SEAL of Honor (10 page)

“Where to start?” Gabe stayed silent for a moment, then gave a quiet laugh. “I’ll never forget the look on The Admiral’s face the day Raffi announced he was not going into the military. I believe he said something like he wanted to dance and sing and act and he was going to drama school in New York, fuck you very much.” Pride filled his voice. “Priceless. Our old man looked like he was going to shit monkeys.”

Audrey picked up another strip of burlap, held it in place with her thumb where the last one ended, and lifted his foot to continue wrapping. “Raffi sounds like my kind of guy.”

Gabe’s smile dropped into a dark scowl. “Yeah, well, don’t get any ideas. He’s gay.”

“Even better.” When his frown deepened, she smothered a laugh and finished bandaging his foot, tying the burlap in a tight knot to keep it from slipping. She bent over and placed a gentle kiss on the knot. “There. All done.”

She looked up to find him staring at her with an odd expression on his face. “What, Gabriel? Nobody ever kissed away your pains as a child?”

“No. My mother wasn’t exactly…” He trailed off and seemed to struggle with an inner demon for a moment, then shook his head. “Uh, yeah, you know what? I won’t even make excuses for her. She sucked as a mother. She never should have spawned once, not to mention three times.”

Emotion rose into Audrey’s throat and it took two swallows to choke back the automatic denial that popped to mind. If his mother never had children, he wouldn’t be here now. With her.

Good lord, was that really how he felt about himself? That he never should have been born? What a way to go through life.

“That’s a shame,” she finally managed. “Every child should have someone to kiss their injuries better.”

That odd expression of his turned shuttered, unreadable. “Thank you, Audrey.”

Her heart swelled, which was just plain stupid. A thank you, especially a grudging one, was nothing more than an expression of appreciation, even when coming from a man who rarely said the words. “Any time.”

Kicking off her boots, she crawled up on the feedbags and stretched out beside him. They lay together in silence, listening to the chatter of the guerillas by the fire. She could make out bits and pieces of the conversation—bawdy observations about her body, crude challenges issued toward Gabe, speculation over how much money they would get from the United States government for two captives, and how they planned to spend said money. As if they would see any of it. She wanted to shout to them that their leaders were playing them for fools, the rich using them to line their own pockets, while they spent their days marching through the jungle, living off blocks of sugar and white rice.

Did they hold her brother in a camp like this? Maybe he was even somewhere in this camp. Had they forced him to march for miles through the jungle? He wouldn’t last long if they had. Bryson never had been a good outdoorsman, hated camping or anything even remotely rustic. Her lovely little hut on the beach in Quepos, Costa Rica had appalled him so much last year that he’d immediately gone out and bought her that awful condo in the tourist trap section of town. Unable to see past the hut’s lack of comfortable amenities, he just didn’t get it. Didn’t get her. But he tried to help her the only way he knew how, and God love him for that.

Tears welled. As much as they didn’t see eye to eye, she still loved her big brother. He had to make it through this. She’d try harder to see things his way, she would. Just as long as they both made it out of this hellhole of a country alive.

“Audrey,” Gabe said very softly next to her ear, drawing her out of her thoughts. She hadn’t felt his body shift toward her, but there he was crowding her personal space, big as the mountain she’d compared him to earlier. His hand traced lightly down her arm, dipped to follow the curve of her waist, and finally settled on her hip.

His breath tickled her ear. “I have another injury that needs kissing.”

She smiled into the gathering dark. “Do you?”

“Mm.” He rolled her over and propped himself up on one elbow, bending down until his mouth hovered millimeters above hers. “Right…” He bussed his lips over hers, caught her lower lip in a gentle tug that she felt all the way to her womb. “…here.”

Gabe claimed her mouth in the same take-charge way he did everything else, obliterating all but the need to feel more of him. No fear. No worry. Even the pain in her blistered feet faded. For a moment, it was just her and him, a man and a woman enjoying each other.

His tongue met and danced with hers, lighting up nerve endings in places she’d forgotten existed. His hand tightened on her hip, drawing her against all that hard muscle of his chest, and her fingers snaked into his hair, hugging him closer still.

Yes. This. It was exactly what she needed. A distraction. A tender, loving reminder that she was still alive. How had Gabe known she needed this when she herself hadn’t realized it until now?

