“Who hired you?” she asked. Although the man with the cane had the bearing of a general and his friend in the camouflage pants was most definitely a soldier, they had to be mercenaries. The rest of the group was too ragtag to be official military.
When he didn’t answer, she huffed out a breath. “Do you know who took Brys?”
He ignored the question. Big surprise. She got the feeling he never answered questions not to his liking. “With all due respect, ma’am—”
“Oh, tell me you didn’t just ma’am me.”
Again, he ignored her. “You need to go back to Costa Rica. You’re just as much a target here as your brother was. Let us handle this. We’ll bring him home.”
How did he know she lived in Costa Rica? And what else did he know about her? The idea that he knew more about her than she did him doused her manufactured courage with ice and goose bumps raced over her skin. Even so, she had nothing to hide, and she sure wasn’t falling for that whole let-the-professionals-handle-it, your-brother’s-in-good-hands bit. She’d heard of too many incidences where the so-called professionals were not enough.
“Would you leave?” she asked. “If it was your brother, would you leave without him?”
His jaw tightened just a little bit, telling her she’d hit a tender spot. “Not the same. I’m trained for this.”
“Oh yeah? And just how many hostage rescue situations have you been in, Mr. I’m-Trained-For-This?” She’d be surprised if even one. Soldiers of fortune, or at least the few she’d met in Costa Rica, talked and walked big, but as soon as the real action started they were nowhere to be found. She’d tried to hire one before trekking to Colombia but discovered his claims were just alcohol-fueled bravado and nothing more. And, yeah, she was still miffed at that. Stupid men and their stupid egos.
“Over fifty,” he said placidly.
“Well, see, that’s—a lot.” O-kay, talk about having an argument blow up in her face. The man apparently knew his stuff. Maybe her brother was in good hands. She didn’t dare to hope. “Who are you?”
He exchanged a look with Mr. Camo Pants, a thousand words passing between them without either of them making a sound. Then he shrugged.
“My name is Gabriel Bristow. Gabe.”
Gabriel. It suited him. He even looked a little like the painting her uber-religious mother had of the avenging angel.
Gabe went on to introduce each of the other men in the room. Jean-Luc Cavalier was the fake policeman she’d already had the pleasure of meeting, but he swept into a bow as if this was their first introduction, murmured something delightful sounding in French, and kissed her hand. Her opinion of him did a complete one-eighty. In fact, she melted into a big, gushy puddle of girly giggles and didn’t even hate herself for it.
Jesse Warrick, the medic, touched the brim of his Stetson with a polite, “ma’am”—somehow when he said it in that cowboy drawl, it didn’t sound as condescending as it had when Gabe said it earlier.
Fedora guy was Marcus Deangelo. He nodded toward her wrist. “You do much surfing in Costa Rica?”
She glanced down, at first not sure how he’d drawn that conclusion. Then she remembered the surfboard charm on the bracelet her brother had given her for her twenty-fifth birthday. “Sometimes.”
Marcus grinned and wagged a finger in the air between them. “You. Me. We’re gonna talk.” He held up his coffee cup. “Want some?”
“Oh, very much. Thank you.”
Gabe made some displeased grumbling noises until Marcus returned with a mug, then continued with the introductions.
Eric Physick, whom everyone called Harvard, was the computer geek tapping away at his laptop keyboard. He looked up and offered a distracted smile when Gabe said his name. His glasses sat crooked on his nose. Audrey had to fight the urge to straighten them and comb down his spiky mop of brown hair.
Ian Reinhardt leaned against the wall in a motorcycle jacket with bad attitude rolling off him in waves. He said nothing to her, but his lip curled in a faint sneer of disdain.
O-kay. Mental note: she never wanted to be in a room alone with him.
Finally, camo pants, Travis Quinn, gave her a solemn nod, but kept his distance.
Such an odd assortment of men. She wasn’t sure whether to cheer, laugh, or cry that they were apparently her brother’s only hope since the FBI was doing jack to save him.
