Broken Honor

by Burrows, Tonya

  Pride morphed into something even more dangerous. Hope. “How long will it take?” Quinn asked.

  “Give me…a half hour. I’ll also run a reverse lookup on the phone number, but I doubt we’ll get anything. It’s probably a burner.”

  “It belonged to one of Zaryanko’s people,” Quinn said. Until now, he’d completely forgotten about the phone.

  “Well, we have another clue.” Harvard tapped the phone. “She mentioned Olesea. Is that a place?”

  Jean-Luc shook his head. “Non, it’s a woman’s name. Somewhat common in Moldova.”

  “Well, it’s something. While my programs are running, I’ll pull that research string, too. Something’s gotta fall loose.”

  “Go ahead and do your thing,” Gabe said and faced the remaining members of the team. “While Harvard’s on that, we need to pack up. As soon as we find Mara, we’re gone, and we’re not coming back. Make sure we leave nothing behind that will trace to us. We were never here.”

  “What about Garcia?” Jesse asked. “We need the plane to be ready.”

  Quinn’s gut told him something was wrong there. He glanced a question at Gabe, who shook his head.

  “This is your show, Q. What do you want to do?”

  Mara was their priority objective right now. She had to be. At the same time, if Garcia was in trouble, that compromised their exfil route, which compromised Mara.

  Damn. He hated making these judgment calls, and Gabe knew it, too. “Keep trying to raise him by phone and radio,” he decided. “If we still can’t get him by the time we have Mara in hand, we may have to come up with another plan. And someone try Seth, Marcus, and Ian again. If we’re lucky, they’ll have been watching when she was moved and will already have her location.”

  …

  Mara curled herself around her belly, hoping to conserve as much body heat as possible even as the icy air whisked it away almost before her body produced it. When the pit bull dropped her off, she’d been stripped of Travis’s coat—and the lifesaving phone. Then she was shoved into this shed by a nasty woman named Olesea and left without any protection against the cold. She couldn’t stop shivering. Was the baby suffering, too? What kind of mother was she, already subjecting her child to this kind of danger?

  God, she was an idiot. Such a naive, foolish idiot. This had started as a fantasy, a simple, harmless one-night stand—they were harmless, right? Women had them all the time. Lanie had them all the time and always came out the other side no worse for wear. So how had her one night of abandon gone so horribly wrong and ended like this? Trapped in a sordid room in some godforsaken foreign country she’d never heard of. Cold, hungry, and terrified beyond anything she’d ever felt in her life. Of course, her one-night stand hadn’t stayed one, and part of her wished Travis had never showed up at her house in November, wished she’d never had the opportunity to know him beyond a one-night stand, wished she’d never had the opportunity to fall in love with him.

  Was she being punished for her recklessness?

  But, no, she really hadn’t been reckless. She’d been on birth control when Travis showed up at her house six weeks ago and she’d welcomed him back into her bed.

  Meant to be.

  That’s what her mother had said before her stepfather decided the family should disown her for her promiscuity. And of course Mama had gone along with him, because that’s what she always did, but at first she’d been thrilled to be getting a grandbaby.

  Maybe Mama was right. Maybe this was all just meant to be.

  The door to her prison opened, and she lifted her head from the bare mattress. Zaryanko stood in the doorway, outlined by the snowy-white light of the winter day outside. She again wanted to ask what he’d done with Travis but couldn’t form the words around the lump of terror in her throat. He scanned the tiny room, then studied her for a long moment with flat eyes. His breath clouded against the air as he made a tsk-tsk-tsk sound and shut the door.

  “Olesea!” he roared.

  Mara sat up. Curiosity and a fragile spark of hope made her heart hammer, and she nervously twisted the band of her watch around her wrist. He obviously wasn’t happy with the way she’d been treated since arriving here.

  “Olesea!” he yelled again, and Mara heard the crunch of boots running over snow, followed by Olesea’s scratchy, too-many-cigarettes-a-day voice.

