Broken Honor

by Burrows, Tonya

  Yeah, not exactly the expression he’d hoped for after dropping the L-bomb. Then again, he hadn’t handled the situation well. Those three words had popped out of his mouth without his conscious consent, and it had scared the living hell out of him to hear himself saying them. So instead of manning up and facing the consequences, good or bad, he’d made like a ghost and vanished. Just like he always did when it came to Mara.

  Fucking coward. Not honorable. Not even close to worthy of her, but fuck it. He was a selfish bastard, and he was done fighting his feelings for her. Didn’t know how, but he’d make their relationship work. He’d give Mara the man she deserved and that baby a daddy to be proud of.

  A chill shot down his spine and nailed him in the ass. Christ. Even now, the thought of being someone’s dad freaked him out. He sure had his work cut out for him, but for the first time, he thought he might actually be able to do it. He might even be a good father if he looked at it like a mission.

  Be advised, your objective is to raise a child from birth to adulthood so that she is a productive member of society. Minimum casualties.

  Copy that, Quinn thought, then shook his head at himself and stopped moving, taking cover behind the Belyakovs’ chicken coops. He sucked in a deep breath. His newfound determination in regards to fatherhood was all well and good, but he couldn’t let it distract him now. If he did, he’d never even see the baby. He’d never be able to apologize and make it up to Mara for screwing up his confession of love so badly.

  Focus on tonight’s mission first. The rest he could deal with later.

  Quinn sucked in a breath, let it out slowly through his nose, and slipped along the chicken coop until he faced the concrete wall surrounding the house.

  If anything, this was the most dangerous part. He was completely vulnerable as he pulled himself up and over the wall—but nobody bothered him, and he landed on his feet on the other side without incident. Weapon in hand again, he low-walked through the short open space between the wall and the tree line of the forest. He found a tree trunk wide enough to offer cover and ducked behind it. Listened.

  Nothing.

  It was looking more and more like Liam didn’t have as many men at his disposal as he’d wanted them to believe. Either that or he did have a platoon of men and they were all waiting at the front gate to storm the farm.

  Nah. The first possibility was much more likely.

  But that didn’t mean these guys were any less dangerous. Whether he had ten men or a hundred at his command, Liam wouldn’t tolerate anything less than brutal efficiency.

  But still, shouldn’t he be hearing…something? Up until now, between the taunts through the loudspeaker and the occasional potshots at the courtyard, Liam and his men had made no secret of their presence.

  Why go stealth all of the sudden?

  Unless they knew he was out here with them. And if that was the case, he might as well bend over now and kiss his ass good-bye. The element of surprise was about the only thing he had going for him.

  Except his instincts told him he still had that element. Liam’s biggest weakness was that he expected cowardice from his enemies—because for all of his specialized training and bluster, at his heart, he was a coward himself. He liked to blame Quinn for the murder of Rachael McDonald, the woman he claimed as his wife even though there was no marriage on record. But the truth of it was, he could have stopped her death from happening at any time before Quinn pulled the trigger. He could have warned Rachael that the cartel she did mercenary work for was about to crumble out from under her. He could have dropped the facade that he was an upstanding SAS operative and flipped sides to fight beside her. Hell, he was steps in front of Quinn when they went through that door—if he had loved her like he claimed, he could have even stepped in front of the bullet and taken it for her.

  But Liam was a coward.

  And he’d expect nothing less than that from Quinn.

  So, no. Quinn was confident they didn’t know he was outside the house. And, come to think of it, why hadn’t they attacked yet? It had to be after Liam’s midnight deadline by now.

  Something else was going on here.

  Quinn moved as fast as he could in the darkness and ankle-deep snow. His footfalls sounded like gunshots to him in the silence. A thin layer of ice crusted the top of the snow and cracked each time his foot broke through, but he couldn’t take the time to stop and fashion himself a crude pair of snowshoes.

  A shadow shot out of the trees at a dead run, no stealth whatsoever, and slammed into him before he could jump out of the way. They went down in a tangle of limbs, and Quinn let go of his gun in favor of his knife. He slid it into the guy’s kidney and that was the end of it. Nice and quiet.

