What was it about Mara that turned him into such a fucking coward? Why, when things started getting heavy, was his first response always to run away from her? Especially when he hadn’t run from anything since he was ten and Big Ben had come home drunk and angry with the intention of killing his wife and son.
Was Big Ben the reason he kept running from her?
But, dammit, he wasn’t his father. He’d spent his entire adult life trying to prove it, and now here he was, doing exactly what his father would have done.
Big Ben would be so proud.
A horn blared behind him, and he sat up to see the light had turned green. He gazed down at the sonogram again, then hit the turn signal and pulled a u-ey.
He had promised Mara he was sticking around this time, and as much as it fucking scared him, he wasn’t the kind of man to break his promises.
He wasn’t Big Ben.
Chapter Four
Mara stared in disbelief as his car all but burned rubber out of her driveway. She hadn’t known what to expect from him when she broke the news of her pregnancy. Shock, for sure. Joy. Fear. Maybe even some anger. But she hadn’t expected him to completely shut down and walk away.
Which, yes, had been stupid of her, since he’d done the exact same thing six weeks ago when it became obvious their fling had turned into something more intimate than either of them had intended. But it truly hadn’t occurred to her that Travis wouldn’t love the little heart she heard on the fetal monitor, working so hard to become a person.
How could he not love their baby?
Mara dashed away the tears streaming down her cheeks and straightened her shoulders. Fine. If he didn’t want this, she’d have him sign away his rights as soon as the baby was born and then pretend her pregnancy was the result of artificial insemination. She hated that her baby wouldn’t have a father, but she didn’t need him. She didn’t need her mom or stepdad. She could do this on her own, and she’d give her child the best life possible without help from any of them.
Mind made up, Mara shut the door, made it halfway across her living room, and froze in shock. The sliding glass door to her backyard was wide-open.
Crap. Had she not shut the door all the way earlier? BJ wasn’t bright enough to get out of the fenced-in backyard, but Hawkeye might have tried to make a run for it. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d made it over the fence. She ran to her bedroom and threw on leggings and an oversized sweatshirt, stepped into a pair of tennis shoes, grabbed Hawk’s carrier from her closet, and was nearly to her bedroom door when a sick dread rose into her throat and stopped her in her tracks.
Something was wrong here.
She hadn’t left the back door open. She was sure of it. Someone else had opened it…
And that someone was in her house.
Mara took a slow backward step, afraid to make any sudden moves even though her instincts screamed for her to throw open the door and run for it. The silence in her house was almost painful, scraping against her heightened senses.
No, not complete silence. There was a rattling sound like—like her phone vibrating across her nightstand, where she’d left it after taking off her robe.
Oh, God. It was ringing!
She spun to lunge for it, and the bedroom door burst open. A tall man in a gray hooded sweatshirt and black balaclava stepped through. He took one look at her, said, “Fuck,” and launched across the room. She didn’t have a chance at escape. Barely had time to think about running. In less than a heartbeat, he held her immobile with one big arm crushing her windpipe. He smelled like fresh paint, and as her vision swam from lack of oxygen, she thought, the house next door. He’d been the shadow she’d seen moving around inside. She should have said something to Lanie about it. And Travis. Maybe this wouldn’t be happening now if she had.
Tears trickled in hot streams down her cheeks. This was it. She was going to die, her baby was going to die, and nobody would ever know what happened to them.
Her knees buckled, and she wrapped her arms around her belly, afraid of landing on the baby when she fell. A pair of thick, strong arms caught her and picked her up with surprising gentleness. And in the seconds before she blacked out, she thought she heard him mutter, “I’m sorry. This will be over soon.”
…
She wasn’t picking up.
Quinn couldn’t blame her. After the way he’d acted, he wouldn’t pick up either if he were her.
Yeah, he’d fucked up. Big-time. But he’d make it up to her. Somehow. If he had to, he’d post up on her porch and stay there until she talked to him again.