He kept his lower body off her, but his erection still prodded her side, especially when she sucked on his tongue and his hips surged involuntarily. Reaching down with her free hand, she cupped him through his pants and went utterly wet at the size of him.

Cripes, he was a
big
man. She figured he’d be fairly well-endowed since he towered well over six feet of solid muscle. But she never expected… She pressed her palm into him and let him thrust against her hand. Whew. She didn’t know if he’d even fit comfortably, but sure couldn’t wait to try.

With a groan, Gabe drew her hand away as she fumbled to free the buttons of his fly.

“Easy, honey. We can’t do this now.” After rearranging himself, he pulled her close. “Get some sleep.”

She snorted out a laugh. “You want me to sleep after
that
?”

“To be continued,” he said. “When we’re both in better shape and have more privacy. Believe me.” He cupped her breast and gave it a light squeeze. “We’re nowhere near close to finished.”

“Sadist.” Even as the word left her lips, she yawned. She was so very tired all of a sudden, the sexual buzz having tapped out her last energy reserve. He was right; she needed sleep.

Seemed he was always right. That might get annoying.

“Can you…hold me for a while?” She felt silly asking, like a child afraid of the dark. But the dark had never been so frightening before, and she needed the human contact.

Gabe pushed her hair back from her face and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. “I planned on it.”

“Let me know if I hurt your leg.”

“You won’t.”

Audrey sighed and curled into his side, taking strength from the heat of him, the solidity of his body and character. He was a good, honorable man. Funny to find one now in this place, under these horrific circumstances, after all her years of looking. She just hoped they both lived long enough to explore their budding intimacy.

God, it was all so surreal. She couldn’t help feeling as if she’d wake up any minute in her hammock outside her cabin with a killer margarita headache and the vague notion she’d had a crazy dream. But she wouldn’t. This was no dream, Gabe was no dream man, and they were both in a lot of danger.

As the day started to sink in fully, tears spilled over. “Gabe?”

“Mm?”

“Do you have a plan to get us out of here?”

“Yes.”

The confidence in his succinct answer eased her fears, but only a little. “You’re not just saying that, are you?”

“No, Aud, I’m not.” He shifted and pulled her more firmly against his side. “Do you smell that? Almost like burning plastic?”

She sniffed the air, nodded. The scent did have a plastic smell, but also carried the chemical undercurrent unique to all hard drugs. “They’re smoking something.”

“
Basuco
, the dregs left over from the cocaine-making process. They’re out there celebrating. They think they’ve hit the jackpot with us, but they’re too cocky for their own good. Come morning, they’ll all be drunk and stoned, and I’m going to cause some problems for them with the farmers that live in this village.”

“How?”

“I’m going to kill one of their cows.”

Audrey sat up, an automatic objection jumping to her lips. But when she saw the hard, determined line of his jaw and the flatness in his golden eyes, she knew protesting would be a useless endeavor. Still, she had to try. “Do you have to kill it?”

“It’s the cow’s life or ours, Audrey,” he said without remorse. Those flat eyes met hers, and she wondered at the sudden stranger lying beside her. How could this be the same man who had been so tender with her only moments ago? “Livestock are like currency around here, and the last thing Cocodrilo wants is to piss off the local farmers. It’ll cause chaos, and that’s what we need to escape.”

He was right. She knew it, but God, she hated the thought of some poor animal dying to save her. “Will you be kind to it, at least?”

His features softened a fraction and he caught a strand of her hair between his fingers. He wound it around his hand, studied it like the color and texture fascinated him.

“Gabe?”

“Yeah.” He abruptly dropped the strand. “The animal won’t feel a thing. I’ll make sure of it.”

“Thank you.” After a moment, she settled beside him again, but her heart stayed lodged in her throat. “I’m really scared.”

Gabe’s arm tightened around her shoulders. “Yeah, I know. But I promise I won’t let anything happen to you. Trust me.”

Trust. Funny thing, that. Since her parents’ deaths, she’d never trusted anyone to take care of her but herself. Not even her brother. But, as she tumbled into the oblivion of sleep tucked safely in Gabe’s embrace, she realized she completely trusted him to do as he promised.

