Weapon aimed, he melted into the jungle shadows alongside the road and moved toward the car, keeping down and to the right so he’d come up in the driver’s blind spot.
And what do you know, it wasn’t abandoned. Chloe still sat in the driver’s seat. She jumped when he opened the passenger side door and pointed his gun at her forehead.
“Hi,” he said. “Mind if I join you? No? Great.”
Her eyes flicked from his gun to his face then skipped away. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Could say the same of you, Mrs. Van Amee.”
Her hands tightened on the steering wheel until her manicured nails dug into the braided leather. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?”
She pressed those grotesque, collagen-injected lips together, refusing to answer.
“Chloe.” He made her name into the verbal equivalent of a dagger, all edges, and she flinched.
“I’m sorry.” She turned in the seat, brown eyes wide and wild as tears spilled over. “God, I am so sorry. I-I love my husband, and I didn’t think anyone would get hurt. Rorro—” She said his name with a Spanish inflection, rolling the Rs, and Gabe held up a hand to stop her.
Average American women from Kansas couldn’t roll their Rs like that.
“Your real name isn’t Chloe,” he said. “Who are you?”
“Claudia.” Just like that, she dropped the perfect Midwestern accent, and the lilting sounds of Colombian Spanish weaved through her words. “My name is Claudia Rivera.”
“Jesus Christ. Angel and Jacinto’s missing sister.” How the fuck had they all missed that connection? His first instinct was to get back to Audrey as fast as his bum foot could carry him. Second was to shoot Chloe Van Amee on principle because he suddenly knew who set up Bryson’s abduction and caused Audrey so much anguish. Chloe may not have been the mastermind, but she was in this shitstorm up to her liposuctioned rear end.
“I tried to get away from them,” Claudia sobbed. “I didn’t want any part of my family, but they dragged me back. Rorro called me a year ago and said he’d tell Bryson who I was and what I’d done in Colombia if I didn’t go along with his plans. I had no choice. I didn’t want to lose my husband. My house.”
She said nothing about her sons, and inwardly, Gabe ached for the poor boys. He knew exactly what it was like to grow up with a mother who put on all the right appearances, but really didn’t care about anyone but herself. At least Grayson and Ashton still had a loving aunt and father.
Maybe.
“What plans?” Gabe demanded.
“At first he only wanted money,” Claudia said. “But he bled me dry. The allowance Bryson gave me wasn’t enough, and I couldn’t draw from our joint accounts without making him suspicious. When I explained that to Rorro, he said we had to come up with another way for me to pay. Then he saw a stupid action movie and it gave him an idea to kidnap Bryson for ransom and blame it on the EPC. He had me call Jacinto with the plan because he didn’t want anyone to know he isn’t as dumb as he pretends to be. He likes when people underestimate him.”
Gabe thought back to the raid and hell, that’s exactly what he’d done, even after Luis Mena warned him that Rorro was vicious and not to be underestimated.
They all thought Rorro had tossed his cousin to the wolves out of fear, but it had been a more calculated move than that. He had deemed Jacinto’s usefulness tapped out and disposed of him like a rancher putting down a lame horse.
A chill shot down Gabe’s spine and nailed him in the ass. “Where is he now?”
Claudia gazed over at him. In the light of the fat white moon overhead, her plasticized face took on the macabre look of a skull with sunken cheeks and a peculiar hollowness in her eyes. It was the same thousand-yard stare he’d seen in soldiers who had looked death in the face and walked away alive. The same empty, lonely stare Gabe saw every time he looked at Quinn.
“Claudia. Where. Is. He?”
“He thinks it’s Audrey’s fault he didn’t get the ransom money because she called the FBI and ruined everything.” She moistened her lips and looked away. Guilt thickened her voice. “He’s going to kill her.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Weapon. She needed a weapon.
Audrey looked around, spotted the bedside lamp. It had worked when she thought Jean-Luc was attacking her in Bryson’s apartment in Bogotá, but Jean-Luc hadn’t really wanted to harm her. Somehow, she didn’t think the man banging against the door that she’d barricaded with her dresser felt the same way. His sole purpose was to harm.
Where was Gabe? Had this man harmed him?
Oh God.
Okay, think. There had to be something in here she could use as a weapon.
