Reckless Honor

by Tonya Burrows

The guards crowded in, one keeping his weapon aimed at Jean-Luc while another disarmed him. Jean-Luc struggled until she caught his gaze and mouthed, “Please, don’t.” They’d kill him. After all, they could harvest a corpse for samples as easily as a living specimen.

  He shook off the guard’s hands and didn’t look happy about it, but climbed into the SUV without a fight.

  “What about my family?” Dayo said. “The cure?”

  The scarred man looked at him for a long moment, then gave a subtle nod to one of his guards before climbing into the SUV beside Claire. “Of course. I’m a man of my word. Audric will give you the cure.”

  As the SUV pulled away, Claire saw the guard pull on gloves and a mask, then raise his gun and shoot Dayo in the head. The guard then discarded the protective gear and very calmly walked over to another car that was waiting.

  Claire twisted to stare out the back windshield. Dayo collapsed where he stood, and a pool of blood spread around his head. “No! Why did you do that?”

  “He was infected,” the scarred man said without much concern. “Surely you knew.”

  “But you didn’t have to shoot him!” Something sharp pricked her upper arm and she whipped around to find he’d stuck her with a needle. She immediately felt light headed.

  “What…? No. Jean-Luc…” She crawled across the seat toward him, but he’d also been drugged while she was distracted. They must have given him a higher dose, because his eyes rolled back and he barely had the energy to close his fingers around hers.

  And then blackness engulfed them both.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Marcus awoke to a heavy fist pounding on his hotel door. He struggled to pry his eyes open and check the time on his phone. 0345.

  Shit. He was supposed to meet Jean-Luc at 0300 and his phone had a missed call from the Cajun. “I’m coming,” he called. His voice sounded like he’d swallowed glass. He pulled on his jeans and tried again. “Hang on! I’m coming.”

  Grumbling to himself, he shuffled out to the living room of his suite. His head pounded. He really shouldn’t have hit up the minibar, but lately he couldn’t sleep without alcohol in his system.

  He pulled open the door, and the apology for missing the 0300 rendezvous died on his lips. He blinked. “Lanie?”

  The rest of HORNET stood in the hall behind her, including two guys he recognized from Tucker Quentin’s team, Devlin and Sean Carreras.

  “You look like shit,” Carreras said by way of greeting.

  Lanie put her hands on her hips. “Where are Jean-Luc and Dr. Oliver?”

  “Uh…” He dragged a hand though his hair. His alcohol-logged brain still wasn’t processing. “They’re here. In the suite across the hall.”

  “No one’s there,” Jesse said and hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Door’s wide open.”

  He stared, still not comprehending. “What?” He shouldered through the group and found himself looking straight into the empty suite across the hall. He strode inside, found gun-cleaning supplies in a pile in the living room. In the bedroom, the bed was a mess. The bathroom had a dampness to it indicating it had been recently used, and the tub was still wet. Clothes scattered the floor—the outfits Jean-Luc and Claire were wearing earlier.

  He walked back to the living room. “No, they were here.”

  “Then where are they?” Harvard asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is anything missing?” Lanie asked.

  He rubbed both shaking hands over his face and tried to think. He mentally went back over the suite room by room. “Jean-Luc’s rucksack. His gun and knives. And I didn’t see either of their shoes.”

  Lanie put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a gentle push toward a chair. He went without protest. If he stayed on his feet, he might throw up everything he had drunk.

  “Okay, Marcus. Think,” Lanie said, not unkindly, and sat down in the chair across from him. “Is there any reason Jean-Luc would take Claire away from here?”

  “Why does Jean-Luc do anything?” Ian muttered and shut the suite’s door. “Because he wants to.”

  Marcus shook his head. “No. Guys, this is different. He’s different with her. He wouldn’t do anything crazy to put her in danger.”

  “So it tracks he’d only leave if he thought she was in danger,” Seth Harlan, the team’s sniper, said.

  “Yeah, that’s the only reason I can think of, but it doesn’t make sense. He knew she was safe here. He knew you guys were on the way.”

  “Someone must have convinced him she wasn’t safe.” Lanie crooked a finger at Harvard and pointed at the dining table. “All right, there’s gotta be security cameras in this place. What can you find for us, kid?”

