So she would.
Mara grabbed the spoon from the floor and hauled herself to her feet as she contemplated the window. It was a daunting task, considering how long it had taken her to work the first nail free, but she wouldn’t think about that. Nor would she think about the eight feet down if she did manage to pry the window open.
One nail. That’s all she needed. And then one more. She’d keep at it until her fingers bled if she had to. Because she was so over being the meek little mouse everyone—including Travis—pushed around. Nobody else was going to look out for her. Nobody else was going to rescue her.
If she wanted to be rescued, she’d damn well do it herself.
Chapter Twelve
When Quinn’s brain clicked online again, his first thought was, did Mara notice the blackout? They’d been talking—no, fighting. Or on the verge of it. Shit. If they had been fighting, then she’d definitely noticed.
He should have expected the blackout. Prepared for it. Stress triggered the migraines and more often than not, the migraines triggered a blackout event. At very least, he should have warned Mara about—
Wait.
He wasn’t with her anymore.
Backseat of a car. Hands bound. And he was still shirtless.
Fuck, how had he gotten here?
He scooted around in the seat to look out the back window. Zaryanko stood on the street, talking to Pyotr and Alexei, and he did not look happy.
No Mara.
Quinn’s hands were zip-tied behind his back, but even in his blackout state, his training had still kicked in, thank Christ. He’d clutched his fists when the ties were applied, making his wrists bigger, and now with his hands relaxed, he had some wiggle room. Enough to slip free.
He began working his top hand loose while keeping an eye on Zaryanko in the rearview mirror. Bastard seemed worried, antsy, talking fast with a lot of hand motions and scanning the street as if he expected an attack at any moment. With good reason. If he had hurt Mara in any way, Quinn would end him. Right here, right now, and in the bloodiest way imaginable.
Quinn’s thumb popped loose of the tie, and it was quick work to free the rest of his hand after that. Still, he didn’t move from the seat. He used his thumbnail to release the catch on the zip tie. Now he had a weapon.
Had to time this right if it was going to work.
In the rearview, he spotted an old cable car trundling down the center of the street. A half block back, a cargo van pulled away from the curb and followed. Alexei left the conversation and circled to the passenger seat.
Quinn still didn’t move.
Alexei cranked down the window and lit a cigarette. Muttering to himself, distracted by his own thoughts, he didn’t view Quinn as any kind of a threat.
Good.
The cable car let out an unholy screech as it slowed for a stop at the next corner, and Quinn took full advantage of the noise. He looped the zip tie around Alexei’s neck and yanked it tight. The guy gagged and flailed, his feet making a dull metallic thumping sound in the foot well. But he didn’t have a lot of fight in him, and when he slipped into unconsciousness, Quinn lunged across the seat, grabbed his gun, and pressed the barrel to his temple. The blast was deafening in the close confines of the car and left Quinn’s ears ringing.
One down, two to go.
He shoved open the door and rolled out onto the street, keeping low to avoid putting himself in Pyotr’s line of fire. Still, a lucky shot blasted through the car’s window, raining bits of broken glass on him and coming way too fucking close to his head for comfort. Zaryanko screamed at Pyotr, most likely telling him to stop shooting at the golden goose, but Pyotr was in a rage now and there was no stopping him.
Good. Angry people made mistakes.
One bullet tore through the flimsy door Quinn was hiding behind, and he felt the heat as it skimmed by his neck.
Fuck.
Just as he was about to say a Hail Mary and leave cover to return fire, the cargo van he’d spotted earlier pulled up alongside him and the back doors flung open.
“Quinn!”
Jean-Luc? No. He had to be hallucinating, because he couldn’t possibly be that lucky…
Could he?
But he definitely knew that voice, and as Pyotr peppered the pavement around him with bullets, he crouched, readying to surge to his feet at the first lull—and froze. Across the street, under the statue of Lenin, was a ghost. Liam Miller made a gun with his forefinger and thumb and aimed it at Quinn. Smiling, he pretended to shoot.
Holy Christ. How could he be alive?