Because they did need to talk about…hell, everything. He hadn’t been lying when he’d said he didn’t want the pregnancy. He wasn’t father material. At. All. Just the thought of a baby sent a chill of pure fear down his spine.
What if he broke it?
Could babies be broken?
Yeah. Yeah, they could. He was living proof, which was yet another reason he should have sterilized himself years ago.
He finally wound his way through the gathering afternoon traffic and turned onto Mara’s street—and the car he’d seen last night, the Ford Explorer that had been parked in front of her neighbor’s house, was now in her driveway, engine running.
What the fuck?
All kinds of alarms started clanging inside his head, and he slowed his rental to a stop at the curb behind a minivan. Heart thudding, he reached into the backseat for his go bag and found the binoculars he kept in the side pocket.
A man in a hooded sweatshirt emerged from Mara’s house moments later, carrying something big wrapped up in a blanket. And not just any blanket. The fucking one from her bed. He’d know that gray-and-yellow floral pattern anywhere, and his gut clenched with a sickening sense of dread. He couldn’t think of one good reason why the man would be leaving the house with Mara’s bedspread.
The man loaded his cargo into the back end of the Explorer and just before the trunk shut, the bundle moved. A small hand poked out, a woman’s hand, and on her wrist was a too-big watch.
Mara’s watch.
Mara was in that bundle.
And there went the ground, dropping out from under him. He grabbed the steering wheel for support, tightening his grip until he felt his knuckles pop.
The Explorer pulled out of Mara’s driveway.
Shit. He had to get a grip. Focus. His only shot at getting Mara back was to stay latched onto the Explorer’s tailpipe like a leech. He sucked in a breath, exhaled it slowly, and shoved everything but the mission out of his head. He waited until the Explorer was far enough down the street to avoid detection, then followed.
The problem with conducting one-car surveillance was that it was very easy to get burned by someone who knew what they were doing. And the fucker in the hooded sweatshirt definitely knew what he was doing. Whether he was just being careful or he suspected he had a tail was anyone’s guess, but he weaved in and out of traffic, sped up through school zones, slowed down when the speed limit increased. At the first stoplight they came to, he signaled left and even moved over in the proper lane for the turn.
Was he actually turning or was he watching his rearview mirror to see who signaled over into the turning lane?
Damn. If Quinn didn’t get over, and the Explorer did make the turn, he could lose them in the traffic. If he did move over, he could be spotted.
Quinn took a calculated risk and stayed where he was, in the non-turning lane several cars back. And sure enough, as soon as the light turned green, the Explorer shot forward, straight through the intersection, and cut off the lead car in the line to the sounds of tires squealing and angry horns.
Smart. Dangerous as hell with a vulnerable pregnant woman in the trunk—and Quinn would make sure he paid for that—but smart.
The Explorer took a one-way road in the wrong direction and Quinn turned down a parallel road to keep him in sight. He faked out two more turns, ran a red light, drove in patterns that didn’t make any sense.
&nbs
p; Yeah. The guy knew what he was doing. But so did Quinn, and he stuck close, sometimes close enough to see Mara struggling in the back. His chest ached with each breath he drew.
He. Was. Not. Leaving. Her. Again.
But if he stayed on this guy, they’d just keep going in circles and never get anywhere. He grabbed his phone from the seat beside him and speed-dialed Harvard’s number.
“Uh, hey, Quinn.” Harvard answered after two rings, sounding more than a little surprised. “What’s up?”
“Do you have satellite access?”
“Do I have satellite access?” Harvard scoffed. “Duh. It insults me that you even have to ask. Why?”
“Mara’s been kidnapped—”
“Hold up. Mara? Jesse’s cousin Mara? Kidnapped?”
“Listen!” Quinn snapped. “I’m on her tail, but her abductor knows I’m here. We’ve been driving in circles for the last hour. I need to drop back, but I won’t do it until I know you have eyes on her. I’m in El Paso, driving a gray Honda. Mara’s in a green Ford Explorer with Texas plates.”