  The two carried on a rapid-fire conversation that Mara had no hope of deciphering. She listened anyway, straining to pick up anything familiar.

  Nothing. They were speaking too fast, and from this distance, it all sounded like gibberish to her.

  Desperate to hear more, Mara climbed to her feet and crept toward the one window in the room. She’d peeked out it once before, knew it overlooked a short stretch of snow-covered yard and a ramshackle barn that housed a handful of goats and chickens. Through the ice-frosted glass, she saw Zaryanko and Olesea standing by the shed, deep in an argument that was fast escalating to violence.

  “Nyet!” Zaryanko shouted and hit Olesea so hard her head snapped to the side and blood spouted from her red, pockmarked nose.

  Olesea took off the kerchief covering her salt-and-pepper hair, pressed it to her nose, and said something muffled. Zaryanko raised his hand again, and she flinched back like an abused dog. She nodded and disappeared around the edge of the barn. Zaryanko lit a cigarette and stood there smoking until he caught sight of Mara in the window. He threw his cigarette down and crushed it out in the snow, then strode toward the door of her prison.

  Mara scrambled backward but had no place to go, no place to hide, and her legs bumped the mattress. She sat down, arms automatically wrapping around her belly as she waited and worried.

  Zaryanko threw open the door. “Come with me.”

  She hesitated.

  He muttered something in Russian, then held out a hand and wiggled his gloved fingers. “Do you wish to stay in the cold? Come.”

  An image of lambs being led to slaughter popped into her head. They all probably thought they were going someplace better, too. But she had to go with him. What other choice did she have? To stay here in this freezing room was nothing but a prolonged death sentence.

  Ignoring his outstretched hand, she stood and followed him across the yard, her feet numbing inside her tennis shoes with every step. The house that came into view as they circled around the barn was bigger than she would’ve guessed, two stories tall and painted with absurdly cheerful colors.

  Zaryanko led her up the porch steps and opened the front door. It was warm inside, and the front foyer looked the same as any country cottage found in the United States. The clash of her expectations versus reality gave her an instant headache.

  Nikolai motioned her inside. “In.”

  Despite the warmth spilling from the house, beckoning her inside, she hesitated. “Are you really going to sell me?” The question popped out before her brain weighed the pros and cons of asking it, and she expected him to hit her like he had Olesea, but he merely shrugged.

  “Would you rather I kill you?” He asked the question casually, like it was one he posed every day.

  She recoiled. “No.”

  “Nothing to do with you,” he repeated. “Just business. All of this? Just business. I have a family to care for.”

  “What about my family?”

  He said nothing more and gestured to the house.

  Trembling from the cold, she walked inside and then climbed the stairs when he motioned for her to go up. On the second floor, he unlocked a door and pushed it open. It was dark inside and the stale air stank of unwashed humans. She swallowed hard, prayed to her dad for strength, and stepped over the threshold, but turned around to meet his gaze before he shut the door.

  In that instant, she thought of her mother. Would Rosa Escareno miss her if she disappeared forever? Would Rosa even know? Ramon had such a firm grip on her, she might not even find out Mara was gone. Her brother, Matt, would notice. Jesse and his parents definitely would, and they’d a
ll miss her. Her throat closed up at the thought of never seeing any of them again. “My family needs me, too, Nikolai.”

  He cocked his head slightly as if giving real consideration to her words. “Hmm, yes. But in this world, some people are…sheep. You are sheep. Others are like wolf.”

  “And you’re the wolf?”

  “No.” He gave a toothy smile. “I am a businessman, nothing more. I simply sell the sheep to any wolf willing to pay.”

  Her body froze down to the bone as the door shut in her face. The soft thunk of the lock sliding into place sounded very final.

  She released a breath in a shudder. She wouldn’t cry. It would only exhaust her, and if Travis found her—no, when he found her—she’d need her strength. Because he would come for her. She had to hang on to that hope or go insane.

