American, some tiny, rational portion of her brain realized as she darted toward the stairs at the end of the hall. Still, that didn’t mean he was a friend. He wouldn’t have kicked down the door if all he wanted to do was have a simple chat. She hit the stairs at a sprint, half-expecting him to vault over the railing and cut her off at the bottom. He didn’t, but a glance over her shoulder as she crashed through an emergency exit at the back of the building proved he was still right behind her.
He had a gun now, holding it alongside his leg.
Oh God.
She turned to flee down the alleyway toward the street and smacked into a rock wall of a chest covered with a white short-sleeved cotton shirt.
Audrey screamed. And screamed. And screamed.
…
Gabe wasn’t entirely sure what just happened. One minute he’d been reconnoitering the alleyway, wondering if Bryson had been taken from here because it had easy access to two different streets at both ends, and the next, a wisp of a woman shot out of the apartment building’s emergency exit like her ass was on fire. Then she took one look at his face and gave a bloodcurdling horror movie scream. As a SEAL, he was trained to handle most anything an enemy could throw at him, but a hysterical woman? What the fuck was he supposed to do with her?
“Shh,” he said. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”
She didn’t seem to hear him over her screaming. Or maybe she spoke Spanish and didn’t understand him. She had smooth, tanned skin and light brown hair, but he’d seen enough light-skinned Latinos in his travels to know that wasn’t the best judge of ethnicity. He dug around his admittedly rusty Spanish repertoire for the right words: “Tranquillo. Está okay. No voy…a hacerte daño.”
She screamed.
Jesus.
At wit’s end, he clamped one palm over her mouth and circled her slender neck with his other hand, felt her pulse pounding wildly against his thumb as he applied just the right amount of pressure. She slumped into blessed silence. He had to drop his cane to catch her before she hit the ground, and the extra weight ignited fireworks of pain in his foot.
Great. Now what?
Her head lolled against his shoulder, her hair tickling his nose. Balancing her in one arm, he used his free hand to smooth back the silky strands, which were not so much brown as the color of the finest gold rum. He got his first clear look at her face and felt a tug of familiarity. Freckles dappled the bridge of a nose that he could only describe as “cute,” like something on a doll. High cheekbones, a wide mouth that she probably thought was too big for her face if she judged herself by society’s standards of beauty, but that he found fascinating. He suddenly very much wanted to see her smile.
And then it clicked. He had seen her smile before. In a photo while briefing the men.
This was Audrey Van Amee. His hostage’s sister.
Gabe had a moment of no-fucking-way, but then the door slammed open again and Jean-Luc, his nose bleeding down the front of his shirt, skidded to a halt.
“You got her.”
“What are you doing?” Gabe demanded. “I ordered you to hold your position.”
“She was in Van Amee’s apartment.” He holstered his gun, then tried to staunch the blood flow with the edge of his shirt, which gave his voice a nasally sound. “She spotted me and took off. What else was I supposed to do?”
Gabe shut his eyes, drew a calming breath. Patience, he reminded himself, was a virtue. “Follow orders.”
“Fuck orders. We’re not the military, and I didn’t have time to get you on the horn.”
Police sirens wailed in the distance. Shit, as if this couldn’t get any worse.
“We’ll talk about this later.” Talk. Yeah, that’s what they’d do. After he reamed Jean-Luc a new one. This sort of reckless, Dirty Hairy shit was not happening under his command. “Get the car.”
“What about her?”
He looked at the unconscious woman in his arms. Her freckles stood out in stark relief against her pale face. Her eyes moved restlessly behind lids fringed with some of the longest lashes he’d ever seen.
The police sirens screamed closer.
“Well?” Jean-Luc asked.
Poor woman would wake up with a hellacious headache from the pressure-point KO, but not for at least a half hour. Leaving her unconscious in this alleyway was just not an option.
“She’s coming with us.” They needed to talk to her and find out what she was doing in Van Amee’s apartment. She’d also benefit from a once-over by Jesse when she woke up.