  “Not a kid,” Harvard muttered.

  Marcus was vaguely aware of a weird vibe coming off Harvard, but he was too sloshed, too scattered, to worry about it now.

  Harvard set up his laptop and hunched behind it, working in silence. Yeah, definitely a vibe there. Pissed off, if Marcus had to guess.

  “I’m in,” Harvard finally said after agonizing minutes passed. “Which of the cameras you want to see?”

  Lanie looked to Marcus. He leaned forward and rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh…we got here around three or four this afternoon.”

  Harvard got back to work, then turned his computer around to show them the screen. “Three forty-seven p.m. to be exact.” He played the video on fast-forward. It showed Marcus, Jean-Luc, and Claire entering the building, conversing with the woman behind the front desk. Then to the elevator. While they waited for it, several people crossed the camera view.

  “Hey.” Marcus stood up and moved closer to the computer. He pointed at the dark-haired woman sitting in a chair near the restaurant entrance. “I recognize that woman. With the dark hair and red scarf. She’s with Defion.”

  “Well, now,” Jesse said on a whistle. “That’s certainly a good reason for Jean-Luc to take Claire away from here. Maybe he recognized her too and—” He stopped short and also studied the screen. “Wait. Wait. Wait. Back up the feed.” He leaned forward and watched intently. Then he jabbed a finger toward the screen. “There. The guy your Defion girl is meetin’ with. Do any of you recognize him?”

  They all crowded in around the computer. Marcus tried to focus, but no spark of recognition came, and he shook his head. Seth also gave a negative response.

  Lanie chewed on her lower lip. “He looks familiar, but…I can’t place him.”

  “Yeah, I recognize him.” Ian’s lips thinned into a frown as he straightened. “We evac-ed him from the hotel in Martinique.”

  “Exactly. I spoke to him. He said he’s a virologist.” Jesse tapped the man’s scarred face with his knuckle. The motion was met by a quiet grumble from Harvard.

  “There were a lot of virologists in that hotel, cowboy,” Lanie said, giving her husband a sidelong look. “There was supposed to be an infectious diseases conference that weekend.”

  “Yeah, but if that guy’s a virologist—” Jesse started to jab the screen again, but at Harvard’s hard stare, he held up his hands and stepped back. “Sorry. If he is what he said he is, it follows he’s here because of the outbreak. So I wanna know what he’s doin’ sippin’ cocktails in a hotel bar in Port Harcourt when the virus is killin’ people a full day’s boat ride southeast of here.”

  “Pretty big coincidence,” Marcus said, desperately trying to keep focused on the here and now and not go back to that island. No wonder he didn’t recognize the guy. He’d been doing his best to drink that entire night from his memory. “I mean, we run into him there, where half our team was held hostage and Danny was—” His voice cracked, and he took a second to regroup. Tried again. “And Danny was killed. And now here, after one of our guys up and vanishes from his bed. What are the chances that’s not all connected?”

  “Pretty fucking slim.” Harvard turned back to his computer. “Gentlemen, do we have a name?”

  Everyone looked to Jesse.

&
nbsp; “Oh, dayum. Give me a sec,” he said and pinched the bridge of his nose. “So much happened that night and I… I can’t remember exactly. Somethin’… German or Austrian, I think. He had a slight accent. He’d sustained a dislocated shoulder during the hotel evac. Gray hair, pock scars all over his face, thin, slight build, mid-fifties. Can you get an ID with that?”

  “Can I…?” Harvard scoffed and cracked his knuckles. “I’m insulted you even had to ask.”

  “Okay,” Lanie said on a drawn-out sigh and grabbed her phone from the table. “While Harvard does that, I’ll update the big bosses.” She looked exhausted and who could blame her? Her first mission as their new field commander, and the straightforward rescue had morphed into…what? A hostage sitch? They didn’t have enough intel to know for sure what happened to Jean-Luc and Claire, and now Lanie had to report that big fat goose egg back to HQ. It couldn’t be easy.