Steadying herself with a fortifying breath, she took another look around. Besides the lamp, she had framed photos of Bryson, her nephews, and her parents on the nightstand. Bottles of perfume and lotion rattled on her dresser, more falling with each heave of the man on the other side of the door. The scent from the broken bottles was cloying, flowers and fruits and spices filling her head, making her dizzy, and she promised she’d never put on another drop of the stuff if she lived through this.
Her closet. She must have something in there. She ripped open the door. Hangers. And none of them were even metal. An iron and ironing board. She grabbed the iron and plugged it in. If all else failed, she could hit him with it when it was still hot.
The banging on the bedroom door stopped. She paused for a half second and listened, didn’t hear anything on the other side but didn’t dare hope that he was gone. That’s how people got killed in horror movies. She dived back into the closet and found a broken palette knife missing half of its wooden handle.
Better than nothing.
Up on the shelf: Plastic containers filled with all the miscellaneous junk that she had shoved out of sight, out of mind to sort on some rainy day in the future. Loose screws, plastic thingamajigs, and cords to who knows what. Old birthday cards, tax returns, random junk mail she never threw away. None of this was going to help her.
Oh, why couldn’t she be in the kitchen? She had all sorts of weapons in there. Butcher knives, frying pans. Her X-Acto knives, carving sets, files, and palette knives three times the size of the one in her hand. Shards of sculpture metal and welding supplies. Primers, glues, and—
Paint thinners.
Audrey froze. Despite the overwhelming odor of the perfume, she caught the pungent, piney stench of turpentine, heard the splash of it hitting her door, saw the puddle oozing underneath.
No, no, no, no.
She scrambled backward, away from the growing puddle. Fumes burned her nose and eyes and she curled into a ball in the farthest corner of the room, burying her nose in the edge of her shirt. Something fell behind her and hit her shoulder. Gabe’s cane. She snatched it up, held it to her chest like a child held a teddy bear to fend off the boogeyman.
Gabe.
She remembered the fear and wonder in his eyes as he told her how much loving her scared him. Scared
him
, her brave SEAL. God, the thought of what he might do when she was gone frightened her more than the thought of dying.
No, she couldn’t die and leave him to his own devices. He needed her.
Audrey gripped the cane like a baseball bat and stood, tiptoeing around the spreading pool of turpentine. The easiest way out was the window, but she didn’t dare, too afraid the intruder was waiting for her out there. He probably didn’t expect her to charge out the door, brandishing a cane like a maniac, so that’s exactly what she’d do.
She listened, but didn’t hear anything in the hallway. Made sense. If her intruder planned to burn her to death, he’d get out before lighting the match. Which he could be doing right this very second.
Fear threatened to freeze her. The chemical-heavy air threatened to choke her, and the room morphed into a funhouse mirror before her eyes, all stretched and wobbly. The floor surged and pitched under her feet, and the short trip to the door was a feat of equilibrium that would turn any gold medal gymnast green with envy.
Next up on the balance beam: Audrey Van Amee.
She giggled. Stopped. Shook her head. Nothing about this was funny. Stay focused. If she let the chemicals get to her, she was dead.
She shoved the dresser aside, its legs scraping loud across the wood floor. She didn’t let herself think about how that might alert him and flung open the door. He was there in the hallway, tossing aside an empty can of turpentine, grinning at her as he dug in his pocket.
Flash of silver. A lighter.
She charged, brought the cane down hard on his head. He staggered but didn’t collapse. With her forward momentum and the slippery turpentine covering the floor, she couldn’t have stopped even if she wanted to. She slammed into him, taking him to the floor. He was small. So much smaller than an attacker bent on burning her alive should be. A boy, not a man.
He cursed in livid Spanish, jarringly foul words in a voice that was still more child’s than man’s. She reached for his hand, stabbing her fingers into the fleshy part, hoping he’d drop the lighter.
He did.
She snatched it up and scuttled away from him as he rose to his feet. Oh God, he had a gun. Why did she not think that he’d have a gun? He pointed the muzzle at her head.
“Get up.”
She stared at the gun. Something was dripping…
Turpentine.
He was as smeared with the paint thinner as she was.
She opened her hand and stared at the silver lighter with the initials R.S.V. engraved in extravagant letters on the side. One of those fancy kinds that light when the lid flips off.
Anger surged. If he was going to kill her, then he was damn well going with her. She pressed her thumb against the lid and met his widened eyes.
“Don’t make me do it,” she told him in Spanish.
