“I can’t figure out why I’m so attracted.” Fine lines etched into her brow as she narrowed her eyes at him. “Okay, you’re hot stuff, but you’re also impolite, domineering, abrupt, sarcastic—”
“Stop. My ego can’t take much more flattery.”
She grinned at his deadpan tone. “See? And still, I
like
you.” She sounded shocked. “Once this is over and my brother’s safe, maybe I’ll walk on the wild side and go against type, just this once. See if I’m missing anything. I’ll have to think about it.”
His cock jerked, offering itself for her experimental walk on the wild side, and he clenched his teeth against the hot and raw surge of lust.
No can do, buddy.
“Think about it all you want, Audrey, but nothing’s going to happen.”
“Why not? You want it. If I decide I want it, too, there shouldn’t be a problem. We’re both consenting adults.”
“It’s unprofessional.”
She made a very unladylike sound. “I’m starting to think it’s not me that needs a walk on the wild side. Do you ever just…I don’t know…cut loose?”
When he only gave her a bland stare, she added, “You know. Raise hell, let your hair down, kick up your heels, sow your wild oats… Oh, c’mon, Gabe, work with me. I’m running out of euphemisms here. I bet you were a wild child in your day.”
“Yeah, ‘cuz I’ve had so much time to run wild.” He laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound, even to his own ears. “Forget that I’m a little busy trying to save your brother. Never mind that I spent the past year trying to save my foot, then my job. And every year before that, I was too busy trying to be the best damn SEAL I could be. So, no, I don’t ever
cut loose.
”
“What about when you were a child?”
She asked it so casually, he didn’t think twice about answering. “Same goes. I went to a military academy.”
Audrey gave him a look so full of—Jesus Christ, was that pity? He ground his back teeth and reached into the glove box for an extra ammo clip, then jammed it into the side pocket of his cargos. She had no reason to pity him. He’d had a good life and liked it just fine the way it was. Or at least he did. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about the new course he’d taken in the past twelve hours, but that didn’t rate her pity.
Up ahead, a shout of alarm drew his attention, and what he saw made his heart drop into his gut. Eight guerillas with AK-47s were going from car to car, yanking people out, lining them alongside the road with their hands on their heads, while another two rifled through each empty vehicle.
A raid.
Great. Just great. Should’ve known this would happen. Murphy’s fucking Law.
“What’s going on?”
He ignored Audrey’s question and bent over to unlace his left boot with one hand while he dug for his cell phone with the other.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“You might wanna grab your gun now.”
She blinked and, if he wasn’t mistaken, some of the color drained out of her face. “W-what?”
“The gun I gave you back at base. You might need it.”
“You mean to… shoot? No.” She shook her head. “I’m not shooting anyone. I don’t shoot people.”
Gabe lifted his attention from his boot to stare at her. “You don’t
shoot people
? So what was all that shit about not being a southern belle and shooting what you aim at?”
“I aim at paper targets! Shooting is a hobby. A sport. Something I did for fun with my dad.” She waved a trembling hand at the guerillas. “I’m not like them. I don’t kill.”
“If you don’t kill them first, they are sure as hell going to slaughter you without a second thought.”
“I don’t kill,” she repeated. “Maybe we can talk to them.”
“And afterwards we can all hold hands and sing
Lean On Me
. Christ, what world do you live in?”
“One where violence breeds violence.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly right.” He jerked a thumb at the guerilla soldiers methodically making their way down the line of cars. “But when violence is the only language your enemies know, you gotta learn to speak it, too.”
Jaw set at a stubborn angle, Audrey vehemently shook her head. “I won’t kill anyone.”
Figures he’d end up in the middle of a raid with a peace-loving, flower-sniffing hippie.
“Then make yourself useful and keep watch,” he gritted out between his teeth and made sure his phone was on silent mode before sliding it down into his boot. Thank the technological gods for razor-thin phones. With his boot laced, it was all but invisible, and if the guerillas patted him down, it would go unnoticed. If they made him strip, then he might have some issues.
One of the cars up ahead contained a family, and the guerillas were no gentler with the two little boys than they were with the adults. The kids’ mother cried out as one guerilla shoved the older boy hard enough that he hit his head on a tree stump and went limp.
“Oh my God,” Audrey whispered. Her hand covered her mouth in shock even as she reached for the door. “We have to—”
“Stay here.” He caught her arm. “It’ll be bad enough for us once they realize we’re American.”
