There was a strangled cry of pain, and Quinn glanced up in time to see Mara break free from the doctor’s grasp. The guy was doubled over, too, one hand cupping his crotch, the other braced against the wall for support.
Despite another surge of nausea, a smile pulled at his mouth. Christ, she was amazing. “That was fucking stupid, Mara.”
“Yes, it was. I don’t know why I did that.” She knelt beside him and set a hand on his back. “Are you okay?”
“C’mere.” He gripped her face in his hands and dragged her closer until their lips touched. Just a quick, hard kiss, but it did all kinds of hot, unwanted things to his body. Which wasn’t part of the plan. If he could even call this sloppy kiss-and-grope a plan. With the drugs numbing his system, he was mostly just winging it at this point.
Mara’s body stiffened up in shock.
Shit. He probably should have given her some kind of warning first. He pressed his lips harder against hers, silently urging her to play along as he fumbled with the cell phone, pushing it into her bra, down between her breasts, where it would be hidden.
“Get them out of here,” the doctor ordered in a strangled voice. He straightened away from the wall, tugging his jacket back into place with as much dignity as a guy could muster after getting kicked in the nads by a woman half his size.
Yeah. Mara was freaking amazing, and Quinn kissed her again because—well, he had to. She’d stunned the hell out of their captors just now, and he couldn’t be more proud of the way she’d handled herself.
Alexei pulled them apart, and panic flashed in her eyes as she was dragged toward the door.
“Mara, it’s okay,” he called after her, not bothering to fight when Pyotr yanked on his cuffed hands, pulling him to his feet. His world was spinning, and his feet were numb. If he tried to fight anyone right now, he’d just get himself dead. “Hey, you hear me? We’ll be okay. Just go with them. I promise you, we’ll be okay.”
…
El Paso, Texas
The clue left on Quinn’s phone was an unsent one-word text message: Zaryanko.
Jesse’s heart nose-dived into his gut when he saw it. “Are you fucking kidding me? Nikolai Zaryanko has them?”
“Uh, I’m sorry,” Lanie said and lifted her hands. “Newbie here. Who is Zaryanko and why do you all look like you just bit into a lemon?”
The hotel room went pin-drop silent, and all eyes turned in her direction.
Jesse couldn’t pinpoint why, exactly—if he were in the men’s shoes, he’d be suspicious of her, too—but all that mistrust directed toward her pissed him off in a big way. “This is Lanie,” he said. “She’s Mara’s best friend, and I’ve known her since she was knee-high to a grasshopper. We can trust her.”
The tension eased, then evaporated altogether when Gabe added, “She’ll be helping us on this. Harvard, can you bring up our file on Zaryanko?”
Harvard nodded and hit a few keys on his computer. A photo popped up on screen. It wasn’t the best picture, having been taken during a recon mission in Afghanistan that went to shit shortly thereafter, but it was the only one they had of the man.
“That’s Nikolai Zaryanko,” Gabe said, motioning to the photo. “He’s known for trafficking arms, drugs, organs, and humans. He first popped onto the radar five years ago after the discovery of his association with Liam Miller, a disgraced British SAS operative. Since Liam had a nasty habit of cultivating friendships with the scum of the earth, the spec ops community learned pretty damn fast it behooved us to keep tabs on his associates. And Zaryanko was one of Liam’s closest friends. Shit.” He pinched the bridge of his nose as if a tension headache hammered behind his eyes. Made sense, since his wife had been the one to finally take Liam Miller out, and he’d worried about the repercussions ever since. “What are the chances that we cross paths with Zaryanko twice in the eight months after Audrey killed Liam?”
“I don’t like coincidences, either, boss,” Jesse agreed and dropped his head into his hands as a headache thundered between his own temples. “Goddammit.”
Gabe grasped his shoulder. “I know it doesn’t seem it, but this is good.”
“Good? My cousin’s in the hands of a man who supposedly sold his own sister into sexual slavery. How the fuck is this good?”