Jean-Luc grinned. “If you really want a date, I know plenty of willing women. We don’t have to kidnap one.” He stopped grinning and studied Gabe’s face. “Whoa, you’re serious.”
“Car. Now.”
Jean-Luc shook his head and broke into a jog. “And here I thought we’re the good guys.”
…
“What the…?” Quinn’s jaw didn’t drop open when Gabe limped into the safe house carrying the unconscious woman, but came pretty damn close. In typical Quinn-like fashion, he shook off the shock fast.
“Help him,” he ordered Marcus, who stood beside the door with a cup of aromatic Colombian coffee in hand.
“I got her.” Gabe waved everyone back. Marcus Deangelo, with his California surfer good looks and brimming with all of that Italian lover charm, was not laying even a pinky finger on her. He angled through the group, heading toward the nearest bedroom.
“What happened?” Jesse asked, trailing behind, medical bag in hand.
“Long story.”
“No, it’s not,” Jean-Luc said as he shut the front door and propped Gabe’s cane against the wall. “I found her in Van Amee’s apartment.”
“So , what the hell, Jean-Luc? You knocked her unconscious?” Jesse said.
“Nah. Our esteemed capitaine did that.” He pressed two fingers to his neck and mimed a faint to demonstrate.
“Like a Vulcan death grip? Cool.” Marcus took a drink from his cup. “Can you teach me that shit?”
“She’ll be fine,” Gabe muttered and shouldered into a small bedroom off the living room. The narrow cot he laid her on squeaked under her slight weight. She moaned, but otherwise didn’t stir. “She’ll wake up with a headache, nothing more.”
Jesse crouched beside her, checked her vitals, and then stood. “Seems okay, but I wouldn’t advise makin’ a habit of the Vulcan death grip, ’specially with such a little thing as her.” He snagged his medical bag from the floor beside the bed and went to the door. Glancing back, he opened his mouth to say something, but then looked at Quinn, shook his head, and walked out. “Hey, Jean-Luc, lemme take a gander at your nose. Looks broken.”
A whole minute passed in silence after the room emptied. Quinn stood beside the door, studying the woman with unreadable eyes, a slight frown pulling down the corners of his mouth.
“I couldn’t leave her,” Gabe said. Quinn was one of only two men on earth he’d ever felt the need to explain himself to. His brother Raffi was the other.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You don’t have to. Listen, Q, things got fubared. Jean-Luc, that stupid jackass, went against orders and chased her through the building with his fucking gun. Someone called the cops and I had to make a decision. Leave her and possibly lose any information she might have, or bring her with us.”
He purposely left out the part about the tugging in his groin every time he looked at her.
“Well, shit.” Quinn rubbed a hand back and forth over his high-and-tight. “We’re here to rescue a hostage, not create an international incident by kidnapping a native.”
“She’s not a native. Look at her. Don’t you recognize her?”
Quinn studied her face for several moments. Then his eyes rounded. “Audrey Van Amee. Shit.”
“Yeah, and she’s not our hostage.”
“You just abducted her.”
He set his jaw. “She’s not a hostage.”
“What if she know
s something about her brother? We can’t let her go.”
“We’ll have to convince her to hang around until we find Van Amee, but we’re not going to keep her tied up or locked in a room.”
Quinn’s expression gave nothing away, but Gabe was good enough at reading his best friend to know he thought it was a shitty plan. And it was, but Gabe refused to hold anyone against their will.
Jean-Luc was right. They were supposed to be the good guys.
“So,” Quinn said after another long beat and showed the barest hint of a smile. “Wanna go give Jean-Luc a taste of SEAL discipline?”
CHAPTER FOUR
Audrey woke to the thrum of a baritone voice issuing orders and turned her head toward the sound. Holy God, what was that racket? Her mind swam, temples throbbed in beat with her heart. Better yet, what on earth did she drink last night? She wasn’t a drinker by nature, but every once in a while her friends would drag her out to a dance club on the beach and she’d go a little margarita crazy. Is that what she’d done last night? Must’ve been a doozie of a time since she wasn’t in her own bed—
Bryson.