And when they saw that he was armed. But he couldn’t hide his firearm in his boot. The SIG was a veritable death sentence for him, and all but useless against all those AKs. It wasn’t so unusual for him to be outnumbered and outgunned—for a SEAL, it was just another day in the life, what he was trained for. In theory, he should be able to take three or four out before they got him, but that wasn’t a theory he particularly wanted to test when Audrey’s life was at risk, too. What would happen to her after they killed him? He shuddered to think.
She struggled against his hold. “But the boy—”
“His parents have him. Don’t draw any unnecessary attention to us, Audrey. They’ll notice us soon enough.”
Chapter Eight
The moment the warning left Gabe’s lips, wheels screeched as the car behind them shot into reverse, kicking up gravel that pelted the Jeep like hail. Shouting, the guerillas left their captives to run after the escaping car, those wicked-looking guns locked to their shoulders, firing without sense or aim. Bullets peppered the windshield and Gabe grabbed Audrey by the back of the neck, shoving her down. Her breath whooshed out when the heavy weight of his body covered her and jabbed the gearshift into her ribs. Every second felt like forever, every heartbeat her last. She closed her eyes and prayed like the good Catholic girl her mama had raised her to be. Someone was making a hiccupping sound, and for a long, confused moment, she couldn’t figure out who it was.
Gabe’s arms circled her, crossing over her chest so that his hands covered hers where she held them clasped between her breasts. She felt his heartbeat against her back, heard his soft, even breaths in her ear. Calm. Cool. And so insanely collected, he was almost a robot.
Just another jungle jaunt for the man who didn’t know how to cut loose.
Hysterical laughter bubbled up, but caught on the growing knot of fear in her throat. Realizing she was the one making those hiccup sounds, she clamped her mouth shut and ground her teeth to keep more noise from slipping out.
Gabe gave her a tight, reassuring squeeze. It shouldn’t have helped. She shouldn’t have felt safer with him wrapped around her, because he wasn’t any more bulletproof than she was. But, oh God, did it help.
Minutes, hours,
days
later, the gunfire slowed. Then stopped altogether.
“Stay quiet.” Gabe squeezed her again, lightly this time, and she felt him shift his weight, his face lifting from where he had it buried in her hair. “Oh, fu—”
Suddenly he was gone, hauled off her by rough hands. The passenger side door flew open and more hands reached in to grab her and yank her out of the air-conditioned Jeep, into the stifling heat of the jungle afternoon. A cacophony of sights and sounds bombarded her senses as the guerillas shoved her over to stand with the other captives. Monkeys screeched in the treetops, several people were sobbing, others shouting in jungle-accented Spanish. The car that had tried to get away hissed steam from under its hood as its bullet-riddled radiator leaked. Three bodies lay sprawled on the pitted road, seeping bright red blood even as the guerillas went through their pockets. The air reeked of jungle-rot, gunpowder, blood and bowels.
Two of the men—God, they were more like boys—held Gabe by the arms while a third got in his face and interrogated him in Spanish. “Who are you? Are you police? American military? Answer me!”
Gabe looked as if he was talking about the weather as he shook his head and said repeatedly, “No Spanish.
No hablo Español.
No Spanish.”
The guerilla asking the questions hooked the strap of his AK-47 around his back and reached to pat Gabe down.
The gun. What had he done with his gun?
Or… oh, God. The gun he’d given her! She’d stuffed it underneath her seat before they left Bogotá, sure it would be of no use.
Audrey looked toward the Jeep, where two other men—boys—were ripping through the contents of the basket Armando’s wife had given her. They stuffed the buñuelos and empanadas in their mouths like they were starving and filled their pockets to bulging with the fruit. When they found the sheet with Bryson’s itinerary, the smaller of the two called out to Mr. Interrogator, who stopped frisking Gabe to read it. They’d called him Cocodrilo. She could see how he came by the nickname. He had dark, beady eyes, a long nose, and a prominent brow that resembled the ridges over a crocodile’s eyes.
Cocodrilo scowled at the printout, then at Gabe. “Who are you?”
“
No hablo Español
,” Gabe repeated, even though she was certain he knew enough Spanish to understand the question.
“
No hablo Español, no hablo Español, no hablo Español
,” Cocodrilo mocked and jabbed the butt of his rifle into Gabe’s stomach with enough force that he dropped to his knees, grunting in pain. But he didn’t stay down. Almost as soon as he touched the ground, he was back on his feet. Or foot. He hadn’t used his cane once since leaving Bogotá and was favoring his right side a little, but not enough that the guerillas noticed or else Audrey was sure they’d attack that weakness.