“Nice to meet everyone,” she said when Gabe finished the introductions. She might be frightened out of her wits and confused as hell, but she was a Southern girl, born and bred. Mama would fly down from heaven and tan her hide good if she wasn’t polite, of that she had no doubt.
“But,” she added, “that still doesn’t explain who you are.”
“We’re HORNET,” Jean-Luc said.
“Horny is more like it,” Gabe muttered and gave him a blistering stare. “Keep your eyes above her neck.”
Jean-Luc grinned shamelessly. “Aw, mon capitaine. No worries. I wouldn’t dream of stepping on your turf.”
His turf? Audrey scowled at them both and yanked at the slipping neckline of her tank top. In the sticky heat of the jungle, she often went braless, and hadn’t changed that habit since arriving in Bogotá, despite the cool, rainy climate. A half-inch more and she’d have had to ask Jean-Luc for Mardi Gras beads in exchange for the show. Not that she had a problem with nudity. If she could get away without wearing clothes, she would, but she needed to keep these guys focused. And one surefire way to get a man off task was to flash him.
“What’s HORNET?” she asked.
“That’s not what we’re called,” Gabe said. “We’re a private hostage rescue and negotiation team. And you’re right, we have been hired to bring your brother home.”
“Who hired you?”
“That’s confidential.”
Audrey huffed out a breath. Pulling teeth was easier than getting information out of him. A pit viper’s teeth, to be exact. “Maybe I can help.”
“No, you can’t. And every second we waste explaining ourselves to you is another second your brother spends in captivity. So you need to back off, Ms. Van Amee, and let us do our job.”
“Gabe,” Harvard called across the room. “I got it.”
Without another glance in her direction, Gabe strode over to stand behind Harvard and studied the computer monitor. “Go back to his first appearance.”
Since nobody had told her to stay put, Audrey drifted over to see what Harvard was doing. An image of her brother leaving his apartment building showed on the computer screen. The timestamp in the corner read 5:58 a.m. Forever prompt—that was so like Bryson. His pixelated image left the screen.
“Another angle?” Gabe asked.
Harvard pecked a few keys and Bryson’s image returned to the far left corner. He waited there for something, impatient.
The limo, she thought as Bryson checked the screen of his phone and answered her call. A few minutes later, the limo arrived and a tall dark-haired man opened the door for Bryson. A moment after that, the vehicle pulled away from the curb with her brother inside.
“License plate?” Gabe asked.
“Partial. I’m already running it. And the phone call…” Harvard rewound the footage to check the timestamp. “…came in at 0620. With a little finessing, I can get into his records, see who he spoke to.”
“Do it. Also see if—”
“It was me,” Audrey said and Gabe turned narrowed eyes on her.
“What?”
“It was me,” she repeated. “I called him. I have—was supposed to have an art show this weekend in San Jose and wanted to make sure he remembered. He didn’t.”
Gabe straightened away from the computer. “What else did he say?”
She shrugged. “Typical Bryson stuff. He had to work. He was off to another meeting.”
“Where?”
“He didn’t say. I started lecturing him on how he works too much, how he’s missing out on his sons’ lives, and how his doctor said he needed to
take it easy.” She noticed a faint scowl pass over Gabe’s hard features at that, but he hid it in a blink.
“The medical records I have for your brother don’t mention any serious conditions,” Jesse Warrick said, concern in his voice.
“Uh, no, he doesn’t have any,” she answered. “I mean, nothing that he needs medicine for or anything. He just had some chest pains last summer. They ran tests and are keeping an eye on him, but so far, it seems to be an isolated incident. The doctors think it was caused by a panic attack.”
Jesse looked at Gabe. “The records I have don’t mention anything about chest pain.”
Gabe appeared frustrated and said something back, but she didn’t hear him because Quinn asked from across the room, “Did you hear anything else when you were on the phone with Bryson?”
She glanced over at him. Such solemn intensity. He made her uncomfortable, so she returned her gaze to Gabe. “I heard a man’s voice say in Spanish that Bryson needed to relax, that nobody was going to hurt him because he—” She had to stop and clear away the lump forming in her throat. “Because he was worth too much money. After that, the line went dead.”
