Broken Honor (13 page)

That was a surprise. Gabe’s nickname in the teams had been Stonewall because he was usually just about as reactive as one. Nothing much rattled him beyond fear for his wife’s safety, so those memories must be a special type of hell to keep him awake at night.

Still, Quinn would prefer the nightmares. “There’s this blank spot in my mind. I can remember dinner the Friday before the accident, right down to how much it cost, what my waiter’s name was, and what I left for a tip. Then…nothing until I woke up in the hospital. Almost a whole month—just gone. Like it never fucking happened.”

“Pretty sure with brain trauma that’s normal,” Gabe said.

“Yeah, that’s what the docs all say. Thing is, I’ve had this nagging feeling since I woke up in the hospital. Like there’s something I have to do or… Fuck, I don’t know.” Full of restless energy, he stood. Paced across the small bedroom, then returned. “Before the accident, did I tell you anything?”

Gabe snorted. “You never tell me shit.”

“Gabe, I’m serious. I need to know what I said, what I did.”

Gabe hesitated. “You acted pissed off about something when you picked me up that morning, but I brushed it off as a bad night or a lack of caffeine or both. Whatever had your dick in a twist, you never said anything about it to me.”

Quinn stopped moving, a sudden thought pinning him in place as surely as glue on the bottom of his boots. “Do you blame me?”

“What?” Gabe said with an expression of genuine surprise.

“Do you blame me for the accident?”

“What?” he repeated with a shake of his head. “Shit, no. Why would I?”

“Because I was driving.”

“Q, c’mon. It was that asshole in the pickup truck’s fault. It’s damn lucky he didn’t hurt anybody else weaving in and out of traffic like he was. When he shoved us into that semi, there was no stopping it, no avoiding it. The same thing would’ve happened had I been behind the wheel. Hey, hey.” Gabe stood and caught his shoulders, forcing him to stop pacing. “Listen to me, bro. I don’t blame you.”

Quinn let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding for nearly two years. Gabe didn’t blame him for ruining their SEAL careers. Good to know.

Now if only he could stop blaming himself.

Outside the bedroom door, he heard the team moving around. Jean-Luc cracked a joke, as usual. Harvard laughed. Jesse told them both to fuck off.

Good men. They all were.

Quinn was going to miss them.

Mind made up, he drew a breath and met Gabe’s eyes. “I’m resigning as HORNET’s XO.”

“Whoa. Wait a second, Q. You—”

“No, you’re right. I’m a liability. I shouldn’t even be going on this op now, but—well, this one’s non-negotiable. I have to find Mara. But once she’s safe…” He glanced toward the door and something cracked in the vicinity of his heart. “Yeah, I’m done.”

Chapter Fourteen

Gabe said nothing for several endless minutes. Finally, he walked toward the door but paused next to Quinn and handed over two slips of what Quinn first thought were white paper.

No, wait. It was a photo, ripped in half.

“I went by your place before I left Washington,” Gabe said. “Your house was ransacked.
Looked more like someone was searching for something than a run-of-the-mill burglary.”

What the hell was going on? He shook his head. “This doesn’t make sense. I don’t have anything anyone would want.”

Gabe shrugged, then motioned to the photo. “On my way out, I found that on the floor. The rest were destroyed beyond saving. Thought you’d want it.”

He left.

Quinn stayed rooted to the spot, staring at the closed door until he worked up the nerve to look at the photo. He knew what he’d see, and chills raced through his body as he turned the two pieces over.

Samuel and Bianca Quinn. Their faces smiled up at him from the ruined photo. The doctor and the ICU nurse who’d felt bad enough for a poor, abused ten-year-old that they’d agreed to open their home and hearts to him as he recovered from the gunshot inflicted on him by his own father. They were the one bright spot in the darkness that was Quinn’s life. For six all too short years, they were his family. Not Big Ben and Cherice Jewett, the man and woman who’d given him life. No, it was Sam and Bianca, who had shown him life could be good.

Quinn bowed double over the photo, his heart riding high in his throat, choking off the dry sobs that racked his body. Gabe had said the few other photos he had of them were destroyed. They were gone. Now he had nothing left of them but unreliable memories that got fuzzier and fuzzier each day.

Whoever did this would pay.

No, fuck that. Whoever did this would die.