Chapter Eleven

It had been a long, long time since Gabe woke up with the warm sweetness of a woman curled beside him. In fact, had he ever? Most of his past lovers, those that he’d stayed with longer than a weekend fling, had always elected not to spend the night, either because of their own busy schedules or his.

But this…

This felt good. This felt right. He could learn to love this.

Still half asleep, marveling at the sensation of Audrey’s small breasts flattened against his arm, he slid his free hand over her curves. She wasn’t voluptuous, not like the women Quinn liked and therefore usually found for the both of them. Actually, now that he thought of it, he liked the full-figured ladies okay, but slim women with just a handful of breasts were what really cranked his engine. Almost every woman he’d ever had over the last twelve years was one Quinn hooked him up with. Well past time for him to start thinking with his own dick—and his dick wanted willowy Audrey Van Amee so badly it ached.

He wanted to slip his fingers under the waistband of her jeans and feel her. So hot and slick and ready for him. He’d start with one finger, curling it inside just enough that her hips would surge against his hand, begging for more. He’d give her another finger, and then a third, stretching her until…

She gasped his name.

Gabe came fully awake and, holy shit, he wasn’t just fantasizing. He had two fingers buried deep inside her slick heat as she clung to his shoulder and writhed against him, on the verge of climax.

“Jesus.” He started to withdraw his hand, but she caught his wrist and squeezed so hard he actually felt his bones shift. The look she gave him was so fierce, feral, and utterly feminine that his cock leapt with excitement.

“Don’t you dare stop, Gabriel.” She guided his hand between her legs and pressed her hips upward, taking his fingers in. “I need this. Please.”

Fascinated, Gabe propped himself on one elbow and watched her face. She’d been so flippant about everything the day before that he should’ve recognized her attitude as a defense mechanism. Wound as tight as she was, she was bound for trouble if she didn’t release some of that tension. And he wanted to do that for her, just this once. It wasn’t exactly unprofessional. She had to be clear-headed, because when the opportunity presented itself, he’d need her help to get them out of here. An orgasm was just the quickest way to get her to relax.

Yup. This would be strictly a tactical move. Nothing more.

Gabe found her clit with his thumb and smiled when she hummed with pleasure. Head back, eyes squeezed shut, mouth opening into a little O, she was so open and unpretentious, so sensual without even trying to be.

He took her mouth in a deep, hard kiss, swallowing her moan as she came. Goddamn, but he wanted her, wanted to be inside her when she did that again. It took every ounce of willpower he possessed not to roll over, free his straining erection, and drill into her until they were both too weak to move.

Tactical move, indeed.

Shuddering, Audrey went boneless beside him. With his fingers still buried inside her, he felt her inner muscles ripple with the aftershocks of her orgasm. Slowly, oh so slowly, so that her plumped, sensitized sex felt every movement, he removed his hand.

A sleepy smile curved her lips as she lifted a hand to his cheek. He turned his face into it, nuzzled her palm once before planting a soft, open-mouth kiss right in the center.

“Gabe,” she said.

“Hmm?” He continued kissing up her arm to her neck, enjoying the goose bumps his lips brought out on her freckled skin despite the humidity in their little hut.

Her fingers tunneled into his hair and rubbed his scalp in a massage almost as sensual as a handjob. “Will you let me take care of you now?”

He swallowed hard at the idea, but caught her other hand before it reached his fly. “I’d love for you to, but it won’t be nearly enough. I’ll want you even more than I already do and I won’t be able to have you.”

“Yes, you—”

“Not here.” Gabe pressed her back as she started to sit up. “Not like this.” He bent to kiss her nose. “Soon, though. When we’re safe, and your brother’s safe, I plan to take you to bed and not let you leave for, ah, let’s say three days. Maybe four. We’ll have to see how we’re feeling by the end of day three. If we can still walk, it’s on, so clear your schedule.”

Audrey flashed a smile bright as a sunrise, just as he’d hoped. “I’d like that.”

“Then it’s a date.” After another quick kiss, he pushed himself upright and took stock of his condition. Besides the raging boner and a mean case of blue balls, he felt pretty good. Had a bit of a crick in his side from sleeping on feedbags, and God Almighty, he needed a shower before he gagged himself.

Amazed that Audrey let him anywhere near her when he smelled like a three-week-old gym bag, he climbed off the feedbags and tested his foot. Still hurt, but not like it had last night, and the swelling had gone down. Nothing he couldn’t handle.

