Reckless Honor

by Tonya Burrows

  There.

  He walked over to the rolling cart next to the operating table and started opening drawers. Score one for Jean-Luc. First drawer contained all kinds of scalpels. Now he was in business. He chose the one with the longest blade. Obviously, it wasn’t going to do much for him in a gunfight, but in close quarters, this would give him the upper hand.

  Now to find Ebiere. The girl was probably frightened out of her mind, and it gave him an unpleasant tug in his belly that he’d been so willing to leave her behind. He checked the corridor again. Still empty.

  Just as he stepped out, a figured appeared at the end of the hallway. One of the militants from the generator room. The kid opened his mouth to call to his friends and Jean-Luc thought, merde. He lunged, but the militant twisted away to avoid a scalpel in his jugular and drew his own knife. If he was going for a my-knife-is-bigger power play, he succeeded because that combat blade blew Jean-Luc’s little scalpel out of the water in terms of killing ability.

  Fuck.

  He dodged a swipe at his ribs, blocked a downward blow with his arm. The blade caught on his shirt, tearing a hole, but never made it to his skin. The shorter blade of the scalpel put him at a major disadvantage here.

  He dropped to the floor, narrowly avoiding another downward stab, and swept out with the scalpel. The thin, ultra-sharp blade slid through the militant’s leg muscle, cutting so deep and fast, the kid didn’t even realize at first his leg was now useless and kept trying to Psycho Jean-Luc with his blade.

  “Cajun!”

  Jean-Luc risked a glance toward Marcus’s voice. Marcus stood behind the militant, two rucksacks on his back, a pistol in hand. He slid a karambit across the floor with his foot. Jean-Luc snapped up the claw-like knife, popped to his feet, and hooked the blade on the inside of the militant’s arm while blocking the next downward stab. Flesh ripped as he pulled the knife away and swiped it across the militant’s ribs. The kid screamed and took a step backward, and that’s when his leg collapsed from under him.

  Panting harder than he should’ve been from the fight, Jean-Luc stepped closer to the militant and finished the job with a slice across his throat. His eyes flared wide for an instant, then he gagged and crumpled silently to the floor.

  Jean-Luc breathed out a sigh of relief as Marcus tossed him his pack. “Oh, mon ami. Am I happy to see you.” He opened the pack to arm himself. He pulled on his chest holster, slid his various knives into their homes. The karambit went into its sheath over his heart, right where it belonged. He loved that fucking knife. “How’d you know I was in here?”

  “Well, my first thought was to grab us a boat because I knew you’d want to get the hell out. But I also knew Claire wouldn’t leave her patients.” Marcus relieved the deceased militant of his rifle, and also tossed that to Jean-Luc. Judging by the AK he had slung over his shoulder, he’d already secured one for himself. “Took a solid guess who would win that argument.”

  “I get the feeling you’re insulting me, but a comeback will have to wait.” He slid his pack onto his shoulders and picked up the AK. “We’re after one patient. Ebiere.”

  Marcus fell into formation behind him. “The little girl. The first survivor.”

  “Claire said her blood’s important if this bioweapon ever gets out.”

  “She’s not wrong.”

  They cleared the next corridor together, Marcus going left, and him going right. “Clear.”

  “Clear. Where’d you stash Claire?” Marcus asked.

  “She’s safe. At least until they decide to search the staff tents again.”

  “Gotta hustle then. Know where you’re going?”

  Jean-Luc tapped his temple. “All up here. This way.” He navigated them through the patient areas to the first of the wards. The cold zone. They didn’t see another hostile.

  “I don’t like this,” Marcus said after they cleared the corridor outside the cold zone. “Where are the bastards?”

  “If I had to guess…” Jean-Luc nodded down the hall to the first of the airlocks. “In there. ‘Rescuing’ their countrymen from the evil white doctors.”

  “Jesus Christ. They’re going to get everyone killed. Let’s get outta here. Where’s Ebiere?”

  Jean-Luc again tilted his head toward the airlock.

  “In there? Are you fucking with me?”

