Broken Honor (17 page)

Chapter Nineteen

Mara woke to an urgent need to relieve her bladder and realized she was alone. When she fell asleep, she’d been in the midst of strong, capable men, all of them fussing over her like she was someone important. Even Ian had scrambled to make her comfortable by giving her a leather motorcycle jacket from his pack. Going by the way Jean-Luc and Marcus started mercilessly teasing him about it afterward, the act of kindness must have been very uncharacteristic. She had to remember to give him a thank-you hug when she returned the jacket. He looked like a man who had received too few hugs in his life.

Crammed into the van with them, she had felt as secure as she could without being tucked into Travis’s arms and soon found that she could no longer keep her eyes open. She had drifted off to the sounds of their voices joking and laughing, congratulating each other on a mission well done.

But now the van was silent, empty, and for those foggy moments between sleep and full wakefulness, she panicked that it had all been a dr
eam. Lanie and Jesse both hovering like mother hens. Jean-Luc making her laugh with that delicious Cajun accent. Sad-eyed Ian, so willing to give up his jacket. Affable Marcus, sweet Harvard, quiet Seth…

Had her imagination conjured them all?

And Travis…?

No. His arms had felt real and solid around her for those too-brief moments he’d held her in Olesea’s kitchen. And his cruel words as he led her to safety still hurt too much.

Your baby.

Well, she thought as she sat up and pushed her tangled hair out of her eyes with both hands. If that was the way he wanted it to be, fine. Her baby. Nobody else’s.

Mara glanced around the van, hoping to find that one of the men had had the foresight to grab her tennis shoes from the foyer in Olesea’s house. Seeing as she was barefoot, she couldn’t very well walk out into the snow. She saw nothing except a discarded snow camouflage outfit. Between Ian’s jacket and the silver Mylar blanket someone had draped over her, she was warm enough, but one look at the van’s windows told her how cold it was outside. Fog from the heater and her breath had iced the windows and crystalline spiderwebs glittered across the glass in the moonlight. It would have been pretty if it wasn’t so potentially deadly. She pulled on the white camouflage coat over Ian’s jacket and wiggled into the pants. A born and bred Texan, she wasn’t used to this kind of cold. The more layers, the better. Now if only she could find something for her feet—

She pushed aside someone’s pack and found what she’d been hoping for. Her tennis shoes. Yes! She stuffed her feet in and tied the laces.

Voices outside the van caught her attention, and she crawled over to the door with the intention of telling Travis or whoever was on the other side that she urgently needed a bathroom.

But the voices…

She stopped before opening the door, her hand on the lever, and a chill clawed over her skin that had nothing to do with the cold. The voices were wrong. American, yes, but where was Jean-Luc’s singsong Cajun lilt? Even Travis had a slight blue-collar Baltimore accent that delighted her southern ears when he said “youse” instead of “y’all.”

Careful not to make any noise to alert the men outside to her presence, she scraped ice off the window with one nail and peeked out. Jean-Luc, Seth, Harvard, Marcus, and Ian sat on their knees in the snow, their hands raised and locked behind their heads. A group of men stood several feet away with rifles pointed in their direction.

Oh, no. Had Zaryanko’s thugs come to take her back? Somehow, that didn’t seem right. She’d seen most of his thugs, and none of them had been American. Still, the possibility of it terrified her. She ducked below the window and pressed a hand to her chest, trying to convince her heart that it didn’t need to jump out of her throat.

Where was Travis? The rest of his team? Were they hurt—or worse?

No, she wouldn’t even think it.

She sucked in a fortifying breath. Okay, she’d come this far. She could handle this, too. She just had to breathe and think…and observe. As much as she didn’t want to, she had to look out the window again. Not knowing where they were or what they were doing to the guys was so much worse than watching. She sat up on her knees, lifting her head just enough that she could see through the frosted glass.

One of the men had shouldered his gun, tied Jean-Luc’s and Harvard’s hands behind their back with zip ties, and was now working on securing Seth’s hands. Seth seemed to be hyperventilating and struggled like a wild animal. One of the men whacked him over the head with the butt of his rifle, and he collapsed into the snow.

All of their captors wore snowshoes, the same camouflage as Travis and his team, and the same gray-and-white face paint. For all she could see of their features, they might as well have been abominable snowmen with guns.

Once everyone was secure, the man who had tied them up started walking toward the van. Mara inched away from the door until her back pressed to the steel partition that separated the cargo area from the seats up front. She tried the small lever that would open it.

