“What are you doing?” Olesea stalked across the room and backhanded Mara so hard she drew blood. “Get back to work, cyka!”
Mara straightened from the blow and tasted copper on her lips. Realizing she clenched the sponge so hard her nails dug half moons into her palm, she loosened her fingers until it fell out of her hand and hit the floor with a wet slap. “Nyet.”
Olesea’s mouth dropped open. Apparently, she was so used to blind compliance from the women she housed, she hadn’t expected a rebellion. “Excuse me?”
“Nyet. Ya ne tvoy rab,” Mara said, struggling to make sure the Russian came out clearly.
Olesea laughed. Actually laughed, and the skeletal fingers of fear scraped down Mara’s spine, but she held her ground. The other three women recoiled in terror.
“Ya ne tvoy rab,” she repeated, and even though her voice trembled, she lifted her chin in defiance. “I am not your slave, you bitch.”
“Not my slave?” Olesea’s hand whipped out again, striking Mara across her cheek so hard she stumbled sideways. “We shall see.”
…
“Cajun to Achilles.” Jean-Luc’s voice crackled through Quinn’s earpiece, loud in the muffled winter evening as he lay, belly to the snow, still fifty yards from the house. He stopped crawling and flattened himself out on the snow as much as he could, scanning the area around him for any immediate threats before he answered the radio call. “Cajun, Achilles. Go ahead.”
“Be advised, there is movement in the house. Looks and sounds like a fight in there. How do you copy?”
“Good copy. Do you have eyes on any tangos?”
“Negative.”
Damn. “Anyone have eyes on?”
“Ace to Achilles,” Seth said. “I count one female tango in the house and one female hotel. Three female unknowns. I have visual confirmation of hotel’s identity. Over.”
Visual confirmation of the hotel—hostage. Of Mara. Quinn rested his forehead on his arm for a moment and gave himself a chance to recover from the explosion of pure joy that sang through him at the words. He had to stay focused. Think like an operative. Just because he now knew Mara was inside didn’t mean he could let down his guard until she was safe in friendly territory. This was always the most dangerous part of any snatch-and-grab mission.
The radio crackled again. “Harvard to Achilles. Be advised, I have a car headed toward your position. ETA three mikes.”
Quinn lifted his head and squinted toward the house. Harvard waited in the van a mile down the road, but Quinn could already hear the incoming car. Hard not to when the struts squeaked with every bump on the road. “Copy that. How many passengers?”
“Four,” Harvard said. “Driver looks like Nikolai Zaryanko. Over.”
“Copy that.” All ideas of doing this covertly just went to hell. They had made a tactical mistake, wasting too much time trying to sneak up on a house that was barely guarded, and now they had four likely armed men bearing down on them. Quinn would kick himself for it later. Right now, he needed to get Mara out of that fucking house.
“Achilles to team,” he said into his mic. “You have permission to engage. Go in hot.”
Chapter Sixteen
The door blasted inward with a small explosion. Mara slammed her eyes shut against the blinding flash, and the other three women let out deafening screams. She wrenched her hair from a stunned Olesea’s grasp as two men in white filed into the house, rifles aimed. One shouted commands at Olesea in Russian. The other moved toward Mara with single-minded intent in his shadowed eyes.
No. No, dammit. She was not going to Dubai. This was not how it was going to end for her. She knocked the bucket of dirty water into his path, then bolted toward the kitchen at the back of the house, intent on getting her hands on the butcher knife she’d been planning to steal since she first saw it, the one that Olesea hung right out in the open by the kitchen sink like a taunt. The knife wouldn’t do her a lick of good if one of the white-clad men decided to shoot her, but it didn’t matter. She needed a weapon. She would fight for her baby until the very last breath left her lungs—and then she’d come back and haunt her murderer’s ass.
A third man caught her around the waist just on the other side of the kitchen door. She kicked and screamed and clawed at his white-and-gray-paint-smeared face, but his hard arms only tightened around her.
The man chasing her skidded to a stop. “Got her?”