  In response, Jean-Luc shouldered his weapon and grabbed a mask and gloves from the storage shelves lining the wall. He tossed them to Marcus before picking up some for himself.

  Marcus crossed himself, then pulled on the mask, swearing the whole time. “Dude, if you get me killed just to impress a woman, I’m gonna haunt your sorry ass.”

  Jean-Luc stopped in front of the airlock and found the button to operate it. He glanced over before hitting it. “This isn’t about Claire. This is about a little girl who survived the unsurvivable and doesn’t have anyone else in this world. We’re getting her outta here.”

  Marcus was silent for a moment, then nodded. “Roger that.”

  …

  Oh, God, where were they?

  Claire tried to stay as still as possible, crouched in the corner of her tent behind her cot, but it was hard when her heart beat a conga rhythm and every nearby sound made her jump. The gunshots had tapered off, but she didn’t think that was a good thing. It meant all of her colleagues were dead and the militants hadn’t found what they were looking for, so they could be coming around to search again.

  It was too quiet outside the walls of her tent. Too still.

  What if things had gone wrong in the hospital? What if she was alone again? She’d managed on her own for a long time, but the thought of doing it again truly terrified her in a way nothing else had. Only then did she realize how much she’d come to rely on Jean-Luc since he appeared back in her life. She should resent him for it. She hadn’t needed him before. She’d been strong and resilient and…

  Tired. So very tired of running.

  He’d taken some of the weight of the world off her shoulders. How could she hate him for it?

  She squeezed her eyes shut and tightened her hold on the cooler containing Akeso. Please. Please, let him make it back safely. She didn’t know who she was praying to—she’d always been too scientifically minded for religion—but it helped lessen her anxiety, so she repeated to herself. Over and over. Making it her personal mantra until she laid eyes on him again.

  Something moved near the front of her tent. She didn’t hear it so much as sense it. For one fleeting moment, she thought Jean-Luc had returned with Ebiere, but the shadow that stepped inside was far too small to be Jean-Luc’s six-foot-four frame.

  A woman. And she was holding a gun.

  “Dr. Oliver, I know you’re here.”

  Claire hesitated, but, really, she didn’t have any options. There was no place to hide. No place to run. Slowly, she stood. “Who are you?” Though she suspected she knew.

  “Defion,” the woman said, her tone flat. “You’ve caused us a lot of trouble, Dr. Oliver.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The airlock hissed open. Jean-Luc and Marcus swung through, weapons aimed.

  Empty. The corridor. The entire patient ward. They cleared the warm zone in a matter of seconds.

  Rather than relax him, the emptiness only ramped up Jean-Luc’s nerves. Ebiere should have been here. “This isn’t right. Where are the survivors?”

  “My gut says we’re walking into a trap,” Marcus said.

  “Mine too, but we can’t leave that little girl.”

  “Aw, shit.” Marcus let out a breath that hissed through his mask. He motioned to the next airlock—the one that led into the hot zone. “Let’s do it. You go right, I go left.”

  “Don’t touch anything.” Jean-Luc hit the button and the door opened with a pop that was more felt than heard. Air rushed past them to fill the void of the opening door. Negative pressure to keep the infection in.

  They were entering the virus’s playing field now, and his stomach t
wisted into knots. He didn’t want to go back in there. Claire would give him an earful if she found out, but they couldn’t leave without making sure Ebiere wasn’t hiding in there.

  He stepped through the door into the familiar smell of blood, sickness, and death. He swallowed convulsively to keep from gagging on the stench.

  The militants were gone. All that was left were the dead. All of them headshots.

  “God,” Marcus breathed and lowered his weapon. “They killed everyone.”

  Jean-Luc turned away. He’d spotted Ebiere’s tiny body on one of the cots and couldn’t—just couldn’t. “The Egbesu Fighters didn’t come to rescue anybody.” His voice came out raw, raspy behind his mask.

  “Then why are they here?”

  Realization struck like lightning, bright and painful in its clarity. This attack had the stink of Defion all over it. They had sent the militants in as cannon fodder to distract from the real target—

  “Claire!”

  …

  “You think you’ve won, but you haven’t. I’m not giving you anything.”