For a second, he looked like the boy that he really was. Then he firmed up his grip on the gun and raised it again. “You won’t.”
Audrey shut her eyes, flipped the lid, and threw the lighter at him. She heard his screams, felt the rush of blistering heat, heard the gun go off, its retort little more than a pop in the roar of the flames.
And she knew she was dead.
…
He’s going to kill her.
The words echoed inside Gabe’s head, a gruesome mantra that played over and over and over as he hobbled up the driveway in a ridiculous lopsided run. Earlier, when confessing to Audrey he’d screwed up because he was afraid of loving her, he’d said it terrified him more than anything else he’d ever faced as a man or a SEAL. At the time, he’d been telling the absolute truth.
Not so anymore.
This
terrified him more. Knowing that she may be in trouble right now, that he could be losing her at this very second, and he couldn’t get to her fast enough because he’d left his cane in the bedroom and his damn foot didn’t want to hold anymore.
Bang!
A gunshot.
Gabe staggered and almost went to his knees there in the driveway. “Audrey!”
No answer.
Screw the pain in his foot. He didn’t care if the fucking thing fell off.
Redoubling his speed, he leapt onto the porch and slammed through the front door. Smoke. It clogged his nose, assaulted his eyes. Flames danced in the hallway, eating their way across the floor and ceiling into the living room.
“Audrey!”
He spotted her, curled into a ball on the floor, fire raging around her, licking closer and closer.
Flames blistered his legs. He didn’t notice. He scooped her into his arms and tried not to think about how limp she was, tried not to worry about whether she was breathing. He just hugged her close and got her out of that hell.
Outside, Gabe carried her to the edge of the beach and sat her down where the waves rolled up and kissed the sand. No doubt the salt would sting like a bitch in her burns, but he had to get the chemicals he smelled on her off her skin. She moaned when the ocean rolled over her and struggled against his hold.
“I got you, Aud. Shh, honey. I know it hurts, but I’m here.”
Her lashes, caked with soot and ash, fluttered open. “Gabe?”
Scooping water over her singed hair, he tried to smile. “Hi, honey.”
“You’re okay. He didn’t…hurt you. I thought…”
“No, he didn’t hurt me.” But he was still out there somewhere, and Gabe raised his head to scan the thick tangle of jungle abutting the beach. Shit, he could be three feet in there and Gabe wouldn’t see him. “Audrey, honey, where is he? Where did Rorro go after he set the fire?”
“Rorro?” In that instant, her eyes cleared. She looked at her burning house. “He’s dead. I started the fire. I threw his lighter at him and he… He’s dead.”
Bile surged up Gabe’s throat. She lit a fire knowing she was soaked in flammable chemicals. She was lucky she hadn’t gone up in flames the moment the spark flared.
“Christ.” His whole body started to shake like a palsy victim’s from the mix of adrenaline after-burn and gut-wrenching fear. He couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control it. Gathering her up, he held her tight. “Don’t do that again.”
“Didn’t want to…first time. He was going to kill me. Why?” Her voice broke. “What did I do to him?
He
kidnapped
my
brother!”
“Later, honey. I’ll explain it later.” He just wanted to hold her now. And never, ever let her go.
“My house is gone,” she sobbed.
“We can build another. Bigger, with a workshop for you and an office for me. Maybe a guesthouse for when your brother and nephews come visit. Or, God help us, for when Raffi comes to visit.”
“But my paintings…”
“You can paint more.”
“I guess so.” She sounded unconvinced.
“Audrey…”
“No, no, you’re right. I know you’re right. Just all that work—gone.” She let go a ragged breath and snuggled against his chest. “But that doesn’t matter because I’m safe and you’re safe and we’ll build a new life together.”
“Absolutely. We’ll make this work, okay? I promise.”
He felt her lips curve in a small smile against his shoulder. “And my SEAL never makes promises he can’t keep.”
As they sat there on the beach watching her house burn, Gabe heard the unmistakable beat of a helo’s rotor over the crackle of flames. The bird swung in low over the treetops and hovered over the beach nearby.
Audrey squinted and raised a hand to shield her eyes against the prop-wash of sand. “Is that…?”
A rope fell from the chopper and one by one, six men slid down, armed for war.
“Yeah.” Gabe grinned and helped her stand as Quinn and the others ran toward them. “Our knights in shining armor have arrived.”