“Yeah. Go help the others, Ian. We have incoming,” the man holding her responded, and every muscle in her body went to water at the sound of his voice. She sagged, her legs no longer able to hold her upright. As he easily took her weight and scooped her up in his arms, his hood fell off his head.
Travis. Under all of that war paint and white winter gear, it really was him. He’d found her.
“You cut your hair.” Such a stupid thing to say, but it was the first thing that popped into her dazed mind. She lifted a hand and rubbed her palm over the prickly dark blond stubble. His eyes closed and the room, the noise from the rest of the house—it all vanished with his soft exhale. It was just the two of them in that moment. The outside cold clung to his coat, but she huddled closer until her nose touched the bare skin of his neck. Oh, his scent. Sandalwood and a dark, warm spice. She breathed it in and wanted to hold it—hold him—inside her forever.
Tears blurred her vision. “Travis…”
He said nothing, but his arms tightened around her in a fierce hug, and for the first time since Zaryanko took them captive, she felt truly safe.
All too soon, reality crashed through their tender moment. Gunshots thudded into the kitchen door, splintering the wood. Someone screamed in agony and other voices from men she didn’t know shouted in Russian. No English, though. Where were all of Travis’s men?
He lowered her to her feet the exact moment the kitchen door banged open, and Zaryanko stumbled to a halt in front of them.
Mara felt the muscles in Travis’s arm tighten to steel cables under her hands. He reached into an inside pocket under his white coat.
Zaryanko’s gun, which had lowered a little in surprise at the sight of them, came up again. “Don’t move!”
Travis produced a ripped photo and held the two pieces between his gloved fingers like playing cards. “Did you send someone to ransack my house?” His voice took on a dark edge she’d never heard from anyone before, as sharp and lethal as any blade.
Zaryanko’s gaze flicked to the photo, but he dismissed it with a sneer. “So you came back for your little whore after all?”
Travis waved the photo, his hand trembling a little. “Did. You. Do. This?”
Zaryanko lowered the pistol a fraction and stared at him like he’d lost his mind. Maybe he had. Mara was starting to fear it herself and rubbed a hand soothingly up and down his arm.
“Travis, it hardly matters right now.”
“It matters,” he said through his teeth.
“Why?”
“If he’s responsible, I’m going to kill him.”
She flinched at the implacable way he said those words, as if killing were a matter of fact, not of choice. And, again, she saw him standing over Urban’s body in New Mexico. He’d seemed genuinely remorseful for what he’d done—but that Travis and this one were two totally different people. This Travis looked intent on murder. And, yes, Zaryanko deserved to be punished for his crimes, but she did not want to see Travis be his judge, jury, and executioner.
“Please, don’t,” she whispered, and that seemed to finally break through whatever rage had enthralled him. He dropped the photo like it had caught fire and Mara caught the two pieces of it, partly out of curiosity, partly because it seemed to mean so much to him.
“You’ve become more trouble than you’re worth,” Zaryanko muttered and raised his gun again.
Travis pushed her behind his body. She stumbled at the force of his shove and grabbed his coat to catch herself just as Zaryanko’s gun exploded. She held her breath and waited to feel the impac
t slam through Travis’s body into hers, but nothing happened. Stunned, she lifted her face from his shoulder and looked around. Her tug on Travis’s coat had thrown him off balance enough that the bullet had streaked harmlessly by him and burrowed into the wall, sending plaster dust into the air.
Time stilled, caught in a tableau of violence. It was like slo-mo in the movies, except everyone moved at once and it probably all happened within five heartbeats. Travis pushed her aside and raised his own weapon. Zaryanko’s eyes rounded and he tried to level his gun again, but he was too slow. Far too slow. The quick one-two blast of Travis’s rifle left her ears ringing. Two holes opened up close together on Zaryanko’s shirt, and, with plaster dust falling like a fine snow, he dropped to the floor. Just like that, her kidnapper was dead.
Her nightmare was over.
It almost seemed impossible.