“What if I kill your woman?” Cocodrilo motioned with one hand and a guerilla grabbed Audrey by the wrist and dragged her over. He drew a long blade, dirty with mud and God knew what else, from his belt and made a show of pointing it at her pounding heart. “Will you speak Spanish then?”
Gabe’s jaw tightened. Apparently, he didn’t need to speak the language to understand the intent. “No, wait. Stop. Don’t hurt her.
Hablo…un poco, pero…no hablo…lo suficiente…
ah, goddammit.” He rubbed a hand over his head.
“…mantener una conversación.”
Listening to him struggle through the sentence to save her tugged at her heartstrings and tapped into a store of courage Audrey didn’t know she had. Anger replaced fear. She refused to be the stereotypical damsel in distress, not when knowing the language gave her a distinct advantage over her wannabe knight in shining armor. She turned to face off with Cocodrilo, startled to realize she was taller by a good four inches and older by nearly ten years.
“He doesn’t know enough to have a conversation,” she said in Spanish. “I do.”
“Audrey,” Gabe said softly in warning.
“Shut up.”
His eyes widened in surprise. She imagined not many people talked back to him like that and he’d be licking the wounds to his male ego for the next week. Well, too bad. This situation didn’t call for his particular dictatorial brand of management.
“Talk to me,” she urged Cocodrilo. “I’ll translate for him.”
Cocodrilo eyed her up and down. “Who are you?”
“My name is Audrey. That’s Gabe.”
“Why are you in my jungle?” Cocodrilo demanded.
“We were just visiting some friends up the road.”
“What friends?”
“I’m sorry,” she said as gently as she could, thinking of Armando and his sweet wife and their five kids. “I won’t tell you that.”
She expected to be shot on the spot, or at very least hit with the butt of the rifle like Gabe had been. Instead, Cocodrilo gave a toothy smile that did his namesake proud.
“Are you American?” he asked instead.
“Yes.” She thought it better not to lie.
He nodded, looked at the printout again. “What is this?”
“My brother’s itinerary. He’s been taken captive.” She hesitated and looked at Gabe, searched his unreadable expression for help. He wouldn’t approve of what she was going to say next, but what if this was their shot at finding Bryson?
She drew a fortifying breath and turned back to Cocodrilo. “I want to make a deal for his release.”
…
Gabe didn’t like that he had no idea what they were saying. The few key words he caught, though, made him curse.
Hermano.
Brother.
Cocodrilo looked interested. Then got that glint in his eye, the one that says
cha-ching
in any language, and Gabe knew Audrey had made a possibly fatal mistake. He glanced toward the brush alongside the road where he had tossed his gun as the guerillas yanked him out of the Jeep. Luckily, Cocodrilo was distracted by the itinerary before he found the extra clip in Gabe’s leg pocket. The clip wouldn’t do him much good without his gun, and he didn’t think he’d be able to get to the weapon without one of the guerillas noticing. But the cell phone in his boot had GPS. His team would be able to track him as long as the phone’s battery held out.
A little guerilla with spiky black hair ran to Cocodrilo’s side, shouting in a panicked tumble of Spanish that Gabe couldn’t begin to sort out, not to mention comprehend, but the name Mena came up repeatedly in their exchange.
Mena.
Really, could this goatfuck get any worse?
He kept a close eye on Audrey’s face and when she frowned, he guessed it could. Cocodrilo snapped out orders and the men scrambled to pocket their loot from the cars before letting everyone, including the family with the injured boy, leave.
No such luck for him and Audrey. The muzzle of a gun jabbed his lower back, nudging him off the road.
“
¡Vamos!
” Cocodrilo said and forged a path into the jungle.
…
Well, that had been a colossal waste of their precious time.
Quinn breathed a deep sigh of relief to be out of the 4Runner as he strode toward the front door of the safe house. Stuck in a car with Ian and Jean-Luc for several hours was not his idea of a good time, akin to sitting beside a grenade sans pin and in front of an off-key jukebox that somehow knew every friggin’ song that came over the radio.
In Spanish.
Quinn knew at least seven ways to kill a man with his bare hands, and Jean-Luc was damn lucky he hadn’t utilized them. He’d been tempted, but Gabe would frown upon a dead linguist, so he’d restrained himself—and Ian, who more than once lunged over the seat, intent on strangling the tone deafness right out of Jean-Luc.
