Chapter 5

Gabe wasn’t entirely sure what just happened. One minute he’d been reconnoitering the alleyway, wondering if Bryson had been taken from here because it had easy access to two different streets at both ends, and the next, a wisp of a woman shot out of the apartment building’s emergency exit like her ass was on fire. She took one look at his face and gave a bloodcurdling horror movie scream. As a SEAL, he was trained to handle anything an enemy could throw at him, but a hysterical woman?

What the fuck was he supposed to do with her?

“Shh,” he said. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

She didn’t seem to hear him. Or maybe she spoke Spanish and didn’t understand him. She had smooth, tanned skin and light brown hair, but he’d seen enough light-skinned Latinos in his travels to know that wasn’t the best judge of ethnicity. He dug around his admittedly rusty Spanish repertoire for the right words: “Tranquillo. Está okay. No voy… a hacerte da?o.”

She screamed.

Jesus.

At wit’s end, he clamped one palm over her mouth and circled her slender neck with his other hand, felt her pulse pounding wildly against his thumb as he applied just the right amount of pressure. She slumped into blessed silence. He had to drop his cane to catch her before she hit the ground, and the extra weight ignited fireworks of pain in his foot.

Now what?

Her head lolled against his shoulder, her hair tickling his nose. Balancing her in one arm, he used his free hand to smooth back the silky strands, which were not so much brown as the color of the finest gold rum. He got his first clear look at her face and felt a tug of familiarity. Freckles dappled the bridge of a nose that he could only describe as “cute,” like something on a doll. High cheekbones, a wide mouth that she probably thought was too big for her face if she judged herself by society’s standards of beauty, but that he found fascinating. He suddenly very much wanted to see her smile.

And then it clicked. He had seen her smile before. In a photo while briefing the men.

This was Audrey Van Amee. His hostage’s sister.

Gabe had a moment of no-fucking-way, but then the door slammed open again, and Jean-Luc, his nose bleeding down the front of his shirt, skidded to a halt.

“You got her.”

“What are you doing?” Gabe demanded. “I ordered you to hold your position.”

“She was in Van Amee’s apartment.” He holstered his gun, then tried to staunch the blood flow with the edge of his shirt, which gave his voice a nasally sound. “She spotted me and took off. What else was I supposed to do?”

Gabe shut his eyes and drew a calming breath. Patience, he reminded himself, was a virtue. “Follow orders.”

“Fuck orders. We’re not the military, and I didn’t have time to get you on the horn.”

Police sirens wailed in the distance.

Shit, as if this couldn’t get any worse.

“We’ll talk about this later.” Talk. Yeah, that’s what they’d do. After he reamed Jean-Luc a new one. This sort of reckless shit was not happening under his command. “Get the car.”

“What about her?”

He looked at the unconscious woman in his arms. Her freckles stood out in stark relief against her pale face. Her eyes moved restlessly behind lids fringed with some of the longest lashes he’d ever seen.

The police sirens screamed closer.

“Well?” Jean-Luc asked.

Poor woman would wake up with a hellacious headache from the pressure-point KO, but not for at least a half hour. Leaving her unconscious in this alleyway was just not an option.

“She’s coming with us.” They needed to talk to her and find out what she was doing in Van Amee’s apartment. She’d also benefit from a once-over by Jesse when she woke up.

Jean-Luc grinned. “If you really want a date, I know plenty of willing women. We don’t have to kidnap one.” He stopped grinning and studied Gabe’s face. “Fuck, you’re serious.”

“Car. Now.”

Jean-Luc shook his head and broke into a jog. “And here I thought we’re the good guys.”

* * *

“What the…?” Quinn’s jaw didn’t drop open when Gabe limped into the safe house carrying the unconscious woman, but came pretty damn close. In typical Quinn-like fashion, he shook off the shock fast.

“Help him,” he ordered Marcus, who stood beside the door with a cup of aromatic Colombian coffee in hand.

“I got her.” Gabe waved everyone back.

Marcus DeAngelo, with his California surfer good looks and brimming with all of that Italian lover charm, was not laying even a pinky finger on her. He angled through the group, heading toward the nearest bedroom.

“What happened?” Jesse asked, trailing behind, medical bag in hand.

“Long story.”

“No, it’s not,” Jean-Luc said as he shut the front door and propped Gabe’s cane against the wall. “I found her in Van Amee’s apartment.”

“So, what the hell, Jean-Luc? You knocked her unconscious?” Jesse said.

“Nah. Our esteemed capitaine did that.” He pressed two fingers to his neck and mimed a faint to demonstrate.

“Like a Vulcan death grip? Cool,” Harvard said.

Marcus took a drink from his cup. “Can you teach me that shit?”

“She’ll be fine,” Gabe muttered and shouldered into a small bedroom off the living room. The narrow cot he laid her on squeaked under her slight weight. She moaned but otherwise didn’t stir. “She’ll wake up with a headache, nothing more.”

Jesse crouched beside her, checked her vitals, and then stood. “Seems okay, but I wouldn’t advise makin’ a habit of the Vulcan death grip, ’specially with such a little thing as her.” He snagged his medical bag from the floor beside the bed and went to the door. Glancing back, he opened his mouth to say something but then looked at Quinn, shook his head, and walked out. “Hey, Jean-Luc, lemme take a gander at your nose. Looks broken.”

A whole minute passed in silence after the room emptied. Quinn stood beside the door, studying the woman with unreadable eyes, a slight frown pulling down the corners of his mouth.

“I couldn’t leave her,” Gabe said. Quinn was one of only two men on earth he’d ever felt the need to explain himself to. His brother Raffi was the other.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You don’t have to. Listen, Q, things got fubared. Jean-Luc, that stupid jackass, went against orders and chased her through the building with his fucking gun. Someone called the cops, and I had to make a decision. Leave her and possibly lose any information she might have, or bring her with us.”

He purposely left out the part about the weird tugging in his chest every time he looked at her.

“Well, shit.” Quinn rubbed a hand back and forth over his high-and-tight. “We’re here to rescue a hostage, not create an international incident by kidnapping a native.”

“She’s not a native. Look at her. Don’t you recognize her?”

Quinn studied her face for several moments. Then his eyes rounded. “Audrey Van Amee. Shit.”

“Yeah, and she’s not our hostage.”

“You just abducted her.”

He set his jaw. “She’s not a hostage.”

“What if she knows something about her brother? We can’t let her go.”

“We’ll have to convince her to hang around until we find Van Amee, but we’re not going to keep her tied up or locked in a room.”

Quinn’s expression gave nothing away, but Gabe was good enough at reading his best friend to know he thought it was a shitty plan. And it was, but Gabe refused to hold anyone against their will.

Jean-Luc was right. They were supposed to be the good guys.

“So,” Quinn said after another long beat and showed the barest hint of a smile. “Wanna go give Jean-Luc a taste of SEAL discipline?”