“Holy fuck,” Harvard breathed. “All right. All right. Hang on. Let me see if there’s a satellite in the area.” Computer keys clicked in the background and after far too many agonizing minutes, Harvard said, “I gotchu. Go ahead and drop back. I won’t lose her.” After another pause that seemed like an eternity, he said, “Yeah, he’s moving. Getting on US-54, headed out of the city. Do you think it’s the Juarez Syndicate wanting to cause problems for her stepdad again?”
“I don’t know.” Quinn pulled a u-ey and followed signs for the nearest highway on-ramp. “Whoever it is, they know what they’re doing. They waited until I left and grabbed her fast. I was gone…twenty minutes, tops. And, Harvard, she’s—” He choked on the word, had to clear his throat before finishing, “She’s pregnant.”
A beat of silence passed, and the little hairs on the back of his neck prickled. “What?”
“Yeah…” Harvard drew the word out. “I kinda already knew about the pregnancy.”
“What?” he said again. If Harvard had reached through the phone and socked him in the eye, he would have been less stunned. “How the fuck do you know when I just found out this morning?”
“Look, Gabe asked me to keep tabs on the Escareno family after this summer, mainly because he suspects her stepdad isn’t on the up-and-up.”
“That’s news? Senator Escareno’s a prick and everyone knows it.”
“Yeah, well. I noticed an OB-GYN charge on her credit card, followed by a flurry of activity from places like Babies-R-Us. I put two and two together and it equaled pregnancy. I reported it to Gabe, but he decided it wasn’t our place to tell you. We had no way of knowing for sure if the baby was yours.”
“It’s mine.” And there was that chill of fear again, scraping its claws down his spine. What did it say about him that he was more afraid of a fetus than of the fuckhead who had kidnapped Mara?
“So,” Harvard said slowly after another beat. “Congrats?”
He remembered saying the same to Gabe less than forty-eight hours ago and growled. It’s a wonder Gabe hadn’t punched him for that. “Harvard, do me a favor and don’t talk about it. Just…tell me if they turn off this road, okay?”
“Okay. Sorry.” And then there was nothing but radio silence from the former CIA intelligence analyst until an hour later, when Harvard spoke up again. “Quinn. They’re about a mile and a half ahead of you, making a right off the highway.”
“Yeah, I see a town up ahead.” Really, it was more of a pit stop, its buildings clustered around the highway in crumbling clumps. There was only one intersection, and he could see the Explorer bumping along a desert road to his right.
Damn.
Quinn pulled into the gas station–slash–garage decaying on the corner of the intersection. “Hang on a second, H,” he said into the phone, then popped open his door and called to a small Latino man who was poking around under the hood of a pickup. “Hey!”
“Hi, there. Need gas?” he asked with only a hint of a Spanish accent.
“No.” Quinn studied the guy. He was about fifty and had a friendly, white smile that contrasted sharply with his leatherlike brown skin. The patch on his grease-stained overalls said his name was Antonio. “I need to know what’s down that road.”
Antonio’s gaze followed the jerk of his chin to the road the Explorer had turned onto, then his eyes tracked away again. Big red flag.
“We don’t want your kind around here,” Antonio said.
Quinn sucked in a breath and fought for patience. “What kind is that?”
“The kinda people that go out to the airfield.”
“An airfield? Who owns it?” All he got was a shake of the head in response. Whoever owned that field had the locals scared. “The Ford that just came by? You ever see it around here before?”
“Nope. And I don’t want any part of this. I just go about my business and steer clear.”
Yeah, that’s what Quinn figured. He wasn’t going to get any intel from this guy. He’d have to go in blind. “Is the road all open like this?” he asked instead, motioning to the desert around them. He could still see the Explorer bumping along, kicking up a cloud of dust in the distance.
“Oh, yeah. You can see for miles around here.”
Which meant they’d see his car coming if he tried to get close to the airfield. Fuck.
Antonio let the hood of his truck fall shut. Considering, Quinn eyed the rust bucket on four wheels. “That thing run?”
