You're the only one who's not afraid of dying, Mrs. Sandoval?"
Dee Dee huffed a breath through her nose, her nostrils flaring. "Don't call me that."
"Why not? Seems to me that's who you're acting like. At least you're acting a hell of a lot more like Sandoval's devoted wife than a woman who's anxious to regain her freedom. Hell, if I were you I'd have run through that door the minute I saw the exit sign. But you…" She shrugged markedly, skeptically. "You're wasting valuable time, and for what? To be able to say goodbye to the bastard that allegedly held you prisoner for six years?"
Allegedly. The word—its insinuation—stuck in Dee Dee's throat, quickly sending her raw and empty stomach into a spin. She knew the legal definitions of both kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment, and in the beginning, she'd applied both to herself. But as the years dragged on and compliance became second nature, even she'd begun to question herself. So, it didn't surprise her, really, to know that anyone else was questioning her.
So, screw them, she decided.
Not for the first time since being dragged out of Elian's house, but for the final time. Whether she was a participant in or victim of Elian's twisted world wasn't something she wasted her time trying to decide anymore, and it wasn't something she could allow anyone else to waste time on, either.
"Think whatever you want," she responded, indifference detectable in her tired voice. "I don't give a damn what your opinion of me is. The only opinion that matters is Elian's, because it's the one that comes with consequences."
"Your daughter?"
Dee Dee nodded once, hesitantly. "If you let me see him, if I promise him that I haven't said anything, that I haven't talked…" She sighed with an inference of defeat. "He might believe me."
"Or he might not," Lydia returned. "Then where does that leave us? He gets locked up, you get locked up—"
"She's my daughter!"
"And you're my responsibility!" Lydia hissed, her eyes blazing with impatience over the rims of her glasses. "I don't know if you get it or not, but I have everything on the line at this very second—same as your old partner and captain do! Stop fighting us, damn it, and help us help you! And in the process—God willing—we'll be able to help your daughter, too!"
Dee Dee stared, her eyes widening and then narrowing. Hunter never gave up easily before; she should've known that he wouldn't this time, either. Time didn't change everything, especially bullheadedness. "I'm not going with…them. I, I…can't…" He would want answers, details, explanations, and she remembered him well enough to know that he wouldn't leave her alone until he got them.
And she didn't want him to know.
He couldn't know what she'd let herself become.
"Please, Ms. McCall." Lydia sighed tiredly. "It's the only way."
"No," Dee Dee whispered, shaking her head. "No. No, I…I, I…" The walls began to close in around her. Hunter was waiting for her. On the other side of the door, outside, ready to take her away, somewhere else, somewhere new for her to disappear.
And she couldn't let him.
The floor seemed to tilt in her favor, sending her stumbling in the opposite direction of the woman. Her first few steps were unsteady, but she quickly gained both her footing and momentum. Heading toward the end of the hallway, leaving the damned door marked Exit behind her, she frantically tried to retrace the steps that had delivered her to where she was. But when she reached the corner, the adjoining hallway with its corners and closed doors was a maze to her.
"Damn it! I really didn't want to have to do this!"
The body slammed into her back with force, shoving her face-first into the wall. Dee Dee grunted as hands circled her wrists, her attempted flails no match for Lydia's tight grasp. The sting of metal engulfed her right wrist first and then the left one, leaving her immobilized and trapped, with the woman whispering something indecipherable against the side of her face and the bastard Oscar's voice suddenly screaming deafeningly in her mind.
"If you get sick in my bed, trust me, I'll make sure you regret it. You're a decorated police officer, for God's sake. Act like it."
She couldn't breathe.
She couldn't breathe.
Oscar's hands were on her again, she felt them—rough, trapping her, hurting her. She smelled his breath, stale from cigarettes and whisky, and her knees buckled. Wrenching to the side, she rammed a shoulder into the body behind her, hearing a harsh, gushed breath in response, and she began to tug wildly against the metal around her wrists. She lurched forward, her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at the small of her back as she began to heave. Her throat turned hot and her lungs began to spasm, coughs rocking her as the acrid contents of her empty stomach splattered onto the floor.
"If you get sick in my bed, trust me, I'll make sure you regret it."