  Quinn rolled him over and pulled off his mask. If he was a SEAL, Quinn didn’t know him, but was that…?

  Holy shit. He already had two other knife holes in his chest. No wonder he hadn’t had much fight left in him.

  Quinn pushed to his feet and grabbed the dead man’s gun, scooped up his own, and continued picking his way toward the front of the property. But the closer he got, the more his skin crawled with unease.

  Too. Fucking. Quiet.

  The kind of quiet that only came with the dead. He stopped short, his nerves jangling, which was nothing new. If anyone said they weren’t nervous going into a combat situation, they were either lying or sociopaths. But behind the usual nerves was a klaxon of alarm blaring that he needed to get gone. As in, right fucking now.

  How had the guy ended up knifed?

  Still, the panic could be his brain injury talking. Ever since the accident, he’d become much more reactive than he’d ever been before. He took another handful of steps…

  Blood.

  Huge swaths of it, dark against the snow.

  And bodies. Seven of them littered the ground around a still-running SUV, and among those was Bauer. He also recognized two more SEALs, a guy he’d worked with from Delta Force, and two of Liam’s SAS friends whom nobody had ever expected of wrongdoing. The other man he didn’t know. All were very, very deceased, unless a guy could live without his intestines inside his body.

  Jesus Christ.

  Quinn swallowed back bile. He’d seen a lot of nasty in his life, but this? It was Jack the Ripper–level brutality.

  None of the bodies was Liam.

  Quinn raised his weapon and circled to the driver’s side of the SUV. He yanked open the door and found another man sitting up in the seat with his hands tied to the wheel. Someone had written “Captain Cold” across his forehead under a neat bullet hole.

  For a half second, Quinn forgot how to breathe as he stared into a face very similar to Gabe’s. Same dark hair, square jaw, hazel eyes.

  Captain Michael Bristow.

  Jesus Christ. This was the guy Gabe had recognized at the airfield. The man who had shot him and run away like a coward. His own fucking brother.

  A megaphone sat on Michael’s lap with something scrawled on the side of the bloodstained trumpet in marker…

  Quinn’s name.

  He reached in to turn the thing over and realized a half second too late there was a trip wire attached. Something hit the floor with a dull thunk, and the vehicle’s engine revved, its wheels spinning in the snow, looking for traction. He grabbed the megaphone and stumbled backward just as the SUV lurched forward, headed directly for the front gate of the Belyakovs’ farm.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Every minute after midnight that ticked by without an attack ramped up the tension in the room. The men were all getting twitchy, sweating, and the stink of their nerves had Mara’s stomach rolling.

  It was ten after midnight and all was silent.

  “Somethin’s wrong,” Jesse finally said and a rumble of agreement went through the group.

  “Maybe Travis stopped them,” she offered, but Jesse didn’t waste any time shooting down that frail hope.

  “No. Somethin’s wrong.”

  “Do you think he—”


  Outside, the megaphone screeched again. “Get out of there! Out of the house! Now!”

  Mara’s blood froze in her veins. It wasn’t Liam’s voice on the megaphone, but Travis’s.

  The room around her burst into action. Jesse pulled open the trapdoor to the cellar. “Move! Go to the shed, out the back.”

  Jean-Luc scooped up Nadejda and carried her down the ladder, while Rustam helped his wife.

  Jesse motioned her down next. “Go.”

  “What’s happening?”

  He shook his head and gave her a gentle push toward the cellar door as a screech of metal on metal rent the night, followed by a crash that shook the whole house under her feet.

  Heart thundering, she clambered down the ladder, and the team followed in quick succession until only Jesse was left topside. He tossed his rucksack down first then grabbed for the first rung—

  A fireball exploded behind him.

  …

  The SUV crashed to a halt, wedged into the alcove outside the kitchen, and for a moment, nothing happened.

