Honor Avenged

by Tonya Burrows

  Leah. He pictured her trapped in a place like this, and that was all the motivation he needed. He grabbed the nasty bucket and rolled it over to the trough. He sucked in two deep breaths, then held his breath again as he lifted the thing to balance it on top of the other one. Deed done, he climbed up. The edge of the hole was still inches from his fingertips, even when he stretched up onto his toes.

  Okay.

  He wasn’t about to deal with another latrine bucket. Nope, no fucking way. This had to be good enough.

  Even as the metal started to dent under his weight, he took a moment to steady himself. He looked up, gauged the distance, said a little prayer, and jumped. The edge of the hole, soaked through with rain, gave way under his seeking hand just as his shit-bucket tower collapsed under his feet.

  Fuck!

  He flailed and found a decent grip with his other hand on a wood crossbeam.

  And…now what?

  Marcus dangled there for a moment, rain sluicing over him, not entirely sure how he was going to swing himself up and out of the hole. He wasn’t a fucking monkey.

  In a lifetime of dumb ideas, this rated high up on the list. Top five, at least.

  Well, he had two choices. Make like a monkey or let go, fall, and potentially break something. Ha. Yeah. When he looked at it like that, there was only one choice.

  “Me Tarzan,” he muttered. And he was doing this for his Jane. He had to keep that front and center in his mind. He lifted himself enough that he could grab the beam with both hands, then swung his legs until the beam started to creak.

  Jesus, he was going to bring the whole roof down if he wasn’t careful.

  Down below, his audience looked on in fascinated horror.

  He figured he had one shot at this. There would be no do-overs once he let go. It was either hit his target or make like Humpty Dumpty and his great fall.

  That was one way to find the doctor, but not ideal. He kinda preferred his head uncracked.

  Now or never.

  He mentally gave his best Tarzan yell—he would have liked to do it out loud, but that defeated the purpose of a silent exit—and let go of the beam. His legs caught on the edge of the hole. It gave way again under his weight, but he managed to hook over another beam and used his ab muscles to pull himself up and out.

  Holy. Shit.

  He’d done it!

  He had to remember to thank Quinn for all the rigorous PT the bastard had put the team through over the years. Even while wallowing in depression, he hadn’t been able to let his training slide.

  Marcus sat there a moment to catch his breath, enjoying the pound of the rain on his head and back.

  This had to be how Andy Dufresne felt at the end of The Shawshank Redemption.

  Get busy living or…

  Yeah, no. He wasn’t about to die in this hellhole. And neither was Leah.

  He scooted along the support beam, wincing every time it creaked. A sound behind him caught his attention. He glanced back and saw the kid—the English speaker—had followed him.

  Shit. He hadn’t counted on that. The thatched roof couldn’t handle that much weight. He moved as fast as he could to the edge and gazed down. Less than a ten foot drop. He could lower himself down, but the kid would have to jump. And he’d probably hurt himself.

  Dammit.

  He waited until the kid joined him. “What are you doing?”

  “Going with you. I want to see my father.”

  “Kid—” He broke off and sighed. What was he going to do, tell the kid to go back? He couldn’t condemn a teenager to a lifetime of forced labor. None of those men would ever pay off their debts. At least the kid was clever enough to realize that. “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Abel.”

  “Okay, Abel. C’mere. Let me lower you down.” He gripped the kid’s arms and on the count of three, swung him over the side. He had to stretch to make sure the boy didn’t hurt himself, but it worked. Abel landed easily. Marcus followed and together, they ducked into the shadows alongside the building.

  “Where’s the doctor?”

  Abel shook his head. “No. No.”

  “I need to find her. She might know where my…” He hesitated, not sure what to call Leah. His best friend’s widow wouldn’t translate well, but he could admit now—if only to himself—that she was more than a friend. He wanted her to be more than a friend. More than Danny’s widow.

  His Jane.

  Man, he had it bad.