  Mercedes ignored the doctor’s icy words as she tied the woman’s hands together. She straightened and scanned the shore.

  Where was Sebastian? He should’ve been waiting at the boat. He’d known the plan had never been to trust the Egbesu Fighters with Dr. Oliver’s capture. They’d been merely the distraction needed to safely flush her out. Seb was supposed to have kept the boat running so they could escape before the militants realized they’d been played…

  But things had gone to shit right from the beginning. Goody Igwe went in with his own plans. When she’d hired him and his men, she hadn’t counted on him wanting revenge more than the money. That was the problem with hiring locals, but in this case, she’d had little other choice.

  Flames sparked to life around the camp, tents going up in bonfires as Goody and his boys got that revenge.

  And where the hell was Seb?

  Dr. Oliver made a small sound of dismay. Mercedes turned to find her staring at the flames, pain etched in every line of her face. She might have been crying, but it was hard to tell with the steady drizzle of rain.

  The doctor noticed her watching and straightened her shoulders. She met Mercedes’s stare with the fire reflecting in her own. “If you killed him, I swear you will never get anything from me. Ever. I’ll die first.”

  A chill rattled down Mercedes’s spine. She had a feeling the doctor wasn’t being dramatic. The woman looked half crazed sitting there in the rain with the fires casting shadows across her dirty face.

  She turned away again. It didn’t matter. What happened once she handed Dr. Oliver over was none of her concern. She’d wash her hands of this job and then maybe take some downtime to figure things out with Seb. She had to talk him out of his lunatic idea to leave Defion.

  What if he already left? a small, nagging voice asked in the back of her mind. What if he just said “fuck it” and took off, leaving her here with a bunch of pissed off militants and a hostage? If he had, she wouldn’t be surprised. Men always entered her life with one foot already out the door. What made Sebastian any different?

  Except, he was.

  Two figures broke away from the flickering shadows around the camp, and her heart kicked. Those two were not militants. They moved like trained soldiers. They had to be HORNET. Marcus Deangelo and one of his teammates.

  Dr. Oliver drew in a sharp breath and Mercedes realized what she planned to do a heartbeat too late. She lunged, but not before the doctor got out a shriek that drew HORNET’s attention. They turned toward the sound and started running, shouting orders to release the doctor.

  Fuck. She left Dr. Oliver to scream her pretty little head off and grabbed for the ropes to untie the boat. Time to get gone. She couldn’t wait for Sebastian any longer, and although her heart wrenched at the thought of leaving him, she had no choice.

  The two didn’t fire, and she didn’t expect them to. They wouldn’t risk hitting Dr. Oliver. So the sharp pop of a shot made her heart stutter. For a moment, she wondered if she’d been hit and her body just hadn’t processed it yet, but no pain came. She looked up to see the soldiers no longer running toward the boat. They’d taken cover and returned fire in the direction of the trees lining the riverbank to her right.

  Sebastian.

  Her heart caught on its next beat and she almost screamed his name, but bit her tongue before letting anything more than a pathetic whimper of sound slip out.

  Dr. Oliver stared at her with clinical eyes, and some of the iciness melted away. “You have someone you love out there, too.”

  Mercedes wasn’t going to glorify that question with a response. “Shut up.”

  “This is ridiculous! Is the money Bioteric offering for me really worth losing that person?”

  HORNET had broken cover and now peppered Sebastian’s position with bullets. Seb had stopped returning fire.

  Was he injured? Or worse?

  A cold sweat dripped down Mercedes’s spine and her breath sawed in and out of her lungs as her heart tried to jackhammer out of her chest. Her hands shook so hard, she dropped the rope. She didn’t recognize the foreign sensation at first—panic. She was panicking.

  No. She couldn’t lose Seb. Not like this.

  “Hey, assholes!” she shouted during a lull in the firing and grabbed the doctor’s arm to haul her to her feet. The two men turned. “You want Dr. Oliver back?” She shoved her overboard. “Go fish.”

  One of the men—big blond guy, had to be Jean-Luc Cavalier, HORNET’s linguist—immediately dropped everything and dove into the water. The other man—Marcus Deangelo—turned his weapon away from Seb’s position to provide cover for the water rescue. While they were distracted, Mercedes gunned the boat along the shore toward her lover.