  Quinn raced toward the twisted remnants of metal that used to be the Belyakovs’ front gate—and the vehicle exploded with enough force to set off a chain reaction, blowing all of Ian’s fertilizer bombs at the same time. The heat was incredible and seared Quinn’s face even as the blast threw him off his feet. Fire soared into the sky, casting the world in an eerie orange-red light that danced across the glossy snow.

  Dazed, he sat up and realized the burning sensation in his hand was the megaphone’s plastic fusing with his glove. He yanked the glove off, threw it aside, and in the flickering light of the flames read the message left for him on the megaphone’s trumpet.

  Quinn,

  This setup wasn’t working for me. Until next time, here’s a little something to remember me by.

  Cheers,

  —L

  Oh, Christ. No.

  Quinn shoved to his feet, but he couldn’t get any closer to the house.

  To Mara.

  The team.

  The flames were too hot. Even this close, his skin burned and his eyes watered.

  Maybe he’d warned them in time. Maybe they’d gotten out or—

  The cellar.

  He ran around the outskirts of the property, slipping and sliding across the ice and snow, and found the shed still standing. Nearby, the chickens squawked in their coop and the Belyakovs’ goat gave fearful bleating cries that burrowed into his brain with claws. His vision blurred, his skin prickled, and the light of the fire took on a colorful aura that warned of an impending migraine.

  He had about twenty minutes until he was useless.

  He yanked open the shed’s wooden doors. Smoke poured from the back of the building, and he took the time to pull off his coat. He drew one last breath of the clean air, held the coat to his face and plunged inside. He couldn’t see a fucking thing and moved by memory. The path from the shed sloped in a ramp down to the bottle storage area, then there would be another door and—

  He bumped into someone. Rustam Belyakov.

  “Where is everyone?” His voice was raw and completely unrecognizable to his own ears and the old man spared no heed to the questions as he ushered his family to safety.

  Quinn noticed light streaming from the partly open door at the other side of the room. Not fire. It was soft, steady, and white—a flashlight. He ran toward it, shoved the door the rest of the way open, and came face-to-face with the muzzle of a weapon.

  “Friendly,” he choked out.

  “Friendly,” the man behind the weapon called to the rest of the team, but his voice was also shot and Quinn couldn’t make out who it was at first. Then the guy cursed in French and the flashlight shifted to light Jean-Luc’s soot-streaked face. “Holy shit, Quinn. What the fuck happened up there?”

  “Later. Where’s Mara?”

  Jean-Luc’s gaze skirted away. The Cajun stepped aside in damn near slow motion and shone the light farther up the tunnel and Quinn’s heart almost stopped.

  There she was. Alive.

  Light-headedness set in, but the sharp breath he sucked in made him cough.

  Mara was alive and whole and uninjured, leaning over something on the floor. Or, no, not leaning. She was giving someone mouth-to-mouth.

  “Who?” Quinn demanded, striding forward.

  Jean-Luc stayed right on his heels. “Jesse got caught in the blast. Not in the flames, but he was on the ladder, and the percussion threw him down here. He stopped breathing.”

  Mara sobbed every time she came up for air. “Jesse, c’mon. Please.”

  “Sweetheart, let me.” Quinn touched her shoulder, and she stared up at him, dazed. Tears left trails on her dirty face, and her eyes were glazed with a wild kind of fear. She shoved him away, sucked in a breath, and bent over her cousin again.

  Jesse wheezed, coughed, and his eyes flew open.

  “Oh, God.” Mara threw her arms around his neck, sobbed into his hair. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

  Lanie sat back on her knees beside Mara and released an explosive breath. “Goddammit, cowboy,” she muttered and squeezed her eyes shut, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Just…goddammit.”

  Overhead, the ceiling gave an ominous groan.

  “We need to move.” As gently as Quinn could, he pried Mara away from her cousin and motioned Marcus and Jean-Luc—the least injured among the group—forward. They each wedged a shoulder under the semiconscious medic’s arms and hauled him upright.

  “Go!” Quinn said, scooping Mara into his arms, and Harvard and Ian took the lead through the thickening heat and smoke with Seth bringing up the rear.

  Outside, the wind had picked up and felt like needles to the skin. Snow and smoke swirled around them, but a noise beyond the roar of the flames caught Quinn’s attention.