“Q, c’mon, move your ass!”
A bullet ripped through the car inches from his neck and, yeah, he couldn’t stick around any longer. He took a running leap for the van. Jean-Luc and Jesse caught him by the arms and hauled him inside, then Jesse returned fire.
For a moment, with the bullets continuing to fly and his guys shouting orders at each other, Quinn could do nothing but lie on the floor, shocked into immobility. Had he actually seen Liam, or was his fucked-up brain playing tricks?
Jean-Luc tried to pull the swinging door shut and almost got a bullet through his hand for the effort. He cursed in a livid string that ended with the word “mama.”
“Did you just insult Zaryanko’s mother in Russian?” Seth’s voice called from the driver’s seat.
One of Jesse’s bullets blew through Pyotr’s left cheek and the gunfire came to an abrupt end.
Jean-Luc finally caught the door and yanked it shut. “The Russians know how to do two things well, grasshopper: make vodka and swear. I told him his mother sucks cow dicks.”
Christ, Quinn thought and finally let himself relax. He loved these guys. He really did.
Jesse lowered his weapon and glanced over his shoulder. “Where’s Mara?”
Mara.
He bolted upright. “We gotta go back. She’s still in the hotel.” As far as he knew. Unless they had moved her, too. Fuck, he wished he could remember. “Seth, turn around!”
Jesse cursed a blue streak that rivaled Jean-Luc’s. “We can’t. Zaryanko’s on alert now.”
Of course he was right. Going back without a solid plan was akin to suicide and wouldn’t help Mara.
But still. “Guys, we can’t leave her. She’s pregnant.”
“We know,” Jesse muttered.
The van slowed, then rolled to a stop on an empty side street. Seth shifted it into park and glanced through the metal door that separated the front from the cargo area. “Someone take over up here.” He grabbed the bag that contained his sniper rifle. “I’ll find Ian and Marcus and we’ll keep the hotel under surveillance until we can come up with a plan of attack. If they move her, we’ll know.”
Jesse stepped over Quinn without as much as a glance in his direction. “Go,” he said to Seth. “Keep in touch.”
“Copy that.”
The van lurched forward again with Jesse at the wheel. Quinn leaned his head back against the wall and shut his eyes. Guilt churned in his stomach. If he hadn’t blacked out on Mara, leaving her to fend for herself, maybe they’d both be safe now.
Jean-Luc squeezed his shoulder. “Cajuns have a saying, lâche pas la patate. Translated literally, it means ‘don’t drop the potato.’ But it’s commonly understood to mean ‘don’t give up.’ So lâche pas la patate. We’ll find her and bring her back to you.”
Quinn met the linguist’s intense blue eyes, and emotion surged, blocking up his throat. This team, as dysfunctional as it sometimes seemed, was one of the best he’d ever had the privilege to work with.
He reached up and clasped Jean-Luc’s shoulder in return. “I know we will.”
…
The door burst open a second time, banging hard into the wall, and Mara fumbled the spoon. It landed on the floor with a soft clink, and she kicked it up against the baseboard, doing her best to hide it with her sneaker as she turned to face Zaryanko.
If he noticed the spoon, he didn’t acknowledge it. He was livid, a
nd maybe even a bit shaken. Blood spattered one side of his face.
Mara’s heart lodged in her throat. “What did you do to Travis?”
He crossed the room in several long strides and grabbed her by the arm.
“No!” She ducked out of his reach. “Where. Is. Travis?”
“You wish to know what kind of coward he is?” Zaryanko sneered and withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe away the blood. “He escaped. Saved his own ass and left you here without a second thought. Some savior he turned out to be, yes? So now you will go to Dubai and work off all the money he cost me on your back. And when your child is born, it will work, too. You will never again know the taste of freedom.”
A strange sense of peace settled over Mara, calming her racing heart. If Zaryanko was telling the truth, if Travis had escaped, he’d come back for her. He’d probably walk away later when she was safe, but as long as she was in danger, he’d always come back. She knew it with every fiber in her being. Travis was a lot of things, and not all of them were good, but he wasn’t a coward.