  Marcus got up and paced the length of the suite. It was like so many others they’d been in at the start of missions. Another hotel, another mission. Usually Marcus loved all of it, but losing Danny had drained the joy out of everything for him. Now he was just…restless. And so very angry. He knew he shouldn’t, but he resented Jean-Luc for nearly dying and now for this disappearing act. If it turned out the Cajun had simply taken off somewhere for more sexy alone time with the doctor…

  No. He shut down that line of thought. Jean-Luc could be impulsive and reckless but he wouldn’t risk Claire’s life by taking her away from the hotel. Not when they were mere hours away from safety.

  Damn, he should’ve insisted they all share a room, but he’d wanted to give them some time together. Jean-Luc had been depressed since his grandmother died. He’d wanted the guy to have a little bit of happiness, and Claire seemed to do the trick.

  He still thought she was going to end up with a broken heart in the end, but they were both adults. Whatever happened between them was their business. And, besides, who was he to stand in the way of lust?

  “Bingo,” Harvard said and everyone crowded back in around the computer.

  “Hang on. We may have something. I’ll get back to you,” Lanie told whoever was on the other end of her phone call and hung up. “You have a name?”

  Harvard brought up an ID photo of the man from the bar. In the corner of the card, across from the man’s picture, were the words Führerschein Republik Österreich. Jean-Luc would know exactly what that meant. Marcus had never been great with foreign languages—managed some rusty Italian now and again, but that was about it—so he could only guess it meant something along the lines of “driver’s license.”

  “Yeah, that’s him,” Jesse confirmed.

  “Steffan Ostermann,” Harvard said. “Born in Vienna, Austria, in nineteen sixty. He goes by the title ‘doctor’, only… I can’t find a medical degree in his history. Or even a Ph.D. Looks like he attended med school in the mid-eighties, but he never finished.”

  “What’s he do for a livin’ if he’s not a doctor?” Jesse asked.

  “Far as I can tell, he’s independently wealthy. He’s never had a job.”

  “So…” Lanie drew the word out, her brow furrowed in confusion. “Why was he at the hotel in Martinique? Why attend a virology conference?”

  “And,” Marcus added as a pit of dread opened up in the bottom of his stomach, “why is he here?”

  “Fuck,” Harvard breathed and hit a key. A website popped up. “Ostermann has bought a lot of businesses, including Bioteric Pharmaceuticals.”

  Marcus froze and looked at each of his teammates, cold down to his marrow with fear. “Bioteric has Jean-Luc and Claire.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The knock on the door had them all turning. Weapons came out and up. Tank, who had been snoozing up until that point, leaped to his feet, ears pricked in full alert, muscles quivering, ready for the attack command from his master.

  Ian and Seth, the closest two men to the door, flanked it and readied their weapons. Lanie stepped forward, but Jesse caught her hand. She gave him the look, the one she often gave him when he got too overprotective, the one that said, “I love you, but let me do my job, dumbass.” He swore softly, but let go of her hand and grabbed his own weapon.

  Harvard pulled up the hotel’s surveillance cameras on his laptop. “Okay, it’s a woman, late twenties, early thirties, Hispanic. She’s alone and appears unarmed, but I can’t see all of her to confirm. She’s holding her hands above her head. She just waved at the camera like she knows I’m watching.”

  Shit, Marcus thought. That can’t be good.

  He kept his weapon up as Lanie approached the door and cautiously opened it. Ian yanked the woman inside and Seth patted her down. He found two weapons. One tucked under her shirt at the small of her back, and one in an ankle holster. As soon as Seth finished, Ian shoved her against the wall.

  “Hey, hey,” Seth said and zip-tied her hands behind her back. “Ease off, man. She’s unarmed.”

  Ian flipped her around and again shoved her against the wall. The woman eyed him up and down. Something flickered behind her eyes, there and gone in a moment, but her face remained impassive.

  “Sheesh.” She huffed out a breath and looked out over Ian’s shoulder at the rest of them. “No wonder you guys have more enemies than friends.”

  At Ian’s side, Tank let out a low rumble of warning. The woman glanced down and some of her bravado faded. She gave the dog a nervous smile. “Nice doggie.”

  “Nice doggie will chew off your arm if you don’t start talking,” Ian said.