“Good enough.”
“I’ll give you two hundred bucks if you drive me out there.”
“Nope.”
Christ, he was wasting too much time, felt each passing second as it slipped away and the Explorer got farther and farther from view. But continuing on in his rental was suicide. “Five hundred then.”
“Uh-uh. I’m not going anywhere near there.” Antonio headed for the garage. “No amount of money is worth getting killed for.”
True, but this wasn’t about money for him, and he was done fucking around. He grabbed his bag out of the backseat, left a couple hundred dollars and the rental’s keys on the dash, and made a run for the truck.
And, look at that, good old Tony had even left the keys in the ignition. Quinn wouldn’t have to revisit his days of misspent youth to hot-wire the thing after all. He fired up the engine and it sounded like a bear with a sore throat, but when he stepped on the gas, the truck shot forward with surprising speed. A quick glance in the rearview mirror showed Antonio cursing him out in the middle of the dust cloud his hasty exit had stirred up.
“Sorry, pal. Should’ve accepted the money.” He raised his phone to his ear again. “Still there, H?”
“Did you just commit grand theft auto?” Harvard asked, voice dripping disbelief.
“Nah. This truck’s not worth that much. Good power under the hood, though.”
“Holy shit.”
Quinn ignored him. “You still have her on satellite?”
“Uh…yeah. Yeah. I see the airfield, too, but if she gets on a plane, I’ll lose her. I don’t have a huge network at my disposal like the government does.”
Of course it couldn’t be that easy. “What about the way you tracked Gabe’s phone in Colombia—can you do that with mine?”
“Yes, but—”
“Good. I hope that program of yours has a global reach, because if they put Mara on a plane, I’m going to be on it with her. I’ll need you to lock on my signal and find us. Send the team.”
“Oh, man. Quinn—”
“Does it have a global reach or not?”
“Yeah, of course. As long as your phone has battery power, I’ll be able to track you.”
“Then I’m getting on that plane one way or another.” Quinn stared out the dusty windshield at the winding road in front of him. Adrenaline spilled into his blood, making him twitchy. “And, Harvard, you better make damn sure the team’s right on my ass, got it?”
The problem with deserts was that every move you made kicked up a cloud of dust as good as a neon sign screaming, “Incoming!” Quinn took the truck in as close as he dared, then dumped it and continued on foot at a dead run until he was within sight of the airfield. Only then did he force himself to slow down and flatten out on the ground. Except for a few rocks and some short desert plants, there was little in the way of cover here, but dust already caked most of his sweat-dampened skin and clothes, offering a bit of camouflage if he stayed low.
Quinn could be a patient man, but crawling toward that airfield one excruciating inch at a time was one of the most trying tests of self-restraint he’d ever endured. Every fiber in his being screamed that he had to get to Mara now. Make sure she was okay. Protect her. But he hadn’t seen a plane take off or land, so she had to still be at the airfield, and running in like Rambo would only get them both killed.
Christ, he wished the team were here to back him up.
He halted in the shrubs alongside the runway and spotted the Explorer parked in front of one of the two metal hangars about 150 meters away from his position. Was she still in the vehicle? He couldn’t tell. And he didn’t have a visual on the fuckhead, either.
Now what?
He had no team, minimal gear, and only a handgun. It was a damn fine weapon but still not enough firepower to take on…whoever he was about to take on. The Juarez Syndicate made the most sense, but it didn’t sit right in his gut. The abduction had been too slick, and the Syndicate had too much of a gang mentality to pull off something like this. Their style was more like the sloppy drive-by assassination attempt on Ramon Escareno last July. They didn’t do covert well.
But who else could it be?
Quinn rested his head on his forearms and gave himself a moment to breathe, which he hadn’t done properly since he saw Mara snatched. His headache was nearing epic proportions, and he had to face the possibility it could explode into a full-blown migraine. Or, worse, a blackout episode. If he went lights-on-nobody-home right now, he’d lose Mara.
Broken Honor Page 4