  Christ, he’d never been so glad to hear the whap whap whap of an incoming helo. He set Mara down but held her against his side and hoped to God these guys were friendlies.

  Several ropes fell from the bird, and six white-clad men slid down. Once they were all on the ground, the helo swerved away, presumably to find a place to land, and the men made short work of securing the area, mainly because there wasn’t a whole lot of area left to secure. Only the shed and chicken coops remained standing.

  Finally, two of the men broke away from the rest and strode over.

  “Looks like we missed one helluva fight,” Tucker Quentin said. The billionaire owner of HORNET’s parent company pulled off his hood and snow mask and gave his famous Hollywood smile. “Let me guess, we should see the other guys?”

  Quinn sagged with relief, and the only thing that kept him from collapsing was the fact he still had Mara in his arms. “The other guys are dead, but it wasn’t our doing. How the fuck did you get here?”

  “Jace Garcia,” Tuc said. “He picked us up in Romania.”

  Quinn’s throat tightened. “And Gabe?”

  “My medic’s with him. Rex managed to stabilize him and they are on their way to the best trauma hospital in the U.K. as we speak.” He smiled at Mara and held out a hand to her. “And you must be Mara Escareno.”

  She nodded and accepted his hand but couldn’t seem to form words. She was going into shock, and Quinn hugged her close.

  “I sincerely hope you have another medic with you. We have injured.”

  Tuc nodded. “My explosives tech is cross-trained as a medic.” He whistled between his teeth. “Carreras!”

  One of the men jogged over and smacked Tuc aside the head as he passed. “I’m not a dog, Hollywood.” Stopping in front of Mara, he set his pack on the ground. He dug around inside, found a stethoscope and looped it over his shoulder, then smiled at her and softened his voice to something close to a caress. “Hi, there, sweet. I’m Sean. Let me take a look at you, okay?”

  Quinn tightened his arm possessively around her. The way this Sean Carreras guy talked to her reminded him of Jean-Luc when the Cajun was in seduction mode, and h
e wasn’t so sure he liked that.

  “I’ll take care of her.” So back the fuck off. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from saying that part out loud, but he was sure the message came across loud and clear on his face. After a moment, he added, “But some of my men are severely injured. One broken arm, some ribs. Our medic stopped breathing and we brought him back, but he’s not stable.”

  “Got it.” Sean offered Mara another quicksilver smile before picking up his pack again and jogging over to where Jesse lay in the snow.

  And, yeah, Quinn really didn’t like that smile, either.

  “Don’t worry about Carreras,” Tuc said. “He’s harmless.”

  Harmless, my ass. Carreras had the look of a panty-dropping predator, and he didn’t want Mara anywhere near the guy. He steered her away from the fire and the men, and Tuc called after them, “We have transport arriving, ETA ten minutes.”

  He acknowledged the info with a thumbs-up and sat Mara down on a chunk of crumbled wall. He didn’t like how pale she was or that she hadn’t spoken a word since the tunnel. Maybe he should call Carreras back.

  He cupped her cheeks in his hands and rubbed at the soot staining her face. “Mara?”

  Her eyes tracked from the fire to him. “I want to go home.”

  “We’re going, baby. As soon as our transport arrives, we’re gone and I promise you—”

  “No.” She jerked away from his touch. “You’re not allowed to make promises to me. I can’t—” Her voice broke, and she stood, backed several feet away. “I love you, but I’m starting to realize you don’t love yourself enough to stay healthy and safe. You’ll just keep putting yourself in the line of fire like you did tonight. Again and again, until you get killed.”

  Quinn swallowed back the lump blocking his throat. “What are you saying?”

  She trembled and wrapped her arms around herself. “I won’t keep you from seeing the baby, but I can’t live the kind of life you lead. I’m not strong enough, and I don’t want to be the person they hand the flag to when they bury you. I—I can’t.”

  Each word hit him like a blow, one after the other, but he sat there and took the beating. It was less than he deserved. And he’d known all along he couldn’t be the man she needed, so really, why was he surprised by this?