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm—" She coughed again, and again, tears dripping from her unseeing eyes, as her legs gave out beneath her and she dropped to the floor.
xxx
"Where the hell are they? Ortiz said she needed ten minutes to get Dee Dee out, that was it."
Hunter shot a worried glance at Charlie. He'd been sitting in the idling car for over thirty minutes, Hunter for just under ten. They hadn't said much to each other; there wasn't a lot that could be said. There was too much yet to be thought through, rationalized, accepted, believed, and talking wouldn't benefit either of them when neither of them had been able to shake their shock yet.
He could still see Dee Dee's face, her own shock. When he'd first walked into the interrogation room, when she'd finally looked at him, it was as if she hadn't recognized him. There was a blankness in her eyes, an emptiness. Not that he'd been expecting some happy reunion filled with hugs and laughter, but, damn it, he hadn't been able to stop himself from hoping for more than the nothing that he'd gotten.
"When you saw her, did she say anything?" Charlie asked, his face turned away from Hunter and stare focused outside the driver's side window.
"No." Hunter answered directly, without even a hint of mendacity to soften the truth.
"How'd she seem? Uh, you know. Emotionally?"
"Tired," Hunter grumbled. "In shock." Different, he silently added, clearing his throat to chase the bitter truth back down.
"But she… Physically, she seems—"
"Good," Hunter answered, borrowing Riley Porter's deficient answer.
"That's, uh." Charlie nodded stiffly. "Good. Guess that's something to be thankful for."
Thankful. Hunter couldn't hold back his laughter. It was short and curt and angry, garnering Charlie's attention. Their stares locked, Hunter's face flushing. "What the hell did that bastard do to her? I want to know what he did."
Charlie's lips tensed into a straight line, disagreement rumbling in his throat. "Why?" he asked. "What purpose would it serve?"
"Justification," Hunter growled. "Might get me a lighter prison sentence after I murder the son of a bitch."
Charlie grunted, shaking his head. "Get in line. You aren't the only one who wants to get your hands on him."
Hunter laughed softly, harshly. No, he wasn't the only one who wanted to get his hands on Elian Sandoval. But the thought wouldn't stop clawing at his mind as to why Dee Dee seemed to be the only one who didn't want the same thing he did? She didn't seem—or look—happy; Hunter hadn't sensed any relief in her, either. The nervousness and fear he'd expected, experience and training had prepared him for it. There was Stockholm syndrome to consider, he supposed. After six years, it would make sense. But even though he knew it existed, had even witnessed its effects in varying degrees, he'd never before been put in a position of having to go head-to-head with it. And he wasn't sure how to combat it, how to fight the bastard or win against it.
"She doesn't want to leave," he announced, Charlie's attention once again turned away from him and settled outside the window. "She wants to see him, talk to him."
Charlie grumbled a response, something unintelligible and disagreeing.
"She…" Hunter cleared his throat. "Charlie, she…she has…a…kid. A little girl." He heard the captain's breath leave him in a gush, strong and deflating. But he didn't glance in his direction. "She doesn't know where she is—the little girl. The Feds have started a search." Married. A child. Hunter could almost hear the words rolling around in the captain's brain just like they'd continued to do in his. Pinging and thudding like pinballs in an old time machine. It wasn't what they'd expected, not that either of them had had the first clue in hell what to expect.
"She wanted a family," Charlie finally choked. "Waited a long time." He shook his head, another grumble rattling in his throat. "Damn it. She deserved better than this."
"But what if she…" Hunter shook his head, swiping a thumb across his chin. Thinking. Not wanting to think any more. What if she wanted Sandoval's life? his brain mocked him by asking yet again. Charlie was right, it was what she'd wanted and waited for. They all knew it; Dee Dee had never made it a secret. Having children had always been a dream of hers. She'd wanted marriage, a family. What she'd never wanted was to spend her life alone, and, damn it, it wasn't what she'd deserved to have to do. So, what if they were being as heartless as Elian Sandoval had allegedly been by taking her away from a life that was hers, a life that she actually wanted?
Marriage. Children. Her own family. Finally.
"A little girl?" Charlie asked, pulling Hunter out of his thoughts.
Hunter nodded. "That's what Ortiz said Dee Dee told her."
