And now we come to the second reason I’m writing you. Fair warning, it’s going to hurt.
I lied to you, buddy. When you asked me about the moments before the car accident and if you had said anything to me? Yeah, I lied. You did tell me something. In the days before the accident, you found files that proved widespread corruption, and you suspected it stretched all the way up the chain of command. I was so entrenched in the navy at that point, I didn’t want to hear it, and we were arguing about it when the truck sideswiped us. I know you don’t remember any of this, but you mentioned you put the files on a flash drive. You wouldn’t give me any names of the people involved other than Liam, and I don’t know what you did with the drive. You didn’t have it with you because you were nervous they’d try something to make sure those files never saw the light of day. It’s a good bet you were right to worry and that’s what this clusterfuck is all about. I just didn’t realize it until you spotted Liam here in Transnistria. Part of me hoped this all had something to do with Mara and not us. Should have known better, right? Given our track record.
Find those files, Quinn. ASAP.
You’re probably swearing right about now. Pissed off at me, and I don’t blame you for that. I should have told you sooner, but I was afraid for you, man. Afraid of the shitstorm it would have brewed up and what they’d do if you pushed them. So when you didn’t remember any of this, I decided it was easier, safer for you, if I let it drop. It was wrong to let them get away with it for so long and I’m sorry for that. I just wanted to protect you.
I know I don’t have much right to ask you for a favor at this point, but I’m going to anyway. Don’t take your anger at me out on Audrey. If I’m gone, she’s already hurting, and I wish more than anything I could take her pain away. Please look after her for me.
And look after yourself. Get healthy. Find some happiness. Have a good life. God knows you deserve it more than anyone.
I’d better not see you for at least fifty years, but when you do get to the afterlife, look me up. I’m gonna miss you, man.
Over and out,
Gabe
Quinn folded the paper and stared at the floor in his hotel room for…he didn’t know how long. Too long, probably, but the note was too much to process, and his brain was scrambling to make sense of it.
Gabe had known about the corruption all along. And he’d ignored it, brushed it under the rug. To protect Quinn.
And…to protect Jasper and Michael Bristow?
No. Gabe had said he didn’t know the names of the people involved, and it made sense that Quinn would have kept that to himself…to protect Gabe.
Dammit, he couldn’t be angry when he would have done the exact same thing in Gabe’s shoes.
I’m gonna miss you, man.
He was going to miss Gabe, too, more than he could vocalize. Very carefully, he refolded the letter and replaced it in its envelope. He had to keep it safe because before this was over, he’d need to see his best friend’s words of good-bye again. And maybe he’d need them every day until the hole Gabe’s death created in his heart started to heal. But right now, he was cold down to the marrow of his bones and so raw that even the weight of the clothes on his back was painful. He tried to imagine his life without both Gabe and Mara in it and couldn’t do it.
Didn’t want to do it.
Didn’t want to live it.
His cell phone rang, vibrating across the nightstand, and he grabbed it before it jittered over the edge. A cold pit opened up in his stomach when he spotted Audrey’s number on the screen, and he silenced the call. He didn’t have to answer. He already knew what she was going to say.
Gabe was gone.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The whole team was there, milling around in the hallway in front of Gabe’s room. Quinn refused to meet their gazes, didn’t want to see their grief when his own was sharp enough to slice him in two.
He drew a breath, fortifying himself before he went through the door, expecting to be overwhelmed by the sorrow of a widowed woman.
Instead, Audrey was laughing. She was leaning over the bed and laughing.
Quinn slammed to a halt, disoriented. Hope and adrenaline sang through his veins, and he moved forward on autopilot, his stomach fluttering.
Gabe’s eyes were open, and they shifted from his wife to Quinn. He reached up with a shaking hand, and Quinn met him halfway, clasping their palms together.
“Hey, man. About time you stopped sleeping on the job. You know I hate being in charge.”
Audrey gave a startled laugh. “Quinn!”
Gabe’s hand slipped from his, and he made a scribbling motion at Audrey.
