Broken Toy [Suncoast Society] (Siren Publishing Sensations) (13 page)

She ran her fingers up and down her upper arms, where the ligature marks had been last night after her and Bill had spent a couple of hours under Leah and Seth’s tutelage at the club, as well as a few others who offered their opinions when asked.

She stared at her lower arms, where she’d marveled at the feel and texture of the marks on them.

Nothing now, just smooth, unblemished skin.

She’d had a great time. That alone had shocked the hell out of her. Bill had been fun to spend time with, fun to talk to, and had stirred something inside her she wasn’t sure she wanted to contemplate.

Going out to dinner was great. Feeling like she was welcomed amongst them, not a fifth wheel, not a work colleague people had to watch what they said around.

Friends.

Is this what having friends feels like?

Looking back on it, she definitely didn’t regret going. If nothing else, at the very least she’d satisfied a curiosity in her that, until last night, she’d never realized was so strong.

Hell, she’d never realized, beyond the realm of her Kindle-induced fantasies, that she’d ever begin to see them made real.

Usually it required having a relationship, which she didn’t have.

Fear set in.

She would have to get to know Bill better if she took the second class. As it was, she’d been able to avoid the issue of her scars.

What if he wanted to go out with her more?

What if…

She shook off those thoughts.

There would be
no
getting closer. She was from Miami. She didn’t have time for a relationship.

She’d have to reveal she was a cop.

She closed her eyes and groaned. No, there wasn’t a future in going to another class. There wasn’t any use to get close to someone. To get her hopes up, or his. Last night had been a really stupid mistake, no matter how good a time she’d had.

Why bother?
She was surprised to realize Maria’s voice wasn’t anywhere to be found.

On any other day, she might consider that a miracle and desperately try to figure out how to replicate the result.

She suspected she knew exactly why.

The subspace they’d talked about in class and at dinner. That fuzzy, warm, leftover feeling. The one she wished she could have more often.

The one she’d felt while letting Bill practice tying her up multiple times last night.

Such a great feeling, one she’d never felt before.

One she knew she could never allow herself to feel again. Not without risking her career or her sanity over silly hopes for a relationship that could never work out in the long term.

I need a run.

She got up, threw clothes and sneakers on, and headed out for the jogging path that circled around and wandered through the complex. Outside, despite the early hour, it was already warm, muggy in a familiar way. She tried pushing herself as hard as she could go, trying to use a punishing pace to drive all other thoughts out of her head, but it wasn’t enough. When she returned to the condo and crawled into the shower, she slid down the wall, wrapped her arms around her legs, and buried her face against her knees as she cried.

She wanted more, so much more, and knew it wouldn’t be possible.

Deep inside her soul, the lonely little girl who’d never known love after losing her parents still curled up in a bed in a practically bare room in a house she didn’t know and cried.

The way she’d silently cried so many nights until she finally managed to silence those cries for good.

And she’d learned early on never to let Maria see her cry. Ever.

Not even over sappy Christmas commercials where happy, loving families gathered over coffee or dinners or even new cars.

But inside her the girl cried, lonely, alone, with no one to console her.

She mourned her parents, in a way taken from her twice. First by the drunk that hit their car head-on, then again by a coldhearted grandmother who harbored so much resentment that she wouldn’t let Gabe even talk about them.

I can’t do this. I can’t get so distracted from my work that I let this take over. I have to stop this now, before it goes too far.

Before he can hurt me.
That was a weak little voice she rarely heard anymore.

The voice of the little girl.

Gabe closed her eyes and rocked back and forth under the water.

* * * *

Gabe spent the rest of the day making amigurumis and pointedly avoiding her personal laptop. If she logged on to that, she knew she’d end up on FetLife. And she’d seen an e-mail notice come through her phone where Bill had sent her a friend request.

Breaking up with him in an e-mail is a total dick move.

And despite knowing it was the only option, she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

So she ignored it and focused on adding more crocheted crusaders to the stash.

* * * *

By the next Saturday morning she’d made another yarn and fiber filling run. At last count, over one hundred of the animals were now sharing the condo with her. They covered every horizontal surface in the living room area, as well as the bed in the second bedroom.

She didn’t have the heart to bag them up. She wanted to see the collection grow, swell, fill the place. They would stay out until right before she had to leave, and only then would she gather them to take back to Miami with her.

And she still had two weeks, going by working days, before she left Sarasota.

Which was both a good and bad thing. The last several nights she hadn’t slept well. When she did, her dreams were filled with fantasies of Bill tying her down with ropes before doing things to her, like fucking her brains out.

Even though the dreams left her horny, when conscious thought took over upon waking, all desire left her.

She wanted what she knew she couldn’t have.

That wasn’t anything to inspire sexual desire in her.

Especially not when she’d seen some pretty sexy forced orgasm scenes at the club the previous week.

Scenes that could have easily been pulled from some of the better books she’d read.

I need to delete all that crap from my Kindle. It’s given me expectations I should know better than to have.

She couldn’t bring herself to do that, either.

As time drew closer for the class, she forced herself to stop looking at the clock and focus on her crochet. Another alligator had started taking shape as her hook flew and twisted through the yarn. In her mind, she chanted the phrases as they came in the pattern.

Yarn over, single crochet. Skip. Join. Turn.