The captain turned toward him, his brows lowered. "So, she's talking?"
"Told Ortiz about the kid."
"That's a good sign," Charlie responded, nodding. "It's a start, and right now, I think we should be happy with that. The rest will come when Dee Dee's ready."
"And you think that'll happen? You think one of these days she'll be ready to come back?"
Charlie's expression fell, somberness darkening his eyes. "One of these days," he answered softly, almost too quietly to be heard and far too quietly to be believed. "We have to hope that one of these days she will be." Clearing his throat and pushing back against the seat, he sniffled. "Speaking of talking." He shot a sideways glance at Hunter, wincing expectantly. "You explain things to Trask before you left?"
Hunter answered with a frown, hearing Charlie mumble an understanding, "Yeah, that's what I thought."
"What's going on, Rick?" Mallory had snapped when Hunter shoved her into the janitor's closet, slamming and bolting the door behind them. "Were you even going to tell me? Did you think about talking to me first? Did you think about at least saying goodbye? Or, what? Were you just going to throw me to Stanton and let me fend for myself?"
"Mal, listen." Mal, listen—what? The truth was, Mallory's assumptions had been spot-on. Because the second Hunter saw Dee Dee, his mind emptied of everything else. And that included his less-than-patient fiancé waiting at the end of the hallway.
"No, you listen!" she shot back, with even more anger. "What the hell are you doing? You go through with this and you're throwing your entire life's work away! Stanton won't only make sure your badge gets taken, he'll make sure you end up in jail, too!"
"He can throw me in jail!"
She laughed, brusquely, with her eyes blazing. "Have you even thought this through? You could lose everything!"
"No. Hopefully what I'm doing is getting it back."
"Getting it…" Mallory's voice faded, with understanding. She nodded, seeming resigned to the fact that she was being forced into a losing battle. The same battle she'd been struggling to get ahead in for the past four years. "Okay, fine. So, uh…so, where're you going? Think about it. You're not only hiding from the police and FBI, you're also hiding from Sandoval's men. He's going to want her found, you know."
"Yeah, I know." He took her hands in his, squeezing. Almost wishing that it could have been simple, her and him. "Look it. Don't worry, okay? There's an agent—Lydia Ortiz. She's helping us out. So, stay in touch with her. She'll keep you informed as much as she can."
"As much as she can…" She spiked a brow. "And what about you? How do I get in touch with you?"
"You don't."
Mallory took a quick step back, pulling her hands out of his. "That's unfair. I have the right to know where you are. Jesus, Rick. I have the right to know you're okay. You can't expect me to just sit around and wait."
No, it wasn't fair for him to expect it, Hunter knew it was what he should have told her. It was what he should've told her years ago, early on. In the beginning. When he first realized just how ready she was to move forward from the ugliness their pasts shared.
But he hadn't told her. Not then, not ever.
"It's all we've got," he said, feeling as sympathetic as he did apologetic. "Right now, Mal, we wait. All of us."
"But not all together, right?" she responded coolly. "Or, no, wait. Dee Dee and you will wait together. I'll wait alone."
"Mallory, I'm sorry—"
She stopped him with a hard shake of her head. "I wish I believed that. But even more, I wish it was how you really felt."
"I told her to stick close to Ortiz," Hunter said, Charlie responding with a nod. "Hopefully, I can talk her into heading back to California."
Charlie chuckled, through a shake of his head. "You think she's going to leave, just like that?" He chuckled again, the resonance more of a grumble. "Don't bet on it. One thing you're consistent about? You pick them smart…and stubborn. I have a feeling Trask is going to do exactly what she wants to do, and that's stay close. Especially if staying close is what you don't want her to do."
xxx
"Ms. McCall? Ms.—Dee Dee? Can you hear me?"
"Don't fight me. I've already proven that you can't win, not against me. No one can win against me."
She could hear him. His voice echoed in her mind, rang in her ears, loud and overpowering. Consuming.
"Damn it, come on now. Don't do this to me. I need you working with me, not against me."
The metal fell away from her wrists, chilled air instantly stinging her right wrist and then left one, but she didn't move her arms. She left them stiffened and trembling behind her, her hands balled at the small of her back.
Don't fight. It was what Oscar had told her—over and over. It would only make things worse if she continued to fight him. And eventually, she believed him.