“Oh. Okay. Hang on, honey.” She turned to grab a whiteboard and a dry-erase marker. “His doctor is going to try weaning him off the ventilator later today. Since he can’t talk until the breathing tube comes out, the nurse gave us this so he could communicate,” she explained, handing him the marker. She positioned the board in front of him, and it took him a few tries, but he finally scrawled out, F U, Q. Then he emphasized it by sticking up his middle finger.
“Gabe!” Audrey said in the same half-horrified, half-amused tone she’d used moments ago with Quinn. Her husband gave her a reassuring thumbs-up before his hand dropped heavily back to the bed and his eyes fell shut.
Yeah, Gabe was back. He wasn’t going anywhere yet.
Quinn leaned over the bed’s railing and lowered his voice, “Gabe, do you remember what happened?”
Yes, he wrote. Then his gaze lifted, and despite the cloudiness brought on by pain meds, his eyes asked all sorts of worried questions.
Quinn nodded. “Yeah, I read it, but I’m not pissed off at you, okay? I get why you didn’t say anything. I would have done the same to protect you.”
He blinked slowly, a silent thank-you.
“But you know I can’t drop it now, right?” Quinn hesitated. “And this is going to hit close to home for you.”
Gabe nodded with his eyes more than his head and scrawled, Michael shot me.
“Yeah, I know. He’s dead, but Jasper’s in this, too, and he’s more than willing to kill you to keep his secrets. He’s already tried twice.”
Gabe paused for a moment, his hand dropping with exhaustion. Then he wrote, Twice? The car accident?
“Wasn’t an accident. And maybe Michael and Jasper weren’t directly involved, but they knew someone was going to try for me, and they were okay with you ending up collateral damage to protect themselves.” He tilted his head toward the ventilator that was currently breathing for Gabe. “And now Jasper wants to pull the plug on you.”
“What?” Audrey demanded.
Let them. I can breathe on my own. I’ll pull the plug myself.
Quinn chuckled. “That’ll piss them off, huh?”
Gabe blinked twice, then added in big letters, Not my family anymore. Fuck them over 4 me.
“Hooyah,” Quinn said. “I’ll make things right.”
Gabe swiped his palm over the board, erasing it. He had to pause for several long minutes to gather his strength, then he wrote, Mara?
Quinn huffed out a breath that was caught somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Nag, nag, nag.”
u already fucked it up?
“Probably.” At Gabe’s narrow-eyed glare, he threw up his hands in surrender. “All right, yeah. But I’ll fix that, too.”
Go 2 Mara 1st. He underlined the statement twice, then added, rest can wait.
“Yeah, yeah. When did you turn into such a romantic?”
Gabe dropped the marker and groped for his wife’s hand. He raised it to his cheek, leaned into her palm.
Audrey laughed through her tears. “I think he’s saying I’m rubbing off on him.”
The conversation must have drained him because he drifted off just like that, his cheek pillowed on her hand. Audrey freed herself and lovingly stroked his hair. She leaned over to kiss his forehead.
Yup. Time to leave.
Quinn sl
ipped out the door and closed it. The guys were still in the hall, and a hopeful optimism permeated the air.
“He’s going to be okay now, isn’t he?” Harvard asked.
Quinn looked at the closed door, and the fluttering in his stomach exploded into a sense of euphoria so heady it made him dizzy. He couldn’t control the laugh that erupted from his chest. “Yeah. He’s already issuing orders. He’ll make it.”
The bubble of tension surrounding the team popped. Shoulders relaxed, smiles appeared. Laughter rippled through the group. Someone cracked a joke. Someone else suggested a round of drinks to celebrate. They were in London, after all. You couldn’t throw a stone without hitting a pub.
Quinn held up both of his hands. “Guys. Wait. This isn’t over yet.”
The noise settled, and everyone got serious again.
“Liam?” Jesse said. After his close brush with death, he’d let the doctors check him out but had refused to stay in the hospital.