She let the yarn soothe her and shift her active, conscious brain out of gear. Her fingers took over, knowing what to do.

Not even stopping for lunch, she waited until the light outside the condo’s back porch had started turning dark and purple, and she knew she’d missed the class.

And dinner.

Bill would probably hate her now. Even better. She could feel guilty for it and live with that, but at least she knew it was a clean break. Better for him, more than he would ever know, and best for her despite it hurting her heart.

At least, for now, Maria stayed silent.

And that was something she wouldn’t complain about.

Rather than staying cooped up in the condo and going crazy Sunday, Gabe decided to take a drive south. There were supposed to be some great beaches in the area, especially in the southern part of the county.

She knew if she didn’t get away from her computer, she’d end up working no matter what she’d promised her boss. She couldn’t help it. It was something Maria had, literally, beat into her at a young age.

Working meant you were a productive citizen.

Goofing off meant you weren’t.

Sigh.

Leaving the laptop at the condo, she got in her car and headed south down US 41 until she found the turnoff for CR 776 that would take her south through Englewood. From there, she located the Manasota Key turnoff and found her way to the beaches.

She rarely went to the beaches in Miami. They were crowded with tourists, backed up against condos, and it meant battling annoying traffic to get over to the barrier islands. Parking was always a bitch, and by the time she got there, she was always in such a foul mood she might as well have been visiting a landfill.

This was…nothing like that. The pristine white sand was strangely lacking crowds, or even high-rises. Sea grass dunes revealed gorgeous turquoise water she didn’t have to fight her way through hordes of people to get to.

It was almost…calming.

Okay, so I get why people like it here.

Miami hadn’t been her dream destination. It’d simply been where she ended up after her enlistment had ended, she’d gone to school, graduated, and started working in law enforcement.

After an hour or so of wandering up and down the sand, she returned to her car and continued south, leaving the key from the southern entrance and deciding to follow the road all the way into Port Charlotte, where the map told her it would once again intersect with US 41.

One big, long, lazy loop. No one can accuse me of not trying to sightsee.

When she finally reached that intersection, she found a mall there.

Perfect.

To kill time more than anything, she walked into the movie theatre and bought a ticket for the next show starting, which happened to be an R-rated comedy.

Even better.

After the movie ended, she opted to eat dinner at the mall. When Walker quizzed her about how she spent her time, she wouldn’t have to lie. She did sightsee, she did relax.

Sort of.

Unfortunately, all this gave her more time to think, more time to feel guilty about ditching the second class at the club without bothering to try to get a message to Bill.

Well, he probably hates me already. Fuck it.

It was after dark when she emerged from the mall and headed toward her car. She blamed her full stomach, and being absorbed in her self-recriminations for ditching the class without contacting Bill, for not paying better attention. When the group of three teen boys stepped out in front of her from behind a minivan, it took her a moment to get into work mode again.

One of the three boys had something in his hand that flashed in the light from the overhead security lights in the parking lot. He was the tallest and oldest-looking of the three. “Give me your purse.”

Knife.

Sound faded away as she stepped in close. She grabbed his wrist with her left hand and pushed it down and away as she drew her .380 and pressed it against his temple.

“Law enforcement!” she screamed. “Get on the ground,
now
!”

“Shit!” One of the boys took off running.

She kicked the one with the knife in the kneecap. He dropped the knife as he screamed in pain on his way down to the pavement. She wrenched his arm up and behind him, her knees planted in the middle of his back.

The third boy looked undecided, wide-eyed, and frozen. She pointed her weapon at him. “Hands behind your head and down on the ground,
now
!”

An older couple from the next row over getting out of their car saw the events. “Are you all right, ma’am?” the man asked.

“No. Call 911. Tell them I’m an FDLE agent and I need police backup right now.”

“You mean the sheriff?” the man asked. “We don’t have police here.”

She fought the urge to swear at him. “The 911 dispatcher will know who to send.”

The second boy finally decided he might be better off following her orders instead of fleeing. He didn’t look like a hardened criminal. He looked more like a kid about ready to piss his pants.

She slowly stood and grabbed the knife from where it had landed and backed away from the two boys. “You stay facedown, hands on your heads. If you move, I will shoot you.” Well, she wouldn’t shoot them automatically, but better to give them a threat that would keep them in place than to have to deal with possibly shooting one of them.

She heard the sirens less than a minute later. By the time the first deputy rolled up, she felt the adrenaline kick catching up and hitting her, sweat now pouring down her back.

When the deputy emerged from his unit, a hand on his sidearm, she stepped back and holstered her weapon, holding both hands up. “FDLE Special Agent Gabriella Villalobos, Miami. They tried to mug me, one had at least a knife, and there’s one more who ran. I didn’t have cuffs on me.”

She kept one hand up while slowly reaching into her back pocket to withdraw her badge holder and ID, extending it to the deputy. He looked at it before nodding. “Thank you,” he said.

He tossed her a pair of handcuffs. She cuffed one of the boys while he cuffed the other. Another two marked cars rolled up and the deputies began searching the boys and questioning them. She leaned against the far side of the first car to wait until they were ready to take her statement. Breathing deeply, she clenched and unclenched her fists, trying to ride out the surge of adrenaline now pouring through her.