Locked.

Trapped.

The partition opened suddenly, and a hand clamped over her mouth before she even had the chance to draw in a breath and scream. None too gently, the hand’s owner yanked her backward through the partition and threw her into the passenger seat before slamming the door shut and flipping the lock.

“Buckle,” Travis ordered and cranked the van’s engine. “And stay low.”

“W-w-what about the guys?”

He grabbed her by the back of the neck and shoved her head toward her knees. “Ow! Travis—”

“Get down!”

She heard it then. The blast of gunfire. The ping of bullets bouncing off the van’s exoskeleton as the wheels spun, searching for traction in the snow. Finally, the van lurched forward, and Travis hit the gas.

God, this couldn’t be real. This wasn’t the kind of life she lived. She was a veterinary technician who worked not because she had to but because she loved it. She was a daughter who put up with her mother’s tyrannical husband out of sheer loyalty. A sister who looked up to her big brother with something close to hero worship. She ran errands and took care of her pets and kept a clean house and stayed in close contact with all of her friends. She’d enjoyed a glass of wine here or there before she’d become pregnant, but she didn’t drink to excess. Didn’t smoke, had never tried drugs, didn’t indulge in any other risky or self-destructive behaviors. She’d led a safe, normal life…

Until Travis Quinn. He had destroyed so much more than her heart when he walked out her door and, suddenly, she didn’t think she’d ever be able to forgive him for it.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she hugged her knees and focused on breathing. Just like they taught in birthing classes, which she’d have to register for. And she didn’t have a partner. She turned her head enough to look at Travis. Such a strong profile, an angular jaw with a sexy dimple in the center of his chin. He also had dimples on the rare occasions he smiled.

Would the baby have his straight nose? His dimples?

Travis must have sensed her gaze, because he glanced down just as the tears she’d tried so hard to keep at bay overflowed her defenses.

His lips compressed into a thin line, but she saw no softening in his expression. He’d closed down on her at Olesea’s, and she doubted he’d ever open up again. And right now, she didn’t know if she even wanted him to.

“It’s okay,” he said stiffly. “We’re out of range now.”

Slowly, she sat up and stared out the window. Trees and darkness. Up ahead, in the splash of the van’s rattling headlights, there was nothing but more darkness, more of the bumpy
road. She sniffled and scrubbed away her tears.

“Are you crying because we left the guys?” Travis asked after a long moment of silence.

Disbelief that he even had to ask roared through her. “Yes! And because I want my old life back! And because I’m trapped in the middle of frozen nowhere and I have to pee and I don’t have a partner for my birthing class and the baby will have your nose and your dimples and I won’t be able to stand it when I see a smile and I’m reminded of you!” She paused for a breath but couldn’t seem to stop the tirade now that she’d unleashed it. She glared at him, putting everything she felt into it. Fear. Anger. Pain. So much pain. “And because if I could do one thing in my life over, I’d go back to July and leave you to die of heatstroke in that car in front of my apartment. I really, really hate you, Travis Quinn.”

His mouth opened but no sound came out, and he closed it again. He exhaled a breath that, if she didn’t know any better, she’d think was a suppressed sob. When he spoke, his voice was a little hoarse. “I know you do, Mara, and I’m sorry for that. As for the rest, I don’t know how I can help. Once we’re a little farther away, I’ll stop to let you pee and—yeah. The…birthing…partner thing, you don’t want me for anyway. But don’t worry about the guys. They can take care of themselves.”

“How can you say that? You just left them there! In the cold, with a bunch of armed men!”

His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I didn’t have a choice. They killed—” His voice broke and she looked over at him again. Dread wrapped icy fingers around her spine at the tortured expression on his normally stoic face.

“Killed who?” Oh, why did she ask that? She didn’t want to know. Was terrified to know. What if…?

Travis swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the effort of it. “Gabe.”

Relief crashed over her with such force she slumped back in the seat. Not Jesse. Or Lanie. Thank God. Then the relief twisted into a dull blade composed of equal parts sorrow and shame that cut deep in the vicinity of her heart. Her cousin and best friend were both alive—as far as she knew—but Gabe…

He had been Travis’s best friend, hadn’t he?

She reached for his hand, surprised at how cold and stiff his fingers felt on the steering wheel. “What happened?”