  “I came here with a woman,” he said instead. “Light-colored hair, like gold. Blue eyes.” He held up his hand, approximating Leah’s height. “About this tall. Have you seen her?”

  Abel shook his head again.

  “Okay. I think the doctor knows where she is. I need to find the doctor.”

  Abel grabbed his arm, fingers digging in. “You no understand. Lady doctor is…” He said something in French.

  Ah, dammit. If he got through this in one piece, he was taking language lessons from Jean-Luc. “I don’t know any French, kid. I’m sorry. In English, if you can. The doctor is what?”

  Abel seemed to search for the right word. “Evil.”

  Marcus’s blood ran cold. “What do you mean, evil?”

  “People go to doctor and no see again. She…” He made a slitting motion across his neck. No translation needed for that universal sign of death.

  “She kills.”

  “She took my father.”

  Jesus. Poor kid. “Is she a local?”

  He stared, uncomprehending.

  “Is she from here? Like you? Or from somewhere else, like me?”

  Abel glanced around. There was nobody nearby—Marcus had made sure of that. They wouldn’t be having this conversation here and now if there was a chance of getting caught. Whatever guards were stationed here had been driven indoors by the rain.

  “Abel.” Marcus drew the kid’s attention back to him with a snap of his fingers. “I need to know.”

  “She’s…” Another glance around. “Like the others.”

  “Russian?”

  “Yes.”

  So a Russian doctor was making locals disappear while Russian mercenaries guarded a mine. What the fuck had Leah gotten twisted up in?

  “Abel, if there was a woman prisoner, do you know where they would keep her?”

  The kid opened his mouth, but the slush of a footstep nearby had Marcus waving him silent.

  Someone was coming and here he was without a weapon. He’d gotten pretty good at hand-to-hand combat since joining HORNET, but he’d feel more comfortable with the weight of a gun in his hand.

  He motioned for Abel to stay put then, keeping to the shadows, crept along the side of the building. The hard rain made it impossible to make out more than the indistinct figure of another person, but whoever it was seemed to be slinking around, too.

  Friend or foe?

  Marcus was going to go with foe until proven otherwise. Maybe they’d have a weapon he could confiscate. He waited as they moved closer…closer…

  They stopped at the door of his former prison and peeked through the bars over the one window. “Xander? You in there?”

  The whisper belonged to a woman. And he recognized the voice. Mercedes Raya.

  Shit.

  Was this a good or bad turn of events? It was always hard to tell whose side that woman was on, but right now she was a better bet than the Russians.

  “Raya,” he called.

  She whipped around, her gun drawn and pointed directly between his eyes as he stepped out from his hiding spot.

  She swore in Spanish and lowered the weapon. “Deangelo. What the fuck? I thought you were dead.”

  “Not for lack of trying. Who’s Xander?”

  “None of your business.”

  He tilted his head t
oward the prison. “Unless he’s local, he’s not in there.”

  She swore again, and this time there was a genuine note of pain in her voice. “Dmitry said he was here.”

  “Dmitry Volkov? You spoke to him?”

  The questions seemed to jolt her out of the momentary show of humanity. Her mask of indifference snapped back into place, but it was too late. He’d already glimpsed the woman underneath. Who knew Mercedes Raya actually had a heart?

  “You need to get outta here.” She turned away. “I can’t be seen talking to you. It’ll blow my cover.”

  “Wait.” He caught her arm. “Have you seen Leah?”

  Mercedes’s expression didn’t change, but he got the feeling she was waging an internal battle. “Okay.” She faced him. “I help you get her, and you’ll owe me. Three times over.”

  This woman was, if not an accomplice, then at very least complicit in Danny’s murder. She’d slept with his killer and had very likely known about the assassination before it happened. She could’ve stopped it, and she hadn’t lifted a finger. “I don’t owe you a goddamn thing.”

  “Then you’re on your own.”

