“Only problem is that it could have gone two ways: one, they would go crazy trying to get the department’s attention and mess up enough that the department could find them. Or two, they would get so frustrated with the department that they would actually do something to you. From what Mason said, the department was banking on the fact that since they gave you a month before they said they would kill you, and they stopped responding to them right before a month was up, it would make them crazy wondering why the department stopped looking for you all of a sudden in the last hour. The department assumed I still knew what was happening and would find out soon that they had stopped looking for you and would flip, so they began watching me like a hawk. I couldn’t do anything right away, but every day that passed was killing me. And then I found out about the building you were in. So Mason and I finally started the process of figuring out how to get you back. But we needed to be careful with our jobs, losing them would have been the least of our worries for a while if we would have just rushed in. That took another few days.”

“Are you going to lose your job?”

“No. Because, technically, we could say we were finishing up an old job. And we did find you. We might get a few days’ suspension, but nothing serious.” Keeping my eyes on her face, I slowly moved my hands up her feet to her ankles, and back down. Her body stilled, but she didn’t move away from me again, so I continued the path. “I don’t know what they told you while you were there, but did Byson explain why you were taken?”

“Not really. He didn’t say much that made sense. He asked if I was ever tortured and asked if there were any other girls there, that the department had been sent evidence of me being tortured. As for where I was kept, a few of the guys at the house let it slip one of the last nights that some guy named Romero would want Trent ‘out’ because he’d turned on the rest of the guys. I ended up guessing that Trent was in a gang, and after trying to find out who Romero was, I more or less guessed that he was in prison and was calling the shots. But I still don’t know who Romero is or why I was taken.”

“It was my fault you were taken, Rachel.”

A brief smile crossed her face and her eyes darted over to mine for a second. “Well, you are the one that works in the gang unit. I kind of figured that too, but that wasn’t until the same moment when I knew for sure that you would find me . . . only to find out less than a minute later that you had already stopped looking for me.”

“You remember the last gang Mason and I infiltrated?”

She nodded and thought for a second. “Juarez.”

“Right, and he’d put that hit on us as insurance because he thought we were cops, which is why we had to go undercover in Texas. Juarez and his boys from the meth house are still in prison, as are the two men that were hired to take Mase and me out. Apparently Romero Juarez has two houses for his gang. Mase and I weren’t in with him long enough to be trusted to even know about the other house, which is made up of the men you were with.”

Rachel looked shocked. I believed her when she said she hadn’t known why she was taken, but I still didn’t understand why this Trent guy never told her why he was keeping her if he was supposed to be helping her.

“They wanted their brothers out and, more importantly, the head of their ‘family.’ They were using you to do that, and to get back at me and Mason. From what you said yesterday, you didn’t see the destruction in our bedroom from when they took you. But on one of the walls in red spray paint were the words ‘Did you think we would forget?’ and the gang’s symbol. As soon as I saw that I knew why you were taken. I just didn’t know who had you, and how to get you back. They didn’t want money, just the members out of jail. Which is obviously something the department couldn’t do and why it took so long to get you. We just had to hope we found you before they—well, before they did what they threatened to.”

“What they threatened to . . . I—” Rachel shook her head rapidly before dropping her face into her hands. “I just don’t know.”

“Don’t know what, Rach?”

“This is—well, from your side it seems like a completely different kidnapping. Like I feel like I have no connection with it at all, none of it triggers anything. I never saw any of that. I never saw any of the ‘torture’ that you apparently were receiving evidence of. I didn’t know they were in contact with you. It was just . . . nothing, basically. Just a whole lot of nothing. Being confused about why I was there and why they would take me. Confused about Trent being so nice and making himself so uncomfortable to make sure I was safe. And just day after day of absolutely nothing but sitting on the mattress, being given meals, and writing in my journal.

“Yours sounds terrifying . . . not that I wasn’t scared. I was always so scared. But mine sounds like nothing compared to what you were thinking I went through. I was really just kept in a room, and I was taken care of. There was never any danger . . . up until the end.”

Scooting my chair closer so I could cup the back of her neck, I licked my lips and struggled to find the words. “Rachel, you have no—you don’t understand—fuck. Seeing you yesterday. Seeing you alive, seeing you completely whole and well was the biggest relief of my life. You have no idea how damn happy I am, how happy everyone at the department is, that you weren’t tortured. But don’t downplay what you went through. No one should have to go through what you did, and I still hate that you went through a minute of it, let alone over a month. You may not have been tortured, but that’s just a blessing right now. It doesn’t change what still happened.”

She took a shuddering breath in and held it for a while before releasing it and resting her chin on her knees. Her eyes were glassy, but no tears were falling. I hated that she didn’t look happier to be home. I hated that she didn’t want to be closer to me. I just hated this whole damn thing.

“Tell me about . . . tell me about him, Rachel. I won’t ask questions like the detectives did yesterday, just tell me about your time with him.”

“I know you don’t want to hear about him,” she huffed. “You’re just going to be more pissed off hearing his name. Every time I say it I see the way your eyes harden.”

There was no point in denying that. And I really didn’t want to hear about him. But she looked so lost, the only way I knew how to help her was to get her to talk. If she didn’t, she was going to shut down and start shielding against me. I wasn’t about to go through that with her again.

Not giving her the option to pull away, I grabbed both ankles and sat back in my chair before placing her feet on my lap. She looked down at her feet, but didn’t move them and didn’t say anything.

“Tell me all of it, start from the beginning. Don’t leave anything out for my benefit, Rachel, really, I want to hear it all.”

HOURS LATER, we’d moved back into the house so I could make us lunch. Rachel never once stopped talking as I cooked, and only took brief breaks when she was chewing. A couple hours in, I started trying to remember why I’d originally hated Trent when I realized I was thankful that he had gone out of his way to make sure no one touched her. Staying in the room and bathroom with her had pissed me off at first, but I understood.

It wasn’t until a few hours after we’d finished eating that I had to use every ounce of self-control so I wouldn’t lash out for what Rachel saw one night in the bathroom, and for the two kisses they had shared. Rachel explained both kisses as: “We thought we were about to die, we didn’t know what we were about to walk out of that room and into. He’d taken care of me, killed his ‘brothers’ for me, put himself in danger for me and was about to willingly do it again.” All I could think of as she’d explained the kisses was, You were still engaged!

I couldn’t imagine kissing another woman in any situation, let alone that one. Rachel must have seen that thought repeating itself, because she looked directly into my eyes and whispered, “You weren’t there for all of it. So don’t judge me, because there is no way you could understand why it happened, or why I let it happen.”

When she was done with her story, she started picking at the bottom of her shirt and refused to look at me again; and I just didn’t know what to say.

So I didn’t say anything.

We sat there silently for another hour as she looked at everything but me, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

I wasn’t sure if I was happy I knew now, or not. At least some of the images I had been visualizing had been put to rest. If she said that was all that happened between them on a romantic or sexual level, then I believed her . . . completely. But that didn’t make what had happened any easier.

I knew that Rachel believed she didn’t have romantic feelings for Trent . . . but there was something. I could see even as she told me about her time when she was gone, the way she talked about him changed. Scared of him, to confused about him, to grateful for him, to viewing him as friend, to viewing him as something else entirely. Only problem was she didn’t even realize that final change; and I didn’t have a name for it.

From what she had said, she’d wanted to get out of there and get back to me, and Trent was going to help her. And after watching the way she continued to avoid eye contact or slowly inch away from me, I stopped wondering why she would be doing that after so long apart if she wasn’t actually in love with Trent.