Chapter 6

Audrey woke to the thrum of a baritone voice issuing orders and turned her head toward the sound. Holy God, what was that racket? Her mind swam, temples throbbed in beat with her heart. Better yet, what on earth did she drink last night? She wasn’t a drinker by nature, but every once in a while, her friends would drag her out to a dance club on the beach, and she’d go a little margarita crazy. Is that what she’d done last night? Must’ve been a hell of a time since she wasn’t in her own bed?—

Bryson.

It all flooded back. Chased out of Bryson’s apartment by the fake policeman with the accent. The man with the gold eyes and cane. Her brother’s abduction.

Oh God.

She blinked against her headache and looked around the room. Small. Empty. A wooden crucifix hung over the narrow bed she lay on and immediately made her think of every horror movie she’d ever seen. There was no other furniture. No lamp to use as a weapon and no window to escape from, naturally. The door sat open about six inches. Through the opening, she could make out movement in the other room and hear that commanding voice barking out orders like a drill sergeant, but couldn’t tell what was going on or who her captors were. Did they have anything to do with Bryson’s abduction? If so, seems like they’d make sure to keep her under lock and key instead of leaving the door open.

Of course, maybe they were all armed to the teeth, which was why they had no worries she’d try to escape.

Well, only one way to find out.

She drew a breath and pushed herself upright, waiting a moment for her head to stop its tilt-a-whirl act before swinging her legs off the edge of the cot. Her first few steps were a little wobbly, but she felt steadier by the time she reached the door and gave it a push. It opened easily.

The fake policeman was doing push-ups in the center of the room while the man with the cane walked around him like a predator zeroing in on its weakened prey.

“Arms straight!” He tapped the man’s buckling arm with the tip of his cane. “You want to start over? We’ve got no place to be until Harvard finds that video footage.”

Okay. Definitely Americans. She let out the breath caught in her lungs. Yes, being American didn’t automatically preclude them from bad guy status, she knew that. Plenty of bad Americans out there in the world, but her instincts told her these men meant her no harm. Maybe they were even here to help. Maybe they were FBI or…

Not. She studied the group of men—soldiers, apparently, although most of them weren’t dressed like it—standing around the perimeter of the room. One of them, wearing a trucker cap with a surf logo and sipping a cup of coffee, took bets from the others. Definitely not FBI. Or anything else official.

Mercenaries, then?

Audrey bit her lip and took two steps backward into the bedroom… But then what? She stopped moving, glanced back at the bed. She hadn’t come to Colombia to lie in some tiny room and cower with the sheets pulled over her head.

She studied the group again and decided to go with her instincts. They hadn’t locked her in the room. If they had wanted to harm her, they had plenty of opportunity to do so when she was unconscious. So who were they and what did they want from her? The only way to find out was to talk to them.

The fake policeman finally collapsed, sweating and gasping, and even though he’d chased her and scared the hell out of her, she couldn’t help the twinge of pity as he rolled to his side and gripped his ribs, his face bright red, his teeth clenched. The other soldiers let out hoots until the man with the cane sent them all a look as lethal as a gunshot wound.

“Would you gentlemen like to join him?”

That shut them up, and they all faked interest in something else real fast.

To Audrey’s surprise, the man with the cane’s whole demeanor changed from brutal drill sergeant to—well, she didn’t know, but he was nearly gentle as he gripped the fake policeman’s hand and hauled him upright. “You okay, Jean-Luc?”

“Hah, that’s all y’all got? Piece of—” The man—Jean-Luc, apparently—winced. “Piece of cake.” Blood leaked from his nose, over his lips, and he swiped at it with his arm. “But, uh, I’ll listen to orders next time. Save you the… the humiliation of not breaking me.”

“Good idea.” The man with the cane smiled—and, whew, that was some smile, softening the hard lines of his cut-granite face. He patted Jean-Luc on the back. “Go see Jesse. You’re bleeding again.”

Jean-Luc tried to walk on his own but stumbled a little and slammed a hand onto the nearest piece of furniture, a table filled with electronic equipment, to steady himself. The man with the cane caught him under one arm while another man, who looked more like a soldier than everyone else with his military haircut and urban camouflage pants, wedged a shoulder under his other arm.