“You’re not thinking like an operative, Jesse. We know where Zaryanko lives, where he runs his businesses. Now we can find her and maybe shut him down for good before he tries for anyone else.”
Like Audrey.
Gabe wouldn’t be cruel enough to speak those words aloud, but they hung in the air between them anyway. Jesse couldn’t blame the stark fear he saw in his boss’s eyes and tried to calm himself.
Think like an operative. Think like an operative.
Of course Gabe was right again, but that still didn’t make the whole goatfuck of a situation any easier to stomach. “All right. So what’s our game plan?”
Gabe rubbed a hand over his face. “They’re most likely headed to Transnistria.”
Similar reactions came from everyone in the room, except Lanie, who frowned. “Trans what? Never heard of it.”
Harvard hit a few more keys and pulled up a map. “Transnistria,” he said, turning the laptop around so everyone could see the screen. “It’s an unrecognized breakaway republic sandwiched between Moldova and Ukraine. They have tight ties with Russia, and many in the intelligence community fear it’ll be the next Crimea.”
“So, basically, it’s only a matter of time until Russia invades?” Lanie asked.
Harvard winced. “Wouldn’t be so much as an invasion as a ‘welcome back.’ Transnistria is very much stuck in the Soviet era. Their economy completely collapsed when the Soviet Union fell, and they’ve never recovered. That and the fact they are unrecognized and have largely unprotected borders has turned it into a hotbed for smuggling and sex trafficking.” He slid an apologetic glance in Jesse’s direction. “My research indicates our best option is to infil by parachute here.” Harvard brought the map up on his computer again, indicating a spot just outside the Transnistrian border in Ukraine. “Once on the ground, it’s about sixteen klicks southeast to the capital city of Tiraspol.”
“Let me get something straight,” Jace Garcia said, speaking up for the first time. He walked forward, placed his hands on the table and leaned toward Harvard. “You want me to fly into Ukrainian airspace? You do know they recently shot down a passenger jet that had nada to do with their war.”
Gabe nodded. “We’re aware.”
“HumInt has a small airfield just outside of Odessa, Ukraine,” Harvard said, pulling up another map. “It’s about an hour’s drive from Tiraspol on the main roads. Obviously, HumInt pulled their people out of there when the crisis started, but the field’s still functional for our needs. After we parachute out, you can land the plane and stay hidden there, keeping our exfil route open.”
Gabe met the pilot’s gaze across the table. “Can you manage that?”
Garcia grunted. “Yeah. Yeah, I can. But y’all are more loco than I am. And that’s saying something.”
“What about border guards?” Jesse asked.
Harvard tapped a spot on the map. “There aren’t any border checkpoints or patrols. Not here, at least. Satellite imaging shows this location’s a field in the middle of nowhere. There’s not even a sign to indicate which country you’re in.”
“So we can walk in without anyone the wiser?” Jesse asked with more than a little surprise. He hadn’t expected anything about this op to be easy.
“Yes. The problem won’t be getting in, as far as I can tell. Or even getting out, as long as we stick to the back roads on our way to Odessa. It will be staying undetected while there. Tiraspol is crawling with Transnistrian KGB officers—”
“Whoa, what?” Lanie straightened away from the table. “Didn’t the KGB go the way of the Berlin Wall?”
“They did,” Harvard agreed. “For the most part. But like I said, Transnistria is stuck in time, desperately
hanging on to their Soviet roots, and the KGB is still very much alive there. They will stop anybody who looks like they don’t belong.”
“So we best not be spotted,” Gabe said and also straightened. “Pack your bags, gentlemen—”
Lanie cleared her throat loudly.
Gabe sighed. “Gentlemen and Lanie. We just got an open invitation to the black hole of Europe.”
Chapter Ten
As far as prisons went, Quinn had been in worse.
He seemed to be in some kind of hotel. Although there were no other guests, there was a dance club off the lobby, thrumming with music heavy on the bass. Through the open doors, Quinn spotted a handful of skimpily dressed girls and an otherwise empty dance floor. Which made sense. Transnistria wasn’t usually found on Average Joe Tourist’s destination list.