After canvassing the suspected EPC hangouts Harvard had dug up, they were no closer to finding Bryson Van Amee. The first two addresses had seemed abandoned. At the next two, they had seen a lot of suspicious activity, including several drug deals, gang activity, and prostitutes soliciting their wares, but no signs of anyone held against their will at either place. Hopefully alpha team had better luck. If not, they were SOL in the intel department, which did not bode well for their mission or their hostage’s continued state of breathing. That is, if he still was.
Harvard sat planted behind the computer, doing his geek thing, when Quinn pushed through the door. “Anything?”
Harvard took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Tons of information, but we’re still wading through it all.”
“Give me what you got.”
“I matched the picture I pulled off the security cameras to Jacinto Rivera. He isn’t a known member of EPC, but he’s associated through his brother, Angel.” He hit a few keys on his laptop and the printer next to his work station spit out a sheet. Standing, he stretched his arms over his head, then retrieved the printout and handed it to Quinn.
“From what I can gather, the nominal head of the EPC organization has little to do with the everyday decision-making. Instead, he nominated five generals to control each region of the country. Angel Rivera operates in the Andean Region, which includes Bogotá. I haven’t dug up the names of the other generals yet, but I do know the Amazon Region is controlled by a man known as Cocodrilo, who has a nasty reputation as a sadist.”
“What about Angel and his brother?” Quinn asked. “What are their reps like?”
“Despite his name, Angel Rivera’s no angel. He has as many as fifty kills under his belt—nobody knows the exact number. Could be more. If he likes your shoes, he’d have no problem stabbing you in the gut in the middle of the street and taking them. If he doesn’t like your shoes, he might still stab you for the insult to his well-developed fashion sense.
“His brother, Jacinto,” Harvard continued, “is just as cruel, but also stupid as a bag of shit. Angel’s never been pinched by the law, but Jacinto’s spent most of his life behind bars. His last stint was for attempted armed robbery of a bank here in Bogotá. He served twenty-two months of a seven year sentence and was released with a full pardon, which leads me to believe his brother has at least one high-up politician tucked safely in his pocket.”
“So the EPC is definitely involved in Van Amee’s abduction,” Quinn concluded.
“Could be,” Harvard said. “But also could be Jacinto acting on his own or with one of the many gangs he has ties to.”
“So you’re saying we still don’t know.”
“We still don’t know,” Harvard agreed. “But we will. I just need more time.”
“That’s a commodity we’re running very low on, Eric.” Quinn let out a long breath. “Have you told Gabe about this yet?”
“He isn’t back,” Harvard said. “Hasn’t checked in, either.”
Quinn’s heart gave one hard thump of panic. It was all he ever allowed it. “That’s not like Gabe. He always checks in.”
“I was wondering about that. Think he ran into trouble?”
He hoped not, but it was possible. Hell, likely. Gabe, the single-minded, meticulous guy Quinn knew and loved like family, wouldn’t skip a check-in unless he was unable to make the call.
The door opened and every eye in the room turned toward it in expectation. Jesse and Marcus stopped short.
“What?” Marcus said.
Shit
, Quinn thought. “Did you two find anything?”
Jesse nodded. “No sign of Van Amee, but we took a gander inside one of the warehouses on our list. Just happened the lock on the side door was busted.” He grinned at Marcus.
“Imagine our luck,” Marcus added with an expression of complete innocence as he drew a lock pick kit from his coat pocket and set it on a side table.
“Damn near pissed ourselves when we stumbled into a bomb-making factory,” Jesse said. “C4, semtex, all the good stuff, and this…” He reached into the side pocket of his medical kit and brought out a bag filled with a yellow crystalline substance that he held out to Ian. “Found it stored in these bags like this. Figured you’d know what it is.”
“Explosive D,” Ian said, taking the bag. “Also known as ammonium picrate. Very stable. Used in armor-piercing shells.”
“Well, shit,” Marcus said. “They had enough of that stuff to blow a hole in an armored car.”
“And then some,” Jesse agreed. “Looks like they’re gearing up for a war.”
Probably are
, Quinn thought and rubbed a hand over his chin, hearing the rasp of a two-day beard against his palm. Fuck, he didn’t want to deal with this. He wanted to take orders, not issue them.
Where was Gabe?
He snagged his cell phone from his pocket and dialed Gabe’s number as he spoke: “We have to take that warehouse out of commission. Ian?”
“Oh yeah,” Ian said, showing the first hint of emotion besides the hostility on a constant low burn beneath his skin—excitement. The EOD expert needed a major attitude adjustment, but that was a problem for Gabe, as commanding officer, to handle. Quinn was just another of the rank-and-file, which was how he liked it. He had enough to shoulder without adding the weight of command.