“Yeah,” Quinn answered. “Liam’s a problem we still need to deal with, but after killing Michael and Bauer and the rest of them like he did, he’s gone to ground. If he’s smart, we won’t be seeing him for a while.”
“So then what’s up?” Marcus asked.
“I need volunteers to guard Gabe’s room.”
“You should know you don’t even have to ask,” Seth said, and everyone else voiced their agreements. “But if not Liam, who are we keeping out?”
“His family. None of the Bristows except Raffi are allowed inside.”
Jesse whistled. “Dayam. That’s not gonna go over well.”
Quinn nodded. “It could get ugly. I’m sure Gabe will also tell the hospital staff he doesn’t want Jasper or Catherine around, but I’d still feel better knowing you guys were here to make sure they stay away.”
“Why? What’s goin’ on?”
Quinn hesitated a beat, weighing his options. In the end, he decided the guys deserved to know. And, if something happened to him, they’d be able to take over where he left off. He explained everything as concisely as he could—the widespread corruption, the files, the car accident that wasn’t an accident, the Bristow family’s involvement. When he finished, there was a beat of silence.
Finally, Jesse said, “Okay.”
Quinn managed to hide his surprise at the easy acceptance, but just barely. “Okay,” he echoed. “I have to figure out what I did with those files. I know I wouldn’t have kept them in my home. I would have stashed the drive someplace I knew nobody would ever look.”
“Which would be where?” Harvard asked.
“Hell if I know.”
“Would you have left clues for yourself?”
Quinn had to laugh. Sometimes he forgot how young Harvard truly was. “Nah. I didn’t know I was going to end up with faulty wiring.” He tapped his temple.
“We could fake the files easily enough,” Harvard said. Everyone looked at him, and color stained his cheeks. “I mean, I could fake them. They’d be real enough to pull off a bait and switch. If we have something more concrete to turn over to the authorities—like a confession—we won’t need the copies you made.”
Jesse opened his mouth but apparently couldn’t think of a protest, because he closed it again and shrugged. “It’s actually not a bad plan, except for one thing. How we goin’ to pass off the fakes as the real deal?”
“Well.” Harvard pushed his glasses up his nose. “All we need is for one of us to convincingly switch sides.”
Quinn glanced up as movement at the end of the hall caught his attention. “You mean like a traitor?”
Everyone followed his gaze to Jace Garcia, who hesitated a good ten feet away. “I know I’m not welcome, but I had to find out how Gabe’s doing before I leave town.”
Quinn sent Jesse a sidelong glance.
The medic glowered but then sighed and rubbed his temple. “You saved his life, Garcia. He wouldn’t have made it without your help.”
“So he’ll recover?”
“The prognosis is good,” Jesse said.
Garcia nodded. “Okay. Thanks for telling me.”
Quinn let him walk several steps away before calling, “Hey, Garcia. We’re big about second chances around here. Want to redeem yourself?”
…
“You sure we can trust him?”
Quinn lowered the binoculars and glanced over at Seth, who sat in the driver’s seat of a rented SUV. “No. And that’s why this will work. They think Garcia is one of theirs.”
“Well, he’s not one of ours,” Jesse said from the backseat.
“No,” Quinn agreed and lifted the binoculars again. “I don’t think he’s anybody’s. He does what suits him.”
Across the hospital parking lot, Garcia waited by the car Jasper Bristow had left twenty minutes ago. Any moment now, The Admiral would be returning to it, hopefully shaken by the fact Gabe was alive, awake, and strong enough to come off the ventilator today.
“Hey, there he is,” Seth said and whistled. “Oh, man. He looks pissed.”
“Not as pissed as he’s gonna be when he realizes he’s been had,” Quinn said.
Jasper stopped short at the sight of Garcia leaning on his car. Words were exchanged. Garcia motioned to their SUV.
“Dayam,” Jesse said. “What’s he doin’? He’s not supposed to expose us.”
“Hang on. Give him a chance.”
“Uh,” Seth said. “They’re coming this way. That was not part of the plan.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Jesse said. “We’ve given him plenty of chances, and he keeps fuckin’ them up.”