On a shaky breath, Quinn straightened and dragged his hands through his overgrown hair. Sorrow and rage iced over into a solid layer of determination. He spotted the bag Gabe had packed for him in the corner of the room and snapped it up before going in search of the house’s bathroom. The guys and Lanie looked up as he passed through the kitchen, but nobody said anything—not even Jesse.

The bathroom was a closet off the living room, but it had all the amenities of a Western bathroom, including a shower with hot and cold running water. He set his bag down on the toilet and took stock of his appearance in the scratched mirror over the sink. It showed him a man he barely recognized. Sunken eyes, cheekbones that stood out in stark relief on a face that hadn’t seen a razor blade in a very long time. His dark blond hair had grown so long that it brushed the tops of his shoulders and hung in limp tangles.

Look at him. Sam and Bianca would be so disappointed in what he’d become these past few months. Drunk and self-medicating when he wasn’t on a mission with HORNET. Perpetually pissed off at the world, at himself…

He’d become Big Ben after all.

Christ.

Bile burned on the back of his tongue at the realization, and he unzipped his bag. His battery-powered razor lay right there on top, and he said a mental thank-you to Gabe for packing it and his shave kit. After hunting up the crappy pair of scissors he kept in the kit, he hacked off chunks of hair, cutting it as short as he could with the dull blades. The razor got the rest and tamed his beard. He jumped in the shower, dipped his head under the cold water, and scrubbed his hands over the remaining stubble, then cleaned up with the small bar of soap from his shave kit. He found a T-shirt and fresh pair of urban-print cammies at the bottom of his bag and pulled them on without bothering to dry off. Gazing up, he met his own bloodshot eyes in the mirror.

That was more like it. The man staring back at him looked more like the Quinn he remembered from before the damned car accident that destroyed his career.

All conversation came to a halt when he returned to the kitchen. Their stares brought on an uncomfortable flush along the back of his neck. Damn. He must have looked in bad shape before if this was their reaction to seeing him looking somewhat like himself again.

He cleared his throat. “What’s going on?”

Silence.

“Guys?”

“Oh.” Harvard dropped his gaze to the radio in his hand. “Uh, I was just saying I haven’t been able to raise Seth, Ian, or Marcus by radio. The radios suck, so the one they have could have just crapped out, but still. And Garcia missed his last check-in, which could mean trouble. If our exfil route is compromised…”

“Let’s work on finding Mara first,” Gabe said. “Worry about Garcia later.”

Quinn nodded his agreement. “I’ll try Seth’s phone.” He fished his cell out of his leg pocket and turned it on, pleased to see that Ian and Marcus’s efforts installing satellite dishes and signal boosters on nearby buildings had come to fruition. For the first time since he got his phone back, he had a signal. Weak, but maybe enough to—

A text message popped up from a number he didn’t recognize.

in car license t219ax going NE

“What the hell?” He read it again. And again. And then scrolled down when he realized he had several other messages from the same number.

nz sent me 2 olesea says i go 2 dubai 2morrow

hide phone now leaving on please find me travis

Every last molecule of air hissed out of his lungs. He swayed a little as the room started a spin that couldn’t be healthy.

“Q?” Gabe said, concern in his voice.

“It’s Mara.”

All motion in the room stopped and suddenly Jesse was by his side, snatching the phone from his hand.

“Thatta girl,” Jesse murmured.

Lanie grabbed the phone next and grinned. “Way to go, Mara.”

Quinn smiled a little, pride shining a brief beacon of light inside his dark soul. Mara was smart. Stronger than anyone gave her credit for. Resourceful.

And his.

Even if she never forgave him for…well, everything, his heart had her name carved into it for eternity. He’d known it from the very first time she’d kissed him in her living room all those months ago—exactly why he’d tried to run as fast and as far away from her as he could.

What a fucking fool he was.

Quinn took the phone from Lanie and passed it to Harvard. “Can you track a Transnistrian license plate?”

Harvard winced. “You know I hate to doubt my own abilities, but I’m not entirely sure it’s possible. Because Transnistria is unrecognized, there might not be any records to trace. Or, if there are, they might not be digital. I can take a peek, but it will take time we can’t afford.”

“Do it,” Quinn said. “Fast as you can.”

Harvard gave a solemn nod and sat behind his computer, his fingers already tickling the keyboard like an expert pianist. “I’m on it, boss. Wait.” He straightened away from his computer and smacked his palm against his head. “I’m an idiot. We don’t need to trace the license. All we need is the phone. There are so few cell towers in the country that finding out which the messages pinged off should give us a search area.”

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.