Rifle still aimed, Travis walked toward the obviously dead body and grabbed Zaryanko’s pistol, which had slid across the floor when he dropped it. Travis holstered it on his leg, then crossed to the door. Took a breath, held it, and swung out into the hall, leading with his rifle.
A moment later, she heard him say, “Clear,” and he came back to the door. He held out a hand to her but didn’t stop scanning the hallway. “You okay to walk?”
She nodded and tried not to look at Zaryanko’s body as she accepted his hand and followed him out of the kitchen. “I’m okay.”
“You’re lucky.” He stepped over another body sprawled across the hallway—Olesea, her gray hair matted with blood—then held up a fist in a halt gesture and checked around the next corner into another room.
“It’s clear, but stay behind me.” He took hold of her wrist in a firm grip. “I’m not risking you or your baby again.”
Your baby.
Not my baby. Not even our baby.
Your baby.
Mara’s heart sank. “Well, I guess that answers that question.”
His head never stopped moving, scanning for threats. “What question?”
“How you feel about our baby.”
He said nothing and stopped at the front door, which sat propped open. Cold outside air wafted into the foyer, and a shiver raised goose bumps on her bare arms.
“Coming out?” he called.
“Coming out,” someone answered.
Shouldering his rifle, he scooped her into his arms again and whisked her through the door into the swirling snow. Over his shoulder, she caught glimpses of two other men dressed in the same white-and-gray camouflage as him, their faces covered with paint. Both men also carried rifles and brought up the rear, always scanning, scanning, scanning for threats. Three more bodies stained the snow in the yard red.
Travis bundled her into the back of a cargo van with one of the two men from his team, then left without so much as a word of good-bye. A second later, two doors slammed shut up front, and the van rumbled to life. She craned her neck to see who sat in the driver’s seat, but a hand reached out and shut the mini door in the steel partition that separated the front from the van’s cargo area.
Travis’s hand. Shutting her out. Again.
She tried to convince herself that it didn’t hurt. Failed miserably. Why was he shutting her out?
“Mara,” the man beside her said in a comforting, twangy drawl that reminded her of home. He removed his ski mask, and his dark hair stuck up in sweaty spikes. His eyes were a warm, caring brown filled with relief—so unlike the snowy gray of Travis’s.
“Jesse!” She let the tears come and flung herself at him. His arms felt good around her, strong and safe, like a little bit of home.
“Hey, buttercup.” He held her tighter for a moment, then set her back at arm’s length and rubbed his thumb gently over her bruised cheek. “We’ll be stopping to pick up the rest of the team in a minute. They took the three women from the house to safety down in the village. But before they get back I wanna look you over, okay? Make sure you’re not injured.”
“I’m not,” she said but lay down on the pallet he indicated anyway, because she knew he wouldn’t relax until he’d seen for himself. “Have you spoken to my parents?”
Jesse’s brows slammed together and he opened his mouth as if about to say something, but then he shook his head and started his exam with her vital signs. “Does anything hurt?”
“My heart.” Her eyes filled with tears again. She couldn’t help it, but she’d be damned if she let any more fall. “Is Travis always…” Cold. Calculating. Unfeeling. Grim. She couldn’t settle on the right adjective and trailed off.
“Quinn?” Jesse scowled. “Yeah, he’s always everything you’re thinking.”
Mara turned her head away on the makeshift pillow as he performed the physical exam on her. “I’m such a fool.”
“Love does that to people.” When she blinked up at him, his lips quirked in a self-deprecating smile. “Don’t deny it. You know me—I’ve fallen enough times myself to know love when I see it.”
“I’m not denying it, but it doesn’t matter how I feel.”
“You’re probably right. Quinn’s goin’ to do what he’s goin’ to do. I suppose it won’t matter if I tell ya he’s absolutely the wrong man for you.”
“No. It won’t matter.”
“Figures.” He smiled down at her. “Little Mara’s goin’ to do what little Mara’s goin’ to do. Isn’t that what Uncle Jackson always said about you?”
“Yeah.” She huffed out a laugh and rested her hands on her stomach. “But I think Daddy would be surprised to see I’m not so little anymore.”