Was Mara in that club?
He craned his neck, but Pyotr stepped into his line of sight and shoved him forward. He stumbled sideways and unfortunately, it was only partially an act. He still wasn’t steady on his feet, but pretending to be more off-kilter than he was gave him a better view into the club.
He didn’t see her.
Pyotr dragged him upright. “Walk.”
“If you’d wanted me to walk, you shouldn’t have drugged me, asshole.”
He got another shove for his sarcasm and shuffled across the tiled floor on bare feet. Judging by the desk clerk’s non-reaction when Pyotr marched a handcuffed, naked man across the lobby, the place had to be owned by Zaryanko or one of his associates—which was pretty much everyone running the corrupt government here. He wouldn’t be able to count on getting help from any civilians he came across.
Unless the team found them—and soon—they were well and truly fucked.
Pyotr dragged him upstairs to a room at the far end of the hall, unlocked his cuffs, and pushed him inside.
“Travis?”
He spun at Mara’s voice, and relief like nothing he’d ever known crashed through him. She was still in her bra and underwear, and fresh bruises marred the skin on her arms. Before he even realized he was moving, he’d crossed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms.
“Christ, Mara. Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”
She released a shuddering breath and shook her head. Her hair tickled his bare chest.
“No,” she whispered. “Not really. They held me down to draw some blood.” She showed him the bruised flesh of her inner arm. The fresh needle mark was still dripping a thin line of blood.
“To confirm you are pregnant.”
She nodded. “Then once they had it, they brought me up here.”
“They didn’t search you?”
“No.”
Quinn shut his eyes and hugged her to him again, burying his face in her hair. Just for this one moment, he’d let himself hold her, let himself give in to the overwhelming relief that they hadn’t subjected her to the same kind of invasive search they had done to him.
The door opened again and a tray of food landed on the floor along with the rest of their clothes. And like that, the moment ended.
Mara pulled out of his arms and picked up her sweatshirt. “Oh, thank God. I’m freezing.” She hesitated over the food. “Can I…?”
“I wouldn’t,” Quinn said. “We already know they’re willing to use drugs to subdue us. Don’t risk it.”
She sighed and nodded, but still gazed longingly at the tray before pulling the sweatshirt on over her head.
Quinn grabbed his pants and stepped into them, then did a lap around the room to check for cameras. The only furniture was the bed, which had been bolted to the floor. The bathroom—if it could be called that—consisted of a hole in the corner.
No surveillance equipment monitoring them as far as he could tell, but if the room was used for what he suspected, Zaryanko wouldn’t care what happened inside. Outside, though, the hallway was probably monitored, if not guarded.
He crossed to the room’s one dingy window, ignoring the wave of dizziness that crashed over him. Outside, thick gray slush covered a city full of boxy concrete buildings, and low-slung clouds promised more snow on the way. In the empty park across the street from the hotel rose a statue right out of the Cold War.
“What the…?” Mara came up to the window beside him and rubbed her eyes as if to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating. Nope, she wasn’t. That was a statue of Lenin standing there in all of its communist glory.
“Where are we?” she whispered.
“Fucking Transnistria.” He shook off another wave of dizziness. It had been over an hour since he was hit with the syringe of drugs, and although it never completely knocked him out, he’d been groggy and disoriented ever since. Not to mention, his head was splitting like a cord of firewood and he was starting to see zigzagging patterns flashing in front of his eyes, which meant he had about twenty minutes before a migraine knocked him on his ass.
“Do you still have the phone?”
“Oh,” she gasped and reached into her bra. “I made sure they didn’t find it. Does it work?” She handed the old flip phone to him and he checked the screen.
“Would if we had a signal.” He picked up his coat from the floor, dropped the phone into the pocket, and glanced out the window again. Didn’t appear to be any balconies nearby and no fire escapes, but the roof of the dance club was only about eight feet straight down.
Finally, a lucky break.