It all flooded back. Chased out of Bryson’s apartment by the fake policeman. The man with the gold eyes and cane. Her brother’s abduction.
Oh God.
She blinked against her headache and looked around the room. Small. Empty. A wood crucifix hung over the narrow bed she lay on, but there was no other furniture. No lamp to use as a weapon and no window to escape from, naturally. The door sat open about six inches. Through the opening, she could make out movement in the other room and hear that commanding voice barking out orders like a drill sergeant, but couldn’t tell what was going on or who her captors were. Did they have anything to do with Bryson’s abduction? If so, seems like they’d make sure to keep her under lock and key instead of leaving the door open.
Of course, maybe they were all armed to the teeth, which was why they had no worries she’d try to escape.
Well, only one way to find out.
She drew a breath and pushed herself upright, waiting a moment for her head to stop its tilt-a-whirl act before swinging her legs off the edge of the cot. Her first few steps were a little wobbly, but she felt steadier by the time she reached the door and gave it a push. It opened easily.
The fake policeman was doing push-ups in the center of the room, while the man with the cane walked around him like a predator zeroing in on its weakened prey.
“Arms straight!” He tapped the man’s buckling arm with the tip of his cane. “You want to start over? We’ve got no place to be until Harvard finds that video footage.”
Okay. Americans. She let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Yes, being American didn’t automatically preclude them from bad guy status, she knew that. Plenty of bad Americans out there in the world, but her instincts told her these men meant her no harm. Maybe they were even here to help. Maybe they were FBI or…
Not. She studied the group of men—soldiers, apparently, although most of them weren’t dressed like it—standing around the perimeter of the room. One, wearing a blue plaid fedora and sipping a cup of coffee, took bets from the others. Definitely not FBI. Or anything else official. Mercenaries, then?
Audrey bit her lip and took two steps backward into the bedroom… But then what? She stopped moving, glanced back at the bed. She hadn’t come to Colombia to lie in some tiny room and cower with the sheets pulled over her head.
She studied the group again and decided to go with her instincts. They hadn’t locked her in the room. If they had wanted to harm her, they had plenty of opportunity to do so when she was unconscious. So who were they and what did they want from her? The only way to find out was to talk to them.
The fake policeman finally collapsed, sweating and gasping, and even though he’d chased her and scared the bejesus out of her, she couldn’t help the twinge of pity as he rolled to his side and gripped his ribs, his face bright red, his teeth clenched. The other soldiers let out hoots until the man with the cane sent them all a look as lethal as a gunshot wound.
“Would you gentlemen like to join him?”
That shut them up and they all faked interest in something else real fast.
To Audrey’s surprise, the man with the cane’s whole demeanor changed from brutal drill sergeant to—well, she didn’t know, but he was nearly gentle as he gripped the fake policeman’s hand and hauled him upright. “You okay, Jean-Luc?”
“Hah, that’s all y’all got? Piece of—” The man—Jean-Luc, apparently—winced. “Piece of cake.” Blood leaked from his nose, over his lips, and he swiped at it with his arm. “But, uh, I’ll listen to orders next time. Save you the…the humiliation of not breaking me.”
“Good idea.” The man with the cane smiled—and, whew, that was some smile, softening the hard lines of his cut-granite face. He patted Jean-Luc on the back. “Go see Jesse. You’re bleeding again.”
Jean-Luc tried to walk on his own, but stumbled a little and slammed a hand onto the nearest piece of furniture, a table filled with electronic equipment, to steady himself. The man with the cane caught him under one arm while another man, who looked more like a soldier than everyone else with his military haircut and urban camouflage pants, wedged a shoulder under his other arm.
“Dizzy,” Jean-Luc muttered. He suddenly didn’t look good at all, pale as bone despite his tanned complexion.