  “You’d let an innocent woman die to fulfill your own agenda?” What was he saying? Of course she would. She’d let Danny die, after all. “You’re slime, Raya. I’ve gone up against some of the worst people the world has to offer, but you? You top them all.”

  She whirled around and shoved at his chest hard enough that he had to take a step back. “You don’t know a thing about me, Deangelo.”

  “I know you have no regard for anyone’s life other than your own.” And they were wasting time. Standing here arguing with her only increased their chances of getting caught.

  “I care—” Her voice cracked on the word. “I care about my brother, and he’s here somewhere. He’s all I have now, and I will do everything in my power to find him.”

  Well…shit. He hadn’t expected her to suddenly act all human. He always figured she had a cold hunk of rock in her chest rather than a heart.

  He recalled the name she’d whispered while peeking into the prison. “You’re talking about Xander?” Then, suddenly, it clicked. “Jesus Christ. As in Alexander Cabot? You’re related to Cabot?”

  She swiped at the rainwater streaming down her face. “I have my mom’s maiden name but we share the same bastard of a father. Everything you hate about me, Xander is the opposite. He’s good and kind and doesn’t deserve the shit I’ve put him through. I dragged him into Defion with me and he hated it, wanted out. He disappeared last year and I thought he was dead, that Defion had killed him, but my search led me here to Volkov instead. He’s innocent, and if you can walk away from helping him, you’re no better than me.”

  Dammit. As if rescuing Leah wasn’t complicated enough. “You help me find Leah, and HORNET will find Xander.” It wasn’t a stretch to make the promise. They were already looking for the man, after all.

  She studied him warily for so long he started to get impatient. “Mercedes, need a decision here. Now. Whose side are you on?”

  “Fine,” she finally said. “We have a deal. Follow me.”

  It wasn’t lost on him that she still hadn’t picked a side, but he followed anyway. What choice did he have?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Marcus couldn’t shake the itch between his shoulder blades as they darted from cover to cover across what turned out to be an abandoned village that Volkov had repurposed into a prison camp.

  Mercedes couldn’t be trusted. He knew it, and yet here he was, trusting her. She could be leading him into a trap for all he knew, and he was following willingly.

  For Leah.

  And, he had to admit, that glimpse of the real person under Mercedes’s hard outer shell had changed his opinion of her somewhat. She wasn’t the cold, heartless bitch he’d pegged her to be. Still a bitch, yeah, and he had a feeling she’d agree fully with that assessment. But she’d made mistakes that had hurt those she loved, and Marcus related to that hard-core.

  Mercedes crouched down behind the half-crumbled wall of a bombed-out home and waited until Marcus and Abel joined her. She pointed to another house across the street. “I saw them take Leah in there.”

  “And you left her? As a distraction,” he realized, anger heating his blood to a simmer. “As long as they were focusing on her, they weren’t paying attention to you.”

  “Leaving me free to find my brother.” She sent a narrow-eyed glance over her shoulder. “You can’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same in my boots.”

  Damn. He couldn’t. Because if it came down to saving Leah or saving her, he’d choose Leah hands down. But his stomach churned with the horrible knowledge of what Volkov could’ve been doing to Leah all this time.

  He peeked around the wall again. The door to Leah’s prison was bolted with a padlock, which led him to believe nobody else was inside there with her. They wouldn’t lock the door from the outside if they still had men inside.

  Marcus sank back behind the cover of the wall and considered his options. He didn’t have his trusty lock pick kit. The original was still in Wyoming at HORNET’s headquarters. No doubt Tuc Quentin had put one in his go bag, but that had been left in Indonesia. He could go all Hulk smash on the lock, but that would make too much noise. He didn’t want to draw Volkov down on their heads when Mercedes was the only one armed.

  Oh. Wait. He did have a lock pick.

  Mercedes had long hair, which she currently wore pinned up in a bun at the back of her head. He studied her until he found a bobby pin, then plucked it out of her hair. A loose curl fell free from the bun.