He pulled his hand away on the pretense of wiping his eyes. “We were ambushed. We let down our guard and Gabe was shot. He was bleeding out in the snow and instead of taking him to a hospital, I left—” In a burst of emotion fiercer than any she’d ever seen from him, Travis swore and banged his fists against the steering wheel. “What am I supposed to tell his wife? She’s going to hate me for not taking care of him like I promised. She’s going to…” He trailed off, his outburst hanging in the air like a thick, wet blanket, making it hard to draw a decent breath.

“What about Lanie?” Mara whispered. “Jesse? Are they…?”

“I don’t know.” He keep his eyes on the road, but she had a feeling his reluctance to look at her had little to do with the driving conditions. “I had to get back to you. I couldn’t risk Bauer and his guys sending you back to Zaryanko’s people. Or worse.”

“And yet you left your men with them.”

“My men can take care of themselves,” he said with a lot less conviction in his tone than before. “And they all know and accept the possibility of sacrifice. Your safety is our first priority.”

Our priority.
Not
my priority
.

She reached over and set a hand on his muscled forearm. “We need to go back, Travis. We need to go help your team. Help
Gabe
. If there’s still a chance he could be okay—”

“No.” His profile was set in stone, not letting even the faintest hint of his thoughts through. He glanced over, and in a passing sliver of moonlight, she thought she saw wetness glimmering on his cheeks. “We can’t go back. I’m not willing to risk you.”

Claws of pain dug into her heart, and she rubbed at her chest. “At the expense of your best friend’s life?”

“Yeah,” he said and returned his attention to the road. His voice was raw. “Even at the expense of Gabe’s life.”

Oh God. If he were willing to sacrifice his best friend for her, what else would he sacrifice?

Chapter Twenty

“We’ll crash here for the night.”

As Travis shifted the van into park, Mara blinked open her gritty eyes and looked around. More darkness, more trees, but the landscape had flattened out while she was trying and failing to sleep. “Where’s here?”

“We’re still in Transnistria, if that’s what you’re asking. We can’t leave until I figure out how to get us through the border checkpoints into Moldova and then to the air force base in Romania.”

“Why not take me to the closest consulate?”

He gave her a dry look before he crawled out of his seat and ducked into the cargo area of the van. “My former teammates are after me. They want me badly enough that they killed my best friend. Do you really think they wouldn’t warn any government officials of my presence in their country? If I show my face at a consulate, the marines stationed there will arrest me”—he snapped his fingers—“like that. Someone high up has to be involved in this, too, and then it will only take some paper shuffling to get me where they want me. Besides, the only embassy I’d be comfortable taking you to is in Bucharest, and the air force base is closer.”

She stretched out a crick in her neck before following him. “Won’t the air force arrest you?”

“Yeah.” Grim lines hardened his mouth as he shook out a sleeping bag from his pack and laid it on top of the pallet she’d slept on earlier. “But the air force is a completely separate entity from the navy. They’re less likely to be corrupted by…whoever the hell is behind this.”

“The lesser of two evils?”

“Pretty much. At least if I turn myself in to the air force, I might live long enough to set foot on U.S. soil again. Hell, maybe I’ll even get a shot at a decent trial.”

“Trial for what?”

“For killing Todd Urban.”

Outrage seared the lining of her throat. “But you did it to protect me. He kidnapped me!”

Travis pointed a finger at her. “Exactly the reason I need to keep you alive. You’re my get-out-of-jail-free card.”

“Oh, of course.” She snorted in disgust. “Silly me for thinking you’d want me alive because I’m carrying your child. Or, say, because you care about me.”

“Dammit, don’t make me sound like a heartless asshole.”

“I don’t need to. You do a good job of sounding heartless all by yourself.” She sat down with her back to the wall of the van and ignored his creative cursing. Folding her hands across her belly, she watched him put together a makeshift bed until the silence between them started to weigh on her, pressing down on her lungs, making breathing difficult. “Are you physically incapable of carrying on a genuine, personal conversation?”

Without a word, he grabbed another pack from along the wall and unbuckled a second bedroll. He tossed the second sleeping bag over the first with a lot more force than necessary. Then he sighed, and his shoulders slumped forward.

“What I said before…it came out wrong.” He turned toward her with an expression of complete exasperation. “I do care about you, Mara.”

The words sounded like he had to drag them from his throat. Not exactly the romantic declaration she’d fantasized about when he showed up on her doorstep again. God, that felt like a lifetime ago, but it had only been a few days.

“If you truly care, then you have a strange way of showing it.”