So, she remained still, huddled on the floor with her forehead pressed into her knees and the pungent stench of vomit contaminating each of her breaths.
"Ms. McCall, please. We're wasting a lot of valuable time here."
Her breath was hot against the tops of her thighs, her heart hammered as she felt the bastard's arm slide around her neck. She wouldn't tell anyone; she'd promised—damn it, sworn to God. What could she tell, anyway? She saw faces but didn't recognize them, and heard names but none of them meant anything to her. She just wanted out. She didn't care anymore about justice or arrests or revenge. She only cared that it stopped.
"Okay, come on. Let's get back to the here and now. Not to be insensitive, but I really need you to save the flashbacks for someone else's watch. I don't have time for them on mine."
"I'll take her with me. I'm not worried about the police—or the FBI, for that matter. Once I get her to Miami…"
Her head popped up as Elian's voice boomed in her ears, her eyes wide, searching. For a second she saw him, looming over her, looking smug, but then the rumpled figure came into focus. Not looking any happier than Elian ever did, but surprisingly, not looking as threatening, either.
"That's it," Lydia coaxed, nodding. "Come on back with me now." The metal cuffs dangled in one of her hands, and as Dee Dee's wide-eyed stare targeted them Lydia quickly moved them behind her back and hooked them to her belt. She shrugged as if to apologize, before mumbling, "Stupid move on my part. Never cuff a victim. FBI training one-oh-one."
Dee Dee swallowed audibly, her gaze dropping to the floor and the sticky bile that dotted it. "I'm…I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't mean…to…"
"You're sorry, I'm sorry…" Lydia shrugged a brawny shoulder. "Apologies given and accepted. Now, think you can get back on your feet?"
"Where're you taking me?"
"Guess that's a fair question," Lydia responded, before hooking a hand beneath Dee Dee's arm and helping her up. She grunted as Dee Dee swayed and pressed her back against the wall to steady her. "Let's go over this one more time—fast. Because, honestly, you have, like, thirty seconds to get it and then we're out of time."
"You're arresting me?" Dee Dee asked shakily.
"That's what I'm trying to stop from happening," Lydia returned, moving her face close to Dee Dee's flushed one. "No one's found any evidence that says you should be charged with anything, but some of the pricks around here who get their rush off of power still want you locked up until we get the answers we need out of you. They work under the philosophy of guilty until proven innocent, if you know what I mean. And right now, their theory is that you're guilty simply because of association." She shrugged again, markedly. "You're married to the bastard, so that has to mean you're playing for his team."
Dee Dee hesitated, before managing a weak nod. "I am married to him," she admitted. "There was a…ceremony, a judge."
"Yeah? Were you a bouquet-carrying participant in this ceremony because you wanted to be?"
Dee Dee's brows wrinkled, and she bit down into her bottom lip. "I, uh. I was pregnant," she whispered. "And so, Elian, he…he, uh…"
Lydia took a step back, sighing. Running a hand through the top of her mussed hair, she shot a glance at the opening of the hallway. "I'm sorry," she finally said, her voice tight, low. "I'd kill the bastard myself for you if I could. But I can't do that. All I can do is try to help you this way—by getting you out and sticking you somewhere safe. And, God willing, that safe haven is Coconut Grove. It's just a few miles down the highway, but at this point, putting even a few miles between this place and you is better than none at all."
Coconut Grove. It could be a trick, Dee Dee reminded herself. All of it from the second she was dragged out of the house could be one more of Elian's tests. And it probably was, she knew. Just like she knew that she'd already failed. She'd talked when she shouldn't have, said more than she was supposed to. But the decision to do so had been made purposely on her part. It had been the first decision she'd made in what felt like a lifetime. And although the consequences of being so bold—or so stupid, as Elian would see it—made her uneasy, knowing that she'd stood up for herself that much, even if just a little bit, felt unfamiliarly good.
"Ms. McCall, please—"
Dee Dee cut off the woman with a sharp nod, before mopping her forehead with a swipe of her hand. "We're out of time," she said, repeating what she'd been told. "If I leave with you, what about my daughter? If you find her—"
"I will get her to you," Lydia promised. "If it's the last thing I do."