“Dizzy,” Jean-Luc muttered. He suddenly didn’t look good at all, pale as bone despite his tanned complexion.

Audrey had a feeling he hadn’t elaborated about their scuffle in Bryson’s apartment. He probably had a concussion from her hitting him with the lamp.

“I hit him on the head.” When seven sets of eyes turned her way, she realized she’d spoken aloud, and her heart took up residence in her throat. Some of the gazes were mildly hostile, others assessing, and still others showing a spark of male interest, but one particular set of hazels focused on her like sunbeams. Not as gold in the artificial light of the overhead lamp as they had been in the gloomy natural light of the alleyway but more greenish-gold, they swept over her, lingering a second longer than was necessary considering the situation. Then he seemed to catch himself and ripped his gaze away, again focusing on Jean-Luc.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” he asked in that smooth, calm baritone.

Jean-Luc blew a raspberry with his lips. “Aw, it was nothing. Glancing blow.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Audrey told the man with the cane. “I hit him three times with a lamp. He really scared me.” But since they hadn’t tied her up and none of them had yet to attack her or threaten her in any way, she was beginning to think that had been a fluke. Maybe these guys were at least partly on her side.

“Pardon,” Jean-Luc said and looked genuinely apologetic through the blood leaking down his face. He collapsed into a chair someone had pulled up, and a man wearing a Stetson—a medic, she assumed, since he carried a bag of medical supplies—pressed a compress to his nose, then flashed a penlight in his eyes. He tried to wave the medic aside, but the medic wasn’t having any of that.

“Either you let me do an exam, J.L., or I knock you out. Then I’ll know for sure you have a concussion.”

He grumbled but let the medic take his vitals without further fuss and refocused on Audrey. “Things got a little out of hand back there at the apartment, cher. For that, I am sorry.”

“It’s okay.” She felt the man with the cane’s eyes on her again but pretended not to notice. “I apologize for hitting you. And, uh, kicking you in the nose.”

“Jesus, Jean-Luc,” the man in the trucker cap laughed. “She beat the shit outta you.”

“Hey, Marcus, got a gift for ya.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jean-Luc said and flashed him the middle finger, which made Marcus hoot with laughter.

“That’s enough, gentlemen.” The man with the cane, again catching himself staring at her, snapped to attention. She watched it happen, saw him yank on the reins of tightly held control.

How often did he let go of those reins? Not nearly enough, she guessed, and she had the inexplicable urge to force his hand.

As he directed his men, Audrey realized she was staring right back at him and gave herself a mental kick. Bryson was in danger. She didn’t care how intriguing and, yes, sexy the man with the cane was. He wasn’t important right now. Nobody was, except Bryson.

When he refocused on her, his eyes were like citrine—cool, calculating, but still sparking with inner fire that no amount of training or control could hide.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“I’m…” She considered giving an alias for all of a half-second, but that would only complicate matters. Given all the computer equipment in the room, her real name wouldn’t stay secret long… if they didn’t already know it. Her art show was getting a lot of press, not only in Central America but also in the States. All they had to do was look for one of the many interviews scattered over the internet with accompanying photos of her. For the man in the corner pounding away at his laptop keyboard, she bet that would be the work of a minute.

“I’m Audrey Van Amee.”

He nodded as if she’d confirmed what he already knew, but, damn him, he didn’t introduce himself or any of the other men.

“And you are…?” she prompted.

“Looking for your brother.”

Could he be more deliberately obtuse? She jammed her hands onto her hips. “I kind of figured that, given that you were staking out his apartment. What I want to know is if you’re working for or against him.”

Please, please, please say for.

“For,” he said, without a blink of hesitation.

Audrey discovered she was holding her breath again and let it out in a soft exhale so as not to draw attention to the fact. She thought it better that she appeared confident and strong in front of these pseudo-soldiers, but what would she have done if her instincts had failed her and these were the bad guys? Her stomach jittered at the thought.

Bryson was right. She really should start thinking situations like this through before running her mouth. Then again, she’d never been in a situation like this before and was pretty much winging it.

“Who hired you?” she asked. Although the man with the cane had the bearing of a general and his friend in the camouflage pants was most definitely a soldier, they had to be mercenaries. The rest of the group was too ragtag to be official military.