  “Sebastian!”

  He limped out of the cover of the trees. Both his leg and arm were bleeding. He dove into the boat, landing hard on his side at her feet.

  She swore at him as she sped up river, out of range of HORNET’s bullets. “What were you thinking?”

  He groaned. “You had your mission. I had mine.”

  “And now we both have nothing!” It wasn’t completely true. She had Dr. Oliver’s research, but that hadn’t been the mission and she shivered at the thought of reporting only a half success.

  “It doesn’t matter.” He rolled over to his back and shielded his eyes from the rain with one arm. “Deangelo is a tough bastard to kill and I admire him for it. I’m done trying. Defion can get someone else for the job. I’m out. Are you coming with me or not?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Claire tried to gasp in a breath before she hit the water, but reacted too late and water filled her lungs. She gagged on it, tried to kick to the surface, but that Defion bitch had tied her ankles as well as her hands. The boat’s motor rumbled away overhead, leaving her to drown.

  She felt herself growing heavier, colder as she sank.

  This was it. This was how she was going to die. She didn’t want this to be it and kicked with all of her flagging strength. No use.

  All of her running was for nothing. Defion had her research.

  All she’d wanted was to help the millions of people infected with viruses, but instead all she’d accomplished was getting everyone around her killed. Tiffany. Marcus and Jean-Luc’s friend Danny. Sunday…

  They had died for nothing.

  A strong arm clamped around her waist and lifted her toward the surface. Her first instinct was to cough up the greasy water and gasp for air. Her second was to fight against the arms holding her because she wasn’t going with Defion. But then a familiar voice murmured calmingly next to her ear.

  “That’s my girl,” Jean-Luc said. “Cough it all out.”

  She relaxed and let him swim her over to another boat. Marcus was aboard, motor running, and he bent down to help fish her out of the water. Dazed, still gasping for breath, she watched Jean-Luc pull himself aboard, the ropes of mus
cle in his arms and shoulders flexing as he did. He’d lost weight while sick, and his new thinner frame only highlighted how muscular he still was.

  Shouts rang out from the shore. Bullets peppered the water mere feet short of them. The militants raced toward their remaining boats.

  “Get us outta here,” Jean-Luc said.

  “Already on it.” Marcus got behind the wheel and poured on the speed. The militants hadn’t even untied their boats yet when they rounded the first bend in the river.

  Jean-Luc crawled over and scooped her up in his arms. He pushed her hair back from her face. “Claire? Talk to me, ma belle.”

  “I—” Her voice came out hoarse, and despite the warm night, she couldn’t stop shivering. “I’m okay.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re in shock.”

  “Here.” Still at the wheel, Marcus kicked over one of the heavy rucksacks leaning against the wall of the boat. “Take my bedroll.”

  Jean-Luc unzipped the sleeping bag, and tucked it around her. She gratefully accepted it and snuggled against his chest. “They have my research.”

  “But they didn’t get you, and that’s all that matters to me right now.” He kissed her forehead. “Try to rest.”

  Rest was the last thing she wanted to do. At the same time, she was suddenly so very sleepy, the adrenaline having seeped from her system. She stared at the dark water of the river rushing by. “Where’s Ebiere? Is she safe?”

  Marcus glanced over his shoulder, a grim expression on his face.

  Jean-Luc shook his head slightly and rubbed soothing circles on her back. “Not now. You rest now. We’ll talk later.”

  The undertone of sadness in his voice woke her up. She bolted upright and turned to study him. “What happened?” But then, he didn’t need to say it. She knew, saw it written all over his face. “She’s dead, isn’t she? They’re all dead.”

  “I’m sorry, Claire. We were too late. She didn’t suffer. It was quick.”

  “Oh my God.” Her lungs constricted, and she couldn’t catch her breath. Like she was underwater again, breathing liquid. “So now we don’t have Akeso or any of the survivors and some mad scientist is out there getting ready to release the Delta virus somewhere else or sell it to the highest bidder or—”