“It’s the only way I know how,” he snapped. “If you want to be cuddled, I’m not your guy. I told you, I’m not gentle.”

I don’t do gentle, Mara.

As much as she hated herself for it, heat crackled over her nerve endings and her nipples tightened against the fabric of her bra at the reminder of the way he’d held her pinned up against her living room wall. “I remember.”

In the bright moonlight filtering through the windows, she thought she saw those same heated memories flare in his eyes.

“I do, too.” He sucked in a breath, and his gaze dropped to her mouth. “It’s one of the few things I haven’t forgotten.”

But then his gaze dropped lower and settled on her belly and the heat fizzled, replaced with the snowy indifference he had down to an art. He stared at her as if the baby was a potential threat and he had to calculate a strategy to combat it.

“Travis.” She reached for his hand and placed his palm over her belly. “This is our baby.”

He jolted like she’d electrocuted him and yanked his hand back so fast he whacked his elbow on the wall. He gritted his teeth against a curse and hurried to finish laying out the sleeping bags.

Mara sighed. “You’re never going to be okay with this, are you?”

“Honestly?” He glanced over his shoulder. “I don’t know, but it’s not on the top of my list of concerns at the moment.”

“It should be.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right about that, but my head’s all kinds of fucked up. I really can’t imagine what a nice, respectable woman like you ever saw in me.” As if he realized he’d said too much, he pulled back the edge of one sleeping bag and motioned for her to lie down. “Now let’s get some rest. We’re hidden well enough here. We should be safe until morning.”

Beyond exhausted, both physically and emotionally, she was past the point of arguing with him and nestled into the makeshift bed. Travis had zipped the two sleeping bags together on three sides, making them into one big sack. He slid in beside her before zipping up the final side and, despite his earlier comment about cuddling, he wrapped his arms around her and drew her against his too-lean body.

“You’ve lost so much weight.”

He grunted. “This changes nothing, Mara. It’s only a survival tactic to keep us warm. Body heat.”

Mara couldn’t put her finger on it, but something in his tone told her he was lying. Maybe he was even trying to convince himself of it. But everything had changed. She had Travis in her life again, and she was safe with him. He was a warrior, born to right wrongs and built to protect. For all of his faults, she knew that to be one undeniable truth about him.

The van’s floor was hard under her back, and the blankets were cold, but she didn’t care. He threw off a furnace of heat beside her, and it all felt like a small slice of heaven after living in Zaryanko and Olesea’s cold world for…

How long?

“What day is it?” she asked. “I’ve lost track.”

“The fourth of January. Well, probably fifth now,” Travis said after a second of thought.

Five days. She’d lost nearly a week of her life. “With everything…needing to move and, well, everything else…I completely missed out on the holidays this year. Christmas, New Year’s. It’s like they never happened.”

“They’ll come back around,” he replied with a complete lack of enthusiasm that she couldn’t understand. She’d always adored the holiday season.

“Don’t you like Christmas?”

Under her cheek, his shoulder lifted in a half shrug. “I’m not religious.”

“Even so, you can still enjoy it as a celebration of life and love and family.”

“Family?” He gave a humorless laugh. “Yeah, right, except when you don’t have one. Then Christmas is just a day like any other.”

She lifted her head to look at him, but he had his head tilted back and his eyes closed and all she could see was his throat and stubbled chin. “Don’t you have a family?”

“I did. The SEALs.” His throat worked as he tried to swallow. “But they’re dead to me now.”

“Your parents?”

“The only parents I want to remember are dead.”

She thought about the picture he’d had in Olesea’s kitchen. The one that had sent him into a rage. “But what about—”

“I’m going to sleep now. You should, too, Mara.”

She settled against his shoulder and bit her lip. His reluctance to touch her belly was starting to make sense. He wasn’t doing it to be a jerk. It was the self-defense mechanism of a child who never knew what it meant to be part of a family.

But they’re dead to me now.

Those words, spoken in that carefully emotionless tone of his, said so much more about his life than he probably intended. He’d suffered loss the likes of which she couldn’t begin to understand. Her father’s death when she was eight had left a gaping wound in her heart that refused to close, so how must it feel to have lost everyone you ever cared about?

Jesse had been right. Travis Quinn was a very lonely man.

On impulse, Mara lifted her head again and pressed a kiss to the underside of his chin. He didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge the affection in any way, but she knew he wasn’t asleep yet. His breath caught.

“You’re not alone anymore, Travis,” she whispered.