“Yeah, I bet so. Surprised the hell outta me when I found out.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
He waved a hand. “Nah, don’t be. I know why you were afraid to. And you were right to be worried. I’ve been actin’ like a jackass about it—as Lanie has delighted in tellin’ me throughout this whole mission.”
“Lanie’s here?” She started to get up, but he gently held her still.
“Yes, she’s with the rest of the team. You’ll see her when we stop. May I?” He indicated her stomach, and she nodded. He lifted her shirt and did a quick exam, then set his hand reverently on her belly. “Tell me the truth now. Do you feel okay?”
She nodded. “I’m fine. Banged up, tired. Hungry,” she added with a little laugh when her stomach gave a mighty growl.
Jesse smiled. “I can do somethin’ ’bout that. How do you feel about MREs?” He reached into one of the packs lining the wall and grabbed a small pouch. “Let’s see what we got here. Apple-cinnamon oatmeal. Sound good?”
“Sounds amazing, and I’m sure the baby will appreciate it, too. I…am a little worried,” she admitted because, well, this was Jesse. She could tell him anything without facing judgment—something she’d forgotten about him until just now. “I haven’t eaten in days, and I’ve been really nauseous since yesterday morning.”
He started heating the oatmeal for her, then opened the other packages included in the kit. “Sounds like normal morning sickness, but we’ll get you checked out as soon as we’re back in friendly territory.”
“Thank you.” She pulled her shirt down over her belly and accepted the toaster pastry he handed her. She was fairly certain it was the most wonderful thing she’d ever tasted, especially when she washed it down with a swig of the fruit punch drink he handed her next. Then came the oatmeal, and crackers with peanut butter, and applesauce. By the time the van rolled to a stop, she’d demolished it all and was sipping from a foam cup of cocoa.
Someone pounded on the back of the van and Jesse called, “One minute.” He turned to her and enclosed his hands around hers on the cup. “Mara, listen. I’m only goin’ to say this once, because it’ll hurt like hell to admit.”
She set down the cocoa and held his gaze. “Okay. I’m listening.”
He drew in a breath and let it out in a sigh. “I wasn’t happy about what happened between you and Quinn. I’m still not. Quinn is not the kind of guy I wa
nt for my baby cousin.”
“What if he’s the kind of guy I want?”
“Thought you might say that. And when I saw the way you looked at him back there… Well, I realized it’s not my decision to make, is it?”
“No,” she said as gently as she could, because she knew her bluntness would sting. “I know you mean well, Jesse. You and my brother both, but you’ve always been too protective. Between you two always worrying and Ramon always dictating, I haven’t been able to breathe. That’s part of the reason this happened. I just wanted…freedom, and Travis offered me that, even if it was for a short time.”
“Yeah.” He glanced away, obviously uncomfortable. “Thing is, I like Quinn, but I saw a lot of guys like him when I was with the army. Burned out, but they keep doin’ the job until they completely flame out or get themselves killed because they have nothin’ else. Quinn’s right on the edge of that. He needs somethin’ to care about.”
Her heart gave a hard thump. “Like?”
Jesse smiled a little and flattened one hand on her belly again. “You have that somethin’ right here. If you really do love him, you won’t let him push you and the little one away. He needs you both if he has any hope of making it.”
Relief surged through Mara, leaving her light-headed and nearly giddy. Her arms and legs even felt light, as if her shackles were truly broken and she was finally free to make her own decisions for the very first time in her adult life. No matter what she did, whatever mistakes she made, Jesse and her father’s side of the family would always love her. So would her brother. And her stepdad had never loved her to begin with, so why waste energy trying to please him? Or her mother, who was too weak to stand up to Ramon’s tyranny?
Mara wrapped her arms around her cousin and buried her face in the front of his coat. There were so many things she wanted to say to him. Instead, all that came out of her mouth was a teasing, “You love Travis, too, don’t you?”
Jesse scoffed and pushed her back at arm’s length. “Horrified” was the only word to describe his expression. “Straight guys don’t love each other.”
Broken Honor Page 14