  The woman scanned the faces in the room and finally settled on Lanie. Her expression softened ever so slightly and a hint of pleading entered her gaze. “Can we chat without Mr. Scowls-a-Lot and the hellbeast?”

  Marcus could’ve laughed. The woman was so far off base with her girl-to-girl approach. Of all of them in the room, Lanie was probably the most kick-ass and least sympathetic to the woman’s problems. “She’s with Defion,” he told Lanie. “The woman from the video with the red scarf.”

  Lanie merely lifted a brow. “Is that true?”

  The woman cast one more look at Tank, then tried to straighten away from the wall. Ian shoved her back. She sent Ian a simmering glare and blew a strand of dark hair out of her face. “My name is Mercedes Raya. I believe we can help each other.”

  …

  Mercedes tried to keep her gaze focused on the woman in front of her, and not on the man beside her. He was leaner than the last time she’d seen him, his hair shorter, shaved close to his scalp. He had more tats now, too, peeking out under the sleeves of his black T-shirt. And the dog. That was definitely new.

  Ian Reinhardt.

  She thought hell would’ve frozen three times over before she saw him again, and she would’ve been A-okay with that.

  So why the fuck had she come here?

  After leaving her meeting downstairs with the creep, she’d returned to her hotel to check on Sebastian, only to find him gone. Just gone. No note, no nothing. He’d left her to deal with Defion on her own, and she couldn’t focus on how much that hurt.

  With nothing else to do with her time but think, she’d found her mind wandering back to the creep in the jacket and how not right that encounter had been. And the more she obsessed over it, the more she disliked the whole situation. Mercedes couldn’t shake the feeling that he had something awful planned for Dr. Oliver’s research. She kept coming back to one thought: Dr. Oliver was genuinely a good person. Hell, the woman had made a career out of risking her life to help people nobody else cared about. If the Bioteric man had altruistic intentions, she’d be working for him, not running from him.

  Which meant his intentions were bad. And with the type of research Dr. Oliver was involved with, there could be bad shit on the horizon.

  Once that uncomfortable seed took root in her conscience, Mercedes returned to the hotel thinking she’d do…something, and had seen HORNET arrive. She’d followed them upstairs, overheard part of their
conversation—Dr. Oliver and one of her men were both missing—and made a decision.

  Sebastian was right. If she wanted out of Defion, she just had to leave. And she did want out. With him. She knew exactly where he’d gone. She could follow him, and they could disappear together.

  But first, she needed to do this one thing so her conscience would be clear.

  The HORNET woman finally moved. She walked forward, hands on hips, and eyed Mercedes up and down. She was a pretty woman with skin a few shades darker than Mercedes’s own, tall and fit with long hair that spiraled around her shoulders. She had a simple wedding band on her left hand—nothing frilly—and wore cargo pants and a T-shirt just like all the men in the room.

  The men all seemed to defer to her, which Mercedes had to admit was pretty kick-ass. The few women working for Defion were never given a position of power.

  “If you’re with Defion, why would you help us?” the woman asked.

  Okay, no more bullshit. She met the woman’s gaze. “My mission was to find Dr. Oliver and her research for Bioteric. I accomplished it, but when I handed the research off, my gut told me it was wrong. I listen to my gut. It’s kept me alive.”

  Ian snorted in disbelief. “We can’t trust her, Lanie.”

  She refused to look at him, kept her gaze fastened on the woman—Lanie. “He’s right. If I were in your position, I wouldn’t trust me either.” She wondered if he realized her words were directed at him as much as Lanie. He probably did. He’d never been a stupid man. Just an asshole.

  She tried to take a step forward, but Ian shoved her back again. She growled in frustration. “Okay, listen, there was something very wrong about Bioteric’s man. So wrong that I’m willing to risk my life to stop whatever he has planned, but if you don’t want my help, fuck it. That’s on you.”

  Lanie said nothing for a moment, then walked over to the table where a guy sat behind a computer. She asked him something and he nodded. She picked up the laptop and brought it over, stopping a few feet in front of Mercedes.

  “Is this the man you gave Dr. Oliver’s research to?”