  A scrape of a footstep sounded behind her. She whirled and groped for a light switch, but her hand slid along nothing but bare wall.

  “You will not find a light,” a soft female voice said in Russian.

  Mara froze. It took her a moment to translate and then another to find the words she needed to communicate. “Who are you?”

  “Dasia.” Movement in the darkness, and then a curtain opened to let in a pale square of yellow light from outside. A woman stood near the window, a hand resting on her hugely pregnant belly. She was so big she must have been having twins.

  Two more women stepped into the light, both little more than girls and both pregnant. Mara touched her own belly as a swell of nausea rolled through her. These women—girls—were here to be sold. Did they know that? She scanned their faces and saw exhaustion and resignation in each.

  Yes, they knew.

  She swallowed back the lump of sorrow blocking her throat. “How long…uh, have you been here?”

  Dasia winced. “You are not from here. Your Russian is bad.”

  Mara shook her head. “American,” she said in English. “Do any of you know English? Español?”

  She received nothing but blank looks in return. Okay. They’d just have to suffer with her mangled Russian. “How long have you been here?” she repeated, trying to enunciate clearly and make sure her tone and inflections were correct. She must have still bungled it, though, because it took several moments of soft discussion among the women before they figured out what she meant.

  “A week for me,” Dasia said. She motioned to the youngest looking of the group, a small blonde who was maybe halfway through her pregnancy. “Lizabeta arrived three days ago. Oxana”—she indicated the short brunette who was also very pregnant—“yesterday.”

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  Again, the three murmured among themselves, then Dasia nodded. “We’re going abroad to sell our babies.”

  “You want to?”

  All three nodded enthusiastically. “It will pay off our debt to Nikolai,” Dasia explained, “and we’ll be free to go home. It’s a good thing.”

  Oh, God. They truly thought Zaryanko would let them go if they sold their children.

  Mara remembered in vivid detail how Zaryanko had so coldly ordered the execution of a woman on that runway in New Mexico because she was too ugly and how he’d originally planned to kill Mara herself for being too fat. She pressed a hand over her mouth to hold back a sob. These women would have baby weight after they delivered. Would Zaryanko consider them too fat to be of use then?

  How could she make them understand they’d never be free unless they escaped? She didn’t have a good enough command of the language to tell them the information she knew from Travis or about the brutality she’d seen. But she had to try. “Dasia—”

  The doorknob rattled, and the three women scattered like frightened woodland creatures as the door swung open.

  Mara turned to face Zaryanko again, but it was that nasty woman Olesea this time. She snapped out a command Mara didn’t catch and the other women darted from the room. Mara didn’t move. She didn’t know what Zaryanko had said to Olesea by the shed outside, but she had little doubt it was something along the lines of “don’t damage the merchandise.”

  “You won’t harm me,” Mara said in English. “You’re as afraid of Zaryanko as the rest of us.”

  Olesea’s sunken eyes widened. She stalked forward and grabbed a handful of Mara’s hair, twisting hard. Pain exploded across Mara’s scalp, and she dropped to her knees.

  “I will harm you,” Olesea said in heavily accent English. “I leave no marks. Nikolai never knows.” She shoved Mara out of the room. “In my house, you work for the roof over your head. Now go.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Here’s what we have.” As the van bumped over an unpaved road an hour later, Quinn briefed the team. “The last message Mara sent me pinged off this cell phone tower here.” He marked an X on a topography map, then braced himself against the wall when the van hit a pothole that nearly sent it airborne.

  “Sorry,” Harvard said.

  “Fuck, where’d you learn to drive?” Ian asked.

  “Do you think you can do better?” Harvard demanded. “This road doesn’t have ruts. It has canyons.”

  “Don’t listen to them,” Lanie said from the passenger seat. “Just get us there in one piece.”