He tried the window, but it was nailed shut. Okay. A half-lucky break. But if he could get the window open, they had a chance at escape. The drop to the club’s roof was completely doable.
Annnnd then what?
That was where his plan came to a screeching halt. Even if they were able to get out of this place, they had nowhere safe to go in the country. There were no embassies here, and rumor had it the streets were crawling with Transnistria’s version of the KGB, who had very close ties to Russia. And nowadays Russia was about as cuddly as a sewer rat.
The only choice they had was to make a break for the border, but with no money and no winter gear, the going would be rough—possibly too rough for a woman in Mara’s condition.
Then there was the question of which border? Ukraine was the most logical choice, but they were on the verge of war with Russia, and it wasn’t the safest option. And crossing into Moldova would be nearly impossible to pull off with Russian peacekeepers manning the frozen conflict zone between that country and its breakaway state.
Fuck.
Quinn pressed his throbbing head to the cold glass and shut his eyes. He heard Mara moving around behind him but didn’t turn to see what she was doing.
“What is this room?” Her voice shook.
“If I had to guess, it’s for training.”
“What kind of training?”
He glanced over his shoulder. She stood by the squat toilet, staring into the hole like she was trying to decide whether she should use it or not. “Zaryanko’s a sex trafficker, Mara. Take a wild guess.”
She moved away from the toilet and hugged herself. “He brings girls here to traffic them?”
“No, to break them. He’ll have recruiters lure girls from their homes by promising them work abroad, but instead he’ll lock them in a room like this one, have them repeatedly raped, and addict them to drugs until they have no will left of their own. Then he ships them off to his clubs in Dubai or Istanbul, where they’ll work off their debt, which is just some arbitrary number he decides. If they ever manage to work off that debt, he’ll let them come home if they agree to send two more women to take their place. It becomes a vicious cycle.”
She shuddered. “Oh, God. How do you know all that?”
“The spec ops community has been watching Zaryanko for a long time.”
“Then why hasn’t he been stopped?”
“We know what he does, how he operates, but he’s never been caught in the act.”
Mara stayed silent for a moment. “He said he’s going to sell me and the baby.” She tw
isted her too-big watch around on her wrist—a nervous gesture he remembered from the summer. Then she lifted her eyes, tears streaming down her face. “Why is this happening?”
“I don’t know. Why would Urban kidnap you and ship you off to Zaryanko? It doesn’t make sense.” A memory flitted along the outside edges of his consciousness, but when he tried to grasp it and bring it into focus, his headache grew claws. He winced, pinching the bridge of his nose in an effort to relieve the pressure. “What am I missing?”
He shook his head. The whys didn’t matter right now. All that mattered was escape, but he had no weapon, and the phone wasn’t going to do squat for them until it had a signal. He scanned the room for anything else that could help them. The place was pretty much barren, save for the tray of food on the floor.
He crossed the room in three strides and grabbed the tray. Transnistria wasn’t a rich country and didn’t have access to a lot of disposable goods like plastic utensils, so if they were at all lucky…
Yeah, there it was. He picked up the scarred metal spoon and tried to bend it.
“What’s that for?” Mara asked. “I thought you said we shouldn’t eat the food.”
“And we’re not going to.” He studied the window again. “This spoon’s fairly sturdy. I might be able to get us out of here with it.”
She followed his gaze. “How?”
He shrugged. “Haven’t you ever seen The Shawshank Redemption?”
“You’re going to dig a tunnel?” she said, incredulousness in every word. “Um, you do realize it took Andy Dufresne twenty years in the movie, right?”
He tried for a smile, but it felt forced on his lips. He sucked at jokes, he really did. “I’ll get you home before that. I promise.”
…
Mara didn’t doubt that.
At first.
But time passed one excruciatingly slow minute after another, and the longer she watched him unsuccessfully try to dig the nails out of the window frame, the less and less she started to believe him. Besides, he’d promised her he wasn’t going to walk away again, and that was exactly what he’d done when she told him about the baby, so why should she believe his promises now?
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