Audrey had a feeling he hadn’t elaborated about their scuffle in Bryson’s apartment. He probably had a concussion from her hitting him with the lamp.
“I hit him on the head.” When seven sets of eyes turned her way, she realized she’d spoken aloud and her heart took up residence in her throat. Some of the gazes were mildly hostile, others assessing, and still others showing a spark of male interest, but one particular set of hazels focused on her like sunbeams. Not as gold in the artificial light of the overhead lamp as they had been in the gloomy natural light of the alleyway but more greenish-gold, they swept over her, lingering a second longer than was necessary considering the situation. Then he seemed to catch himself and ripped his gaze away, again focusing on Jean-Luc.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” he asked in that smooth, calm baritone.
Jean-Luc blew a raspberry with his lips. “Aw, it was nothing. Glancing blow.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Audrey told the man with the cane. “I hit him three times with a lamp. He really scared me.” But since they hadn’t tied her up and none of them had yet to attack her or threaten her in any way, she was beginning to think that had been a fluke. Maybe these guys were at least partly on her side.
“Pardon,” Jean-Luc said and looked genuinely apologetic through the blood leaking down his face. He collapsed into a chair someone had pulled up and a man wearing a Stetson—a medic, she assumed, since he carried a bag of medical supplies—pressed a compress to his nose, then flashed a penlight in his eyes. He tried to wave the medic aside, but the medic wasn’t having any of that.
“Either you let me do an exam, Jean-Luc, or I knock you out. Then I’ll know for sure you have a concussion.”
He grumbled but let the medic take his vitals without further fuss and refocused on Audrey. “Things got a little out of hand back there at the apartment, cher. For that, I am sorry.”
“It’s okay.” She felt the man with the cane’s eyes on her again but pretended not to notice. “I apologize for hitting you. And, uh, kicking you in the nose.”
“Jesus, Jean-Luc,” the man in the fedora laughed. “She beat the shit outta you.”
“Hey, Marcus, got a gift for ya.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Jean-Luc said and flashed him the middle finger, which made Marcus hoot with laughter.
“That’s enough, gentlemen.” The man with the cane, again catching himself staring at her, snapped to attention. She watched it happen, saw him yank on the reins of tightly held control.
How often did he let go of those reins? Not nearly enough, she gues
sed, and she had the inexplicable urge to force his hand.
As he directed his men, Audrey realized she was staring right back at him and gave herself a mental kick. Bryson was in danger. She didn’t care how intriguing and, yes, sexy the man with the cane was. He wasn’t important right now. Nobody was, except Bryson.
When he refocused on her, his eyes were like citrine, cool, calculating, but still sparking with inner fire that no amount of training or control could hide.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“I’m…” She considered giving an alias for all of a half-second, but that would only complicate matters. Given all the computer equipment in the room, her real name wouldn’t stay secret long…if they didn’t already know it. Her art show was getting a lot of press, not only in Central America, but also in the States. All they had to do was look for one of the many interviews scattered over the internet with accompanying photos of her. For the man in the corner pounding away at his laptop keyboard, she bet that would be the work of a minute.
“I’m Audrey Van Amee.”
He nodded as if she’d confirmed what he already knew, but, damn him, he didn’t introduce himself or any of the other men.
“And you are…?” she prompted.
“Looking for your brother.”
Could he be more deliberately obtuse? She jammed her hands onto her hips. “I kind of figured that, given that you were staking out his apartment. What I want to know is if you’re working for or against him.”
Please, please, please say for.
“For,” he said, without a blink of hesitation.
Audrey discovered she was holding her breath again and let it out in a soft exhale so as not to draw attention to the fact. She thought it better that she appeared confident and strong in front of these pseudo-soldiers, but what would she have done if her instincts had failed her and these were the bad guys? Her stomach jittered at the thought.
Bryson was right. She really should start thinking situations like this through before running her mouth. Then again, she’d never been in a situation like this before and was pretty much winging it.
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