“So naturally you jumped on the first flight to Colombia and put yourself at risk.” Gabe held up a hand when her mouth opened to fire back a defense. “Forget it. What else did Bryson say? Can you remember anything else about that conversation?”
Oh, what a condescending, overbearing…
No, she told herself and clenched her teeth to reign in her temper, don’t let him get to you. There would be plenty of time to rip into him later. Now, she had to focus.
For Bryson.
She shut her eyes, replayed the conversation for the hundredth, maybe thousandth, time in the last twenty-four hours. “He didn’t say anything else to me. When the limo arrived, he had a short conversation with the driver. I couldn’t hear all of it, but I think the driver introduced himself as Jacinto.”
Gabe snapped his fingers and turned to Harvard. “Any clear shots of the driver’s face?”
“Not clear, boss. One profile. Pretty grainy, but I might be able to clean it up. If I can get a clear enough picture, I’ll find you a name, birthday, and the name of his last one-night-stand.”
“Do it. How’s the EPC research coming?”
“Getting there. I have some possible EPC hangouts that need checking.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” He clapped Harvard on the back before turning to the rest of the group. Watching him take command was like seeing a tank roll over everything in its path, and Audrey stood back in awed silence as he addressed his team.
“We’re going to split up, check out those addresses. Jesse, you said your Spanish is passable, so you and Marcus will be alpha team. Quinn, Jean-Luc, and Ian, bravo team. Each will recon half of the addresses Harvard dug up. Stay in constant radio contact in case one of you needs reinforcements. Harvard will stay here on the computers.”
Quinn frowned. “What about you?”
“I’m going to talk to the real limo driver, the one that reported Bryson missing, Armando Castillo.”
“How do you plan to do that?” Quinn asked. “Your Spanish sucks. You should take Jean-Luc with you.”
“Sí,” Jean-Luc agreed. “You shouldn’t go alone.”
“No,” Gabe said, and his tone dared anyone to argue. “Quinn’s Spanish is just as bad as mine, if not worse. Unless Ian…”
Ian shook his head.
“Point made. Jean-Luc goes with bravo.”
“Gabe, man.” Quinn sighed and dragged a hand over his short hair. If it was anyone else protesting, Audrey suspected from the way Gabe’s shoulders tightened that he’d bite their head off and pick his teeth with their spinal cord. But the others wisely kept their mouths shut and let Quinn do the talking.
“When we were on the teams—”
“Teams?” Audrey knew of only one branch of the military that referred to itself as “the teams,” and studied the men with renewed interest. “You’re SEALs?”
At her interruption, they both turned. Having two big, hard men give her such flinty stares should have scared her. And, okay, it did a little.
“Were,” Gabe said at the same time Quinn said, “Yeah.”
“Okay.” She bit her lower lip. “Uh, wow.”
Now that she knew, she wondered why she didn’t see it before. Gabe carried himself not like a general, but like a Navy SEAL. She’d met a few guys retired from the teams while living in Costa Rica, and Gabe walked like a SEAL, talked like one. He even blinked like one. How could she have not noticed that? Having them on her brother’s side suddenly felt a whole lot more like a benediction than a curse.
“On the teams,” Quinn repeated, returning to their conversation, “we always use the buddy system.”
“Goddammit, I know that,” Gabe snapped.
Quinn didn’t back down, didn’t even blink. “Good, ‘cuz it’s not changing now that we’re out. You’re taking someone who knows the language with you.”
“Mind telling me who? We don’t have enough men.”
Quinn’s jaw tightened. “Maybe HumInt has an asset in the city we can borrow. We’re already borrowing a pilot, so—”
“I can go with him.” Again, every eye in the room turned to her. Even Harvard stopped working to gape, and she bristled. “What? You need a Spanish speaker, and I’m fluent.”
“Hell. No.”
“Why not?” Anger flaring, she whirled on Gabe and jabbed a finger between his pecs. There was no give at all under his shirt. Like poking a concrete wall. She barely resisted the urge to flatten out her hand and rub it across all those hard muscles. Had to remind herself—twice—that she was annoyed with him.