Audrey sat up and watched closely as he strode toward the door. “How’s your foot?”

“Not too bad.” He tried the knob, surprised to find it unlocked. No doubt there was a guard stationed—

A body tumbled inside as the door opened.

“Aw, fuck.” He gazed down at a young face staring with sightless, glazed eyes at the pre-dawn sky. The guard’s neck gaped open in a morbid grin, sliced from ear-to-ear.

“Gabe, what’s wrong? What—”

“Shh.” He waved Audrey back and dropped into a defensive crouch, scanning the campsite.

Another body lay crumpled by the still smoldering fire pit, and a third at the edge of the poppy field. No sign of Cocodrilo, but he thought he saw movement near one of the buildings at his nine.

Had his team found him already?

Gabe cupped his hands around his mouth and whistled, mimicking a birdcall, then listened for five long seconds. No answer. Not Quinn. Shit.

Staying low, he edged far enough out into the open to snag the dead guard’s AK-47 and an extra clip of ammo, then ducked back inside the hut. As far as shelters went, it was pretty pathetic, and they had to get out in case a firefight erupted. The thin wood walls wouldn’t stop even a low caliber round from a pistol. Something more heavy duty from an assault rifle would tear the hut—and anyone inside—to shreds.

They’d have to make a run for it. Only problem with that was he was down to one boot. And wouldn’t you know, the dead guard had tiny feet. He bent over and began unlacing his other boot.

“Gabe?” Audrey climbed to her feet, staring at him with fear-widened eyes. “Oh my God, is that blood?”

“Not mine.” Absently, he wiped his bloody hands on his pants and then kicked off his boot. He’d move faster barefoot. He checked the AK over and ejected the magazine, disappointed to see it half empty. “Goddammit.”

What the hell had the kid been shooting at? Certainly hadn’t been his attacker, or else Gabe would have heard. Fuck, the idiot deserved to die if he didn’t know any better than to walk around on guard duty with a half loaded weapon. Gabe pocketed that clip, hoping he wouldn’t need it, and loaded the fresh one, jacked the charging handle.

“Where’s my knife?” he whispered.

“Uh…” Audrey scrambled to their makeshift bed, running her hands over the bags that still held imprints of their bodies. She pulled the folded knife from a crack between the wall and the feedbags and handed it to him. “Here. What’s happening?”

“Someone’s killing off our guards.”

She gasped and looked at the closed door. “Your men?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Oh God.” Her knees wobbled and she sank to the feedbags, shaky hands covering her face. “When will this nightmare end?”

“Hey.” Gabe slung the AK-47 over his shoulder and gathered her in his arms, securing her against his chest with his chin on the top of her head. “I promised nothing’s going to happen to you and I keep my promises. Stay steady and do what I tell you and we’ll be fine. Okay?

“Audrey?” he said when she didn’t answer, and lifted her chin with the crook of his finger. “Can you stay steady for me?”

Her eyes shimmered with tears, but she nodded. So strong. A lesser woman would be an unstable mess right now. Hell, most Average Joe civilians would be, too. That she kept it together with no training to rely on was amazing to him.

“I won’t fall apart now.” With a watery smile she added, “Can’t make any guarantees for later, though.”

“Now’s all I need.” He pressed a quick kiss to her forehead before releasing her. “When I open the door, be as quiet as you can and run straight to the poppy field. Don’t wait for me. Run until you reach the other side, then hide. I’ll whistle twice when it’s safe.” He whistled softly in one short burst followed by a longer one. “If you don’t hear that, stay put.”

Biting down hard on her lower lip, she nodded again. Gabe turned toward the door, rifle aimed, heart thundering behind his ribs. It should have been steady—this was a cakewalk compared to other situations he’d been in as a SEAL—but Audrey changed the stakes. All that mattered was that she got out alive.

A quick glance at her showed him she was ready. Or as ready as she was going to be. He sucked in a breath, held it until his heart slowed, let it go in a slow exhale, and pushed open the door.

“Go.”

…

Jacinto Rivera’s current flop was three blocks down from the warehouse Ian and Jesse planned to make a crater, which really wasn’t a big surprise. The fact that it was less than a half step up from a shithole, however, was. Knowing what Quinn knew about Angel Rivera’s love of luxury, he’d assumed Jacinto rode on his brother’s coattails, living the good life for nothing. This was not the good life.