And neither was she. Not anymore.
She planted her feet. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Zaryanko’s eyes all but spit fire at her. She had never seen such hatred before and recoiled despite her intentions to remain steady.
“You don’t have a choice.” He snapped out a command in Russian and a thug—not Alexei or Pyotr, but a new one—strode into the room. This guy was built like a pit bull and looked about as mean as a half-starved one trained to fight. The last thing she saw was his meaty fist on a collision course with her face…
Until a blast of cold air shocked her awake.
How long had she been unconscious? Seconds? Minutes? She wasn’t sure, but she was outside the hotel now, draped over the pit bull’s shoulder, and her jaw ached. She squirmed, and he dropped her to the pavement like she was nothing more than a sack of potatoes.
Maybe to him, that was all she was worth.
Her hands and knees took the brunt of the fall, and she bit her tongue at the jarring impact. Tasted the copper tang of her own blood. And her fear.
She wasn’t a coward, but oh, God, was she frightened.
“Are you willing to behave now?” Zaryanko asked.
She gazed up and found herself face-to-face with the license plate of a car. T219AX. She stared hard at it, committed the number to memory.
“Well?” Zaryanko demanded.
She spit out the blood pooling in her mouth. Told herself she would not cry the tears blurring her vision in front of this animal of a man. “Yes.”
“Yes what, cyka?”
“Yes, I’ll behave.”
“Then get the fuck in the car and keep your mouth shut.”
Swallowing back a surge of bile, she wobbled to her feet and used the car to steady her progress toward the door Zaryanko pulled open. She slid into the backseat and something jabbed her side.
The seat belt?
No, someone had shoved all of the buckles down into the seat. So what—?
Cell phone. The one Travis had stolen off Pyotr. He’d put it in his coat pocket, and she was still wearing his coat.
Zaryanko had gone back into the hotel, and his thug was walking around the hood of the car toward the driver’s seat. She only had a tiny window of opportunity to get out a call for help. Had to make it count. She slid the phone out and positioned it between her thigh and the door. Hopefully they’d just think she was cowering. She opened a new text message and plugged in the only number she knew off the top of her head besides her mother’s: Travis’s cell phone. She’d dialed the number over and over again after Lanie gave it to her, and all those failed attempts to call him had left his number burned into her memory.
She stuffed the phone back into her pocket before the pit bull was fully settled in the driver’s seat, but he didn’t so much as glance back at her. He started the car, cranked on the music, and began humming along as if he wasn’t driving a woman somewhere against her will.
Mara slipped her hands into both pockets as if she was cold. Which, she was, but the move was more about disguising the fact that she was hiding something in one pocket than it was about keeping warm. She dragged a finger over the old flip phone’s number pad, trying to remember which letter corresponded with each number.
Oh, she hoped she was right.
Slowly, precisely, she began to type out a text.
Chapter Thirteen
“You’ll never guess what we found wandering in the streets,” Jean-Luc called out as he led the way inside the small house they had commandeered as their operating base. He’d explained to Quinn on the ride over that the house had been abandoned when the family that called it home up and moved abroad, leaving most of their possessions behind. And judging by the state of the living room, they hadn’t been a rich family. An old, lumpy couch sat against the tapestry-covered wall, and Gabe rested there with his bad foot elevated and an arm thrown over his eyes. There was also a TV in the corner that was such a technological dinosaur it actually had rabbit ears. Other than that, the place was empty.
Gabe groaned at the sound of Jean-Luc’s voice and didn’t lift his arm. “Please don’t tell me Ian found another dog. No more dogs. And no cats. No furry animals, period.”
“Well, he is a little furry.” Jean-Luc ruffled Quinn’s overgrown hair.
Quinn ducked out of his reach and pointed a warning finger at him. “If you want to keep that hand, I suggest you never do that again.”
Gabe dropped his arm and slowly sat up, his eyes as wide as Quinn had ever seen them. “Q?”
Jean-Luc grinned. “You still so sure you don’t want to keep him?”