  “Ow!” She jerked away from him and rubbed at her head. “Hey!”

  He didn’t apologize. He probably owed her an apology for a lot of things, but a little tug on her hair wasn’t one of them. “I need another one.”

  With an exasperated huff, she pulled another free and more curls fell. She held it out to him. “Would you like my ponytail holder, too?”

  He ignored the sarcasm. “Cover me.”

  She rolled her eyes but settled into position with her weapon propped in a hole in the wall. “All right, you’re clear. Go.”

  Yeah, that itch got worse as he bolted across the muddy road. Mercedes could easily shoot him in the back if she felt so inclined, and there was no telling when she’d decide to switch sides again. He had to work fast.

  He ripped off the rounded ends of the first bobby pin with his teeth, then bent it into an L to use as a tension rod. He inserted it into the lock, then straightened out the second pin to use as a pick. It took only ten or so seconds to pop the lock, but for him that was slow. He was out of practice.

  He got the padlock off, then glanced around quickly before opening the door. Still clear. So far, so good. He pulled the door open—

  And nearly got cracked over the head with a chair. He ducked, and the thing broke against the doorframe inches from his face. The squeak of horror that came from inside the building would have made him laugh under different circumstances. He straightened and found Leah standing there, gripping one arm against her body, her eyes huge in her pale face.

  “Marcus!” she gasped and threw herself at him. “Did I hurt you?”

  “Hey, shh. I’m okay.” He gave himself an instant—just a quick half second—to hold her tight, to feel her body against his and know she was alive. Then he pushed her away and gave her a once-over. She was still holding her arm against her belly, and a bruise darkened her cheek. He saw red. Those fuckers had hurt her, had left marks on her. He’d find whoever was responsible and tear them apart.

  Leah stepped into his space again and cupped his cheek in her good hand. “Marcus, no. Look at me. I’m okay. I’m banged up but they didn’t lay a finger on me. Let’s just get out of here. Please.”

  He blinked away the red and stared down at her in awe. She ha
dn’t shrunk from him in fear. She’d caught a glimpse of his darkness and still stepped toward him.

  Holy hell. He’d spent so much of his life running in fear of others seeing that darkness. Judging him for it. Fearing him.

  But she hadn’t.

  She’d reached out to him instead.

  What if…he didn’t have to run anymore?

  A pop from the road behind him brought him back to his senses. Right now, running was the absolute best idea. He whipped around, using his body to block Leah from any flying bullets, and saw the muzzle flash of Mercedes’s weapon a second before he heard more pops of gunfire. In response, bullets peppered her position, taking bites of red clay out of the wall. He traced the line of fire to the Volkov mercs taking cover behind the big wheels of a cargo truck. If they hadn’t called in backup yet, they would any second now.

  Looked like he had his chance to get his hands on the bad guys after all.

  “Stay here,” he told Leah and ran out into the rain. “Stay inside!”

  He moved in behind the mercs and hoped like hell Mercedes could see him in the growing gloom of evening. It’d suck to get taken out now by friendly—or at least semi-friendly—fire. He saw her peek over the wall and waved at her. She nodded once, then—

  Holy fucking hell. She stood up. The mercs could’ve fired on her. They had all the opportunity in the world in the milliseconds it took Marcus to sneak up behind them and get a chokehold on the smaller of the two.

  But they didn’t fire, and even as Marcus coiled his arm around the smaller guy’s neck and yanked him backward, unease trickled down the back of his neck along with the rain. Were they that badly trained? Or was Mercedes playing both sides again?

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  He wished he knew.

  He pried the weapon from the guy’s hand and turned it toward his head. “Drop your weapons, radios, everything.”

  The bigger guy muttered something in Russian but made no move to comply. Marcus tightened his arm and his victim gagged. He met the bigger guy’s eyes, let him see the darkness boiling to the surface. “You hurt my woman. I will kill you.”