After clearing the apartment’s second floor—not that anyone cared who they were or what they were doing; in this kind of neighborhood, people kept out of their neighbor’s business—Quinn had stood lookout while Marcus made short work of the flimsy lock on Jacinto Rivera’s door. The nearly empty apartment smelled like spoiled milk, food gone over, and rotting flesh.

“Ugh.” Marcus raised his brows at the stench and lifted the edge of his shirt to cover his nose as they slipped inside. “Something’s dead.”

Well, wasn’t Deangelo a regular Sherlock Holmes. Quinn scanned the tiny apartment. “Let’s hope it’s not Jacinto Rivera.”

If so, they were back to square one in their search for Bryson Van Amee, and time, that persistent fucker, kept ticking away. Everything that could go wrong so far already had. Harvard was having trouble digging up enough intel on the EPC, which was slowing down their search. The warehouse job was eating up time and manpower, but no way in hell was Quinn leaving all those explosives in the hands of the enemy. Oh, and let’s not forget Gabe was MIA.

Best case, Bryson would resurface unscathed after the ransom, his insurance company sixty-some million dollars poorer. Or, more likely, his captors would kill him and dump his body somewhere it’d never be found and the insurance company would still lose a couple million to his estate. Either way, it’d count as a loss for HumInt Consulting Inc.’s newly minted Hostage Rescue and Negotiation Team, and that was just not acceptable.

“It’s not Rivera,” Marcus called and Quinn turned toward him. He stood in the small kitchenette off the main room, gazing into the open refrigerator. “Not unless he’s small and furry. Stray cat, and it’s been here a while. Looks like it starved to death.”

“In the fridge?”

“Talk about your ironic death.” With his shirt still tucked up over his nose, he lifted his head to study the rest of the apartment. His dark eyes crinkled in disgust. “Nobody lives here. How could they?”

Quinn made a noncommittal sound, not about to admit he’d grown up in an apartment in Baltimore not much better than this, with an alcoholic father that beat him senseless on a daily basis and a mother too stoned to care. It was something he’d never admitted to anyone. Not even Gabe.

His name had been Benjamin Paul Jewett, Jr., or Paulie, back then, and life had been Hell on Earth. The day Big Ben went on a drunken rampage and shot him and his mother was the best of Quinn’s ten-year-old life, and how sad was that? Lying on his narrow bed, pumping blood from a hole in his chest, his stolen Gameboy still clenched in his hands, he’d thought,
I’m finally free
.

The police had busted down the door, carted Big Ben away, zipped his mother into a body bag, and shipped Paulie to a hospital, where he met Dr. Samuel Quinn and his ICU nurse wife, Bianca. They’d saved his life with so much more than excellent medical care.

Then he’d lost them, too.

“Yo, Q. You here with me?” Marcus’s hand passed in front of his face and he blinked back to the present, silently cursing himself. He didn’t stroll down memory lane often, and when he did, he never went that far back. He shook his head. He had to stop zoning out. Jesse was already suspicious about his medical condition and he didn’t need to add more fuel to that fire by blanking on Marcus.

He also had to get out of this fucking apartment—it made his skin crawl with the memories of Big Ben. He cleared his throat. “Find anything?”

Marcus gave him a narrow-eyed once-over but then shrugged. “Nah. Place is cleared out. If Jacinto ever lived here, it wasn’t recently.”

Quinn nodded and started toward the door. “Let’s go over and see how Ian and Jesse are doing at the warehouse. Maybe we’ll get lucky and—” His phone vibrated in his pocket and he held up a finger. “Hang on.” He checked the screen.

Harvard.

Even as his stomach dropped into his pelvic cradle with sickening speed, he tried to keep his voice level. “What did you find?”

The kid’s voice was almost all static. “Nothing good.”

And it wasn’t. Gabe’s Jeep abandoned on the road, windshield shot up, with no sign of him or Audrey.

Quinn rubbed a hand down his face, appalled that tears blurred his vision. There were so few people left in the world he considered friends, and even less he counted as family. Gabe was family. If that fucker went and got killed… Christ, he might just lose his grip on the thin shred of sanity he still had.