When he didn’t answer, she huffed out a breath. “Do you know who took Brys?”

He ignored the question. She got the feeling he never answered questions not to his liking. “With all due respect, ma’am?—”

“Oh, tell me you didn’t just ma’am me.”

Again, he ignored her. “You need to go back to Costa Rica. You’re just as much a target here as your brother was. Let us handle this. We’ll bring him home.”

How did he know she lived in Costa Rica? And what else did he know about her? The idea that he knew more about her than she did him doused her manufactured courage with ice, and goosebumps raced over her skin. Even so, she had nothing to hide, and she sure wasn’t falling for that whole let-the-professionals-handle-it, your-brother’s-in-good-hands bit. She’d heard of too many incidences where the so-called professionals were not enough.

“Would you leave?” she asked. “If it was your brother, would you leave without him?”

His jaw tightened just a little bit, telling her she’d hit a tender spot. “Not the same. I’m trained for this.”

“Oh yeah? And just how many hostage rescue situations have you been in, Mr. I’m-Trained-For-This?” She’d be surprised if even one. Soldiers of fortune, or at least the few she’d met in Costa Rica, talked and walked big, but as soon as the real action started, they were nowhere to be found. She’d tried to hire one before trekking to Colombia but discovered his claims were just alcohol-fueled bravado and nothing more. And, yeah, she was still pissed off about that.

Stupid men and their stupid egos.

“Over fifty,” he said placidly.

“Well, see, that’s—a lot.” O-kay, talk about having an argument blow up in her face. The man apparently knew his stuff. Maybe her brother was in good hands. She didn’t dare to hope. “Who are you?”

He exchanged a look with Mr. Camo Pants, a thousand words passing between them without either of them making a sound.

Then he shrugged.

“My name is Gabriel Bristow. Gabe.”

Gabriel. It suited him. He even looked a little like the painting her fanatically religious mother had of the avenging angel.

Gabe went on to introduce each of the other men in the room.

Jean-Luc Cavalier was the fake policeman she’d already had the pleasure of meeting, but he swept into a bow as if this was their first introduction, murmured something delightful sounding in French, and kissed her hand. Her opinion of him did a complete one-eighty. In fact, she melted into a big, gushy puddle of girly giggles and didn’t even hate herself for it.

Jesse Warrick, the medic, touched the brim of his Stetson with a polite, “ma’am”—somehow when he said it in that cowboy drawl, it didn’t sound as condescending as it had when Gabe said it earlier.

Trucker hat guy was Marcus DeAngelo. He nodded toward her wrist. “You do much surfing in Costa Rica?”

She glanced down, at first not sure how he’d drawn that conclusion. Then she remembered the surfboard charm on the bracelet her brother had given her for her twenty-fifth birthday. “Sometimes.”

Marcus grinned and wagged a finger in the air between them. “You. Me. We’re gonna talk.” He held up his coffee cup. “Want some?”

“Oh, very much. Thank you.”

Gabe made some displeased grumbling noises until Marcus returned with a mug, then continued with the introductions.

Eric Physick, whom everyone called Harvard, was the computer geek tapping away at his laptop keyboard. He looked up and offered a distracted smile when Gabe said his name. His glasses sat crooked on his nose. Audrey had to fight the urge to straighten them and comb down his spiky mop of brown hair.

Ian Reinhardt leaned against the wall in a motorcycle jacket with bad attitude rolling off him in waves. He said nothing to her, but his lip curled in a faint sneer of disdain.

O-kay. Mental note: she never wanted to be in a room alone with him.

Finally, camo pants, Travis Quinn, gave her a solemn nod, but kept his distance.

Such an odd assortment of men. She wasn’t sure whether to cheer, laugh, or cry that they were apparently her brother’s only hope since the FBI was doing jack to save him.

“Nice to meet everyone,” she said when Gabe finished the introductions. She might be frightened out of her wits and confused as hell, but she was a Southern girl, born and bred. Mama would fly down from heaven and tan her hide good if she wasn’t polite, of that she had no doubt.

“But,” she added, “that still doesn’t explain who you are.”

“We’re HORNET,” Jean-Luc said.

“Horny is more like it,” Gabe muttered and gave him a blistering stare. “Keep your eyes above her neck.”