“I’ve lived in Costa Rica for close to ten years now and I’m as fluent in Spanish as I am in English. And Armando—well, he doesn’t know me personally, but he knows who I am, so he’ll be more likely to talk. I’m an asset, numb nuts. Use me.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Yeah, Gabe wanted to use her all right, but it had nothing to do with her Spanish fluency. Not unless she cried out in Spanish during an orgasm.
Whoa. He put the brakes on those thoughts as his cock twitched in expectation. It’d been way too long for him if Miss Mouth, here, was this big of a turn-on.
And why the hell did he find her name-calling such an aphrodisiac, anyway?
“No,” he said between his teeth at the same time Quinn said, “That might not be a bad idea.”
“What?”
Quinn shrugged. “Tactically, she’s an advantage.”
And the Machiavellian motherfucker never passed up an advantage. Gabe scrubbed his face hard with his palms. “She’s. Not. Trained.”
“Are you expecting opposition?”
Dammit. Quinn already knew the answer to that was a solid no. It was the only reason he’d risk going by himself to talk to the limo driver. Really, Armando Castillo should own a freakin’ phone. If he did, this all would be a moot point. “I’m not taking a civilian—”
“News flash, Gabe. We’re all civilians now.”
Civilian.
His mouth froze on a comeback as the realization struck with the same force as a sucker punch to the solar plexus. Fuck, that hurt. Way more than it should have, and he had a moment of pure panic as his diaphragm refused to expand and let air into his lungs.
He was a civilian now. Damn.
“So it’s settled.” Audrey turned to face Quinn. “I’ll go with him and act as a translator.”
Settled? Far from it. He couldn’t take her anywhere with him unless it was to bed. Definitely not on an op, even one where he expected no resistance. She’d be a distraction of epic proportions, something that could get both of them killed in the wrong situation. Even now, he couldn’t stay on task and found his gaze wandering to her pert little rear end, so close in front of him he wouldn’t have to reach far to get a handful.
But how could he admit that in front of his men? Between Jean-Luc diso
beying orders and Ian’s bad attitude, the natives were already restless, and if he admitted to a weakness—a woman, for shit’s sake—there would be anarchy.
He forced his mind back on task before the pulse in his cock became a full-on boner. Audrey wasn’t trained, true, but she spoke the language and knew the mores of Hispanic culture better than any of his men. She was better equipped to tell whether the limo driver was evading, hiding something, or downright lying to them.
He turned to her. “Could you shoot a firearm and not hit me if the situation came down to that?”
“I was born and raised in the South, honey, but I’m no southern belle. I shoot what I aim at,” she said in a tone so coated with sugar he was surprised her teeth didn’t rot. Then she flashed a smile as bright as that sinful yellow tank top she wore. “But it’s still up in the air whether I’ll aim at you or not.”
Marcus let go an appreciative whistle and Jesse muttered, “Dayam.”
Gabe rubbed his jaw. Last thing he needed was for this Southern spitfire to go all Annie Oakley on his ass, but he pulled his SIG Sauer P226 from the holster at the small of his back and handed it over. When he saw the way she tested its weight and checked the chamber in smooth, efficient movements, some of his trepidation vanished. The woman really did know how to handle a firearm. Thank God.
“All right, you’re with me. Marcus,” he called across the room, “do you have contacts within the FBI that can keep their mouths shut?”
“Nah, boss,” Marcus said, and something that looked a lot like guilt darkened his features. Then he moved his shoulders as if shrugging off a weight. “You know, with the way I left… nobody talks to me now.”
Figures. Gabe didn’t know the nitty-gritty of Marcus Deangelo’s retirement from the FBI, except that he’d left with a less than sterling reputation. “Then find someone who will and get us a sitrep without causing a stir.”
“Sitrep?” Audrey asked.
“Situation report,” Gabe said through his teeth.
“Sure thing, boss,” Marcus said with his usual smile back in place and a cheeky two-finger salute.
Patience is a virtue. Patience is a virtue. Patience. Is. A. Goddamn. Virtue.
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