Yeah, they were right. The pilot had just fubar’d all of their previous plans to use the fake drive to leverage a confession. Time to improvise. “Stay here and hidden until Jasper reaches for his weapon.”
“You think he will?” Seth asked.
“I know he will.” Quinn grabbed the handle and shoved open the door. He strode across the parking lot, meeting the pair halfway. “You’re a liar, Garcia.”
He shrugged. “It’s what I do.”
“You don’t want redemption.”
“Nah. Money’s better. And speaking of…” He turned to the Admiral and handed over the fake flash drive. “This one’s a fake, but I know what’s on the real one. If you want my silence, you got it. For a price.”
The Admiral took the drive and crushed it under his boot, then opened his wallet and pulled out several thousand in fresh five-hundred-dollar bills. “That should do.”
Garcia’s mouth kicked up in a smile as he pocketed the money. “For now. We’ll be in touch.” And with that, he jogged away.
Fucking Garcia.
“Once a traitor, always a traitor,” Jasper said with a smirk. “So, Quinn. Here we are. I have to tell you, I only agreed to this meeting as courtesy to you. You were a good SEAL at one time.”
“Funny.” Quinn crossed his arms over his chest. “I was going to say the same thing about you. What happened, Jasper? Was it the money? Or did you just get bored walking the straight and narrow?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. It’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” He pulled another flash drive from his pocket and held it up. “I suspected Garcia would betray us again, so yes, that drive he gave you is a fake. This one? Not so much. You know what’s on here?”
Jasper’s jaw tightened until a muscle in his temple jumped, but he kept silent.
“The top-secret documents I stole from the Department of the Navy. Actually, from you. I highly doubt the navy had any previous knowledge of these documents. And until recently I didn’t have any knowledge of them, either.” He tapped his temple. “Car accident scrambled my brain, and I didn’t remember. But that accident wasn’t an accident at all, was it? Was it hard to convince Michael that the only way to keep your pockets lined was to have his big brother—your son—killed? I’m betting not.”
Jasper still said nothing, but he didn’t have to confess in w
ords. The guilt was written all over his eyes.
Quinn nodded. “Yeah. It was your way of trying to get rid of me—and Gabe, because you couldn’t be sure I hadn’t said something to him—without making it look like an obvious murder, which would raise too many questions. Kicker is, the whole thing might not have gone down as you planned, but it worked. If you hadn’t sent Urban after Mara, I probably would have gone on not remembering. Hell, I still don’t remember all of it. All I know is what I left for myself in a handful of notes when I downloaded the documents.”
A red flush worked its way up Jasper’s neck and into his face. “What do you want? I’m sure we can work something out and put this whole mess behind us.”
“I want you to stop trying to kill me and those I love.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“Yeah, nobody believes that. You were just too damn afraid I’d spill your secrets to leave well enough alone.”
Jasper ground his teeth together. “That car accident should have been fatal. You were supposed to die.”
“But I didn’t.” Quinn shrugged. “What can I say, I’m stubborn like that. Only thing I can’t figure out is why you got Liam involved. You had to know he wouldn’t play by your rules.”
“He was supposed to be an easy scapegoat,” Jasper said after a beat of silence. “All we had to do was dangle the possibility of revenge, and he was on board. If things went sour, the shit was going to fall on his head, not mine or Michael’s.”
“That worked out well. There’s now a shitstorm bearing down on you.”
“We didn’t expect him to kill everyone. He was making money off us, too, and we assumed he wanted to keep our business arrangements intact.”
“Yeah, that’s the thing about criminals. Can’t trust ’em. Which is why, Jasper, I didn’t come here alone. So that gun you’re reaching for to kill me? Wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Behind him, the SUV’s door opened. He pointed downward, and Jasper gazed at the red laser dot centered over his heart. The hand that had been inching toward his side froze.
Quinn didn’t bother concealing his smile. “You remember Seth Harlan, don’t you?”
Broken Honor Page 27