Jean-Luc grinned shamelessly. “Aw, mon capitaine. No worries. I wouldn’t dream of stepping on your turf.”

His turf? Audrey scowled at them both and yanked at the slipping neckline of her tank top. In the sticky heat of the jungle, she often went braless, and hadn’t changed that habit since arriving in Bogotá, despite the cool, rainy climate. A half-inch more, and she’d have had to ask Jean-Luc for Mardi Gras beads in exchange for the show. Not that she had a problem with nudity. If she could get away without wearing clothes, she would, but she needed to keep these guys focused. And one surefire way to get a man off task was to flash him.

“What’s HORNET?” she asked.

“That’s not what we’re called,” Gabe said. “We’re a private hostage rescue and negotiation team. And you’re right, we have been hired to bring your brother home.”

“Who hired you?”

“That’s confidential.”

Audrey huffed out a breath. Pulling teeth was easier than getting information out of him. A pit viper’s teeth, to be exact. “Maybe I can help.”

“No, you can’t. And every second we waste explaining ourselves to you is another second your brother spends in captivity. So you need to back off, Ms. Van Amee, and let us do our job.”

“Gabe,” Harvard called across the room. “I got it.”

Without another glance in her direction, Gabe strode over to stand behind Harvard and studied the computer monitor. “Go back to his first appearance.”

Since nobody had told her to stay put, Audrey drifted over to see what Harvard was doing. An image of her brother leaving his apartment building showed on the computer screen. The timestamp in the corner read 5:58 a.m. Forever prompt—that was so like Bryson. His pixelated image left the screen.

“Another angle?” Gabe asked.

Harvard pecked a few keys, and Bryson’s image returned to the far left corner. He waited there for something, impatient.

The limo, she thought as Bryson checked the screen of his phone and answered her call. A few minutes later, the limo arrived, and a tall, dark-haired man opened the door for Bryson. A moment after that, the vehicle pulled away from the curb with her brother inside.

“License plate?” Gabe asked.

“Partial. I’m already running it. And the phone call…” Harvard rewound the footage to check the timestamp. “…came in at 0620. With a little finessing, I can get into his records, see who he spoke to.”

“Do it. Also see if?—”

“It was me,” Audrey said and Gabe turned narrowed eyes on her.

“What?”

“It was me,” she repeated. “I called him. I have—was supposed to have an art show this weekend in San Jose and wanted to make sure he remembered. He didn’t.”

Gabe straightened away from the computer. “What else did he say?”

She shrugged. “Typical Bryson stuff. He had to work. He was off to another meeting.”

“Where?”

“He didn’t say. I started lecturing him on how he works too much, how he’s missing out on his sons’ lives, and how his doctor said he needed to take it easy.” She noticed a faint scowl pass over Gabe’s hard features at that, but he hid it in a blink.

“The medical records I have for your brother don’t mention any serious conditions,” Jesse Warrick said, concern in his voice.

“Uh, no, he doesn’t have any,” she answered. “I mean, nothing that he needs medicine for or anything. He just had some chest pains last summer. They ran tests and are keeping an eye on him, but so far, it seems to be an isolated incident. The doctors think it was caused by a panic attack.”

Jesse looked at Gabe. “The records I have don’t mention anything about chest pain.”

Gabe appeared frustrated and said something back, but she didn’t hear him because Quinn asked from across the room, “Did you hear anything else when you were on the phone with Bryson?”

She glanced over at him. Such solemn intensity. He made her uncomfortable, so she returned her gaze to Gabe. “I heard a man’s voice say in Spanish that Bryson needed to relax, that nobody was going to hurt him because he—” She had to stop and clear away the lump forming in her throat. “Because he was worth too much money. After that, the line went dead.”

“So naturally, you jumped on the first flight to Colombia and put yourself at risk.” Gabe held up a hand when her mouth opened to fire back a defense. “Forget it. What else did Bryson say? Can you remember anything else about that conversation?”

Oh, what a condescending, overbearing…

No, she told herself and clenched her teeth to reign in her temper, don’t let him get to you. There would be plenty of time to rip into him later. Now, she had to focus.

For Bryson.

She shut her eyes, replayed the conversation for the hundredth, maybe thousandth, time in the last twenty-four hours. “He