“Jesus,” Gabe said. His mouth worked silently for a second, completely at a loss for words. “Quinn, shit. You okay? Where’s Mara?”
Quinn rubbed the back of his neck. “Honestly, man, I don’t know. I was with her and then…I don’t know.” And it made him sick to his stomach, but he wasn’t ready to get into the conversation as to why he didn’t know, so he nodded toward Gabe’s leg. “Foot okay?”
Gabe grunted a reply that could’ve been anything from “just peachy” to “fuck you,” but the answer was obvious. If his foot wasn’t bothering him, he would have been at the club with the rest of the team. He pushed himself to his feet, limping as his weight settled. He held out a hand, and Jesse slapped his cane into his palm.
The medic’s mood was dark as a storm cloud. Not that Quinn blamed him. “Hey, Jess, I—”
Jesse ignored him and said to Gabe in a carefully flat voice, “Where are Harvard and Lanie? We need to brief everyone on the recent developments.”
Gabe hitched a thumb over his shoulder. “Half of our radios don’t work, which is driving Harvard to drink. Last I saw, he was in the kitchen trying to jury-rig them, and Lanie’s helping.” At that moment, a vicious curse came from the kitchen. Female voice.
Jean-Luc winced. “Annnd from the sounds of it, they are not having much luck. Looks like we’ll be racking up international charges on our cell phones again.”
“Which reminds me,” Gabe said to Quinn and reached into his bag on the floor, “I have your phone.”
“You got my message.”
“Yeah, it was in your drafts folder. Tank found the phone at the hangar in New Mexico.”
Quinn’s lip twitched in a small smile. That dog was worth his weight in gold and completely worth the hassle of bringing him back from Afghanistan. “Man, I take back everything bad I’ve ever said about Tank. I’m buying him the biggest rawhide he’s ever seen when we get home. Where is he?”
“We had to leave him behind on the plane,” Gabe said. “We parachuted in, and he hasn’t had the training for that yet.”
Quinn nodded and turned his phone on. The screen lit up and showed he was doing good in the battery department. “No signal.”
“Harvard warned it would be spotty at best, which is why he’s trying so hard to get those radios up and runni
ng.”
“Well, wouldn’t be right if we didn’t have one snafu.”
“I hear you. No easy day, right?”
“Hooyah.” He pocketed the phone. “You mentioned the name Lanie. You’re not talking about Mara’s friend?”
“He sure is,” Jean-Luc said. “Lanie Delcambre. She’s…” He gave a wolf whistle.
“I heard that, Cajun,” the woman said from the kitchen.
He shrugged and called back, “Well, ya are!” Then added in a lowered voice, “But she plays for the other team—which, you ask me, is hot as hell.”
Jesse stopped short halfway across the living area and spun back. If anything, his scowl only got darker. “What, she’s a lesbian ’cause she didn’t drop her panties at your feet?”
“Or yours.”
“I can hear you, assholes,” Lanie said and appeared in the doorway between the two rooms. A mixed-race woman with sharp, exotic features, she was all long, lean muscle, but it was her eyes more than her build that commanded respect. She had the eyes of a soldier ready and willing to do what was necessary to get her friend back. And right now, those eyes were spitting fire at Jesse and Jean-Luc.
“And, no,” she said, “I’m not a lesbian. I like men. A lot. Just not any of you, so how about y’all get your minds out of my panties and—” She broke off when she finally spotted Quinn, and the radio in her hand clattered to the floor. Her gaze darted around the room. “Mara…?”
“We were separated,” Quinn answered, because he felt like it was his responsibility. “Zaryanko still has her. I’m sorry.”
For a moment, her shoulders slumped in defeat. Then she sucked in a breath and straightened to her full height. “Well. We need to find her then.”
Quinn nodded. He could see why Gabe had chosen to bring her along on this mission.
“Let’s take this to the kitchen,” Gabe said. “More room in there.”
Harvard glanced up when they all filed into the room but returned to tinkering with a radio without much concern. Quinn waited, counting the beats in his head before—
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