  Once the van evened out, Quinn returned to the briefing. “Based on the topography, the cell tower’s range, and the low population density of the area, the call originated from this village of about fifty people.” He called up satellite images of the area on Harvard’s laptop and turned the screen toward the guys. He zoomed in on a blue two-story house seated just outside the village. “This place is our target. The property is gated, and we have no intel on security. It’s on a hill, and the land around it is flat, with only these trees here”—he drew a circle with his finger around the tree line at the back of the property—“for cover.”

  “It’s a logistical nightmare,” Seth muttered.

  “Pretty much,” Gabe said.

  “The house is owned by a fifty-one-year-old woman named Olesea Alistratova,” Quinn continued. “Which matches the name Mara gave us, so it’s a safe bet this is the right place.”

  Lanie glanced back. “Why would this woman help Zaryanko?”

  “She was probably once trafficked herself,” Marcus explained. “That’s how these rings work. They’ll trick a woman into going with them by offering her employment abroad, then addict her to drugs and make her work off some arbitrarily assigned debt that she’ll never be able to pay back. If the women survive that, many of them are so broken they can’t return to their lives before they were taken and end up as recruiters for the traffickers. It allows them to continue paying off their debt and even make a living without being forced to prostitute themselves.”

  “Jesus,” Lanie breathed.

  Stomach knotted, Quinn met each of the guys’ gazes in turn, finally settling on Jesse. “This might be our best chance to rescue her before Zaryanko ships her to Dubai. We can’t fail. We—” His voice cracked, but he didn’t bother clearing the emotion from his throat. He needed Jesse to know how sorry he was for all of this. Needed the medic to know that if it came to it, he’d give his life to make sure Mara made it home safe. “We can’t fail,” he repeated softly.

  Jesse glanced away and sucked in a choppy breath.

  Gabe grasped each of their shoulders. “We won’t fail. We’ll get her back.”

  A beat of heavy silence passed. Quinn knew if anyone could do it, it was this group of men bouncing around with him in a van going way too fast on the rutted road. But fear still ate at him with jagged teeth. He had to lock that shit down and concentrate.

  Finally, he straightened and pointed to the map again. “There’s about a foot of snow on the ground around Olesea’s house, which is going to make a covert attack hard to pull off. I’m open to ideas here, guys.”

  They pored over the maps and satellite images for several bumpy miles.

  “Looks like the biggest area of weakness is the back of the house,” Jean-Luc fin
ally said. “More cover for us.”

  Quinn shook his head. “We don’t want to be fighting uphill. Nothing drains you faster.”

  “So we sniper crawl in,” Seth said. “We have our snow camo. If we take it easy enough, we can be on their back porch before they realize it.”

  “They’re not expectin’ us,” Jesse said with a nod of agreement. “We have that to our advantage, and the slow crawl in will give us time to scope out the opposition force.”

  “If there is one,” Ian said.

  “Yeah. If.” Quinn rubbed his hands over his face. There were too many fucking ifs for his liking and only two certainties: Mara was in that house, and he wanted her back.

  …

  As darkness fell, Mara stopped scrubbing the living room floor to peek out the windows whenever Olesea wasn’t looking. Ever since she’d sent that text to Travis’s phone, she’d hoped…

  But maybe he hadn’t gotten the messages. Or maybe he had received them, but her blind typing made no sense. There were so many ways her plan, as feeble as it was, could have gone wrong, and with each passing hour, she grew more and more desperate.

  She couldn’t stay here and wait for Zaryanko to whisk her off to Dubai. But without help, she didn’t see how she could possibly—

  “Psst.”

  She glanced over at Dasia, who made a scrubbing motion with her hands and whispered in Russian, “Work.”

  Mara shook her head and searched for the words she needed. “Four of us. One of her.”

  Dasia’s blue eyes rounded, huge in her too-thin face. “No. Keep working! We’ll all be punished.”

  Didn’t Dasia realize that breathing was a punishable offense in this place? Olesea enjoyed hurting them. And if she was going to be punished anyway, simply for existing, she might as well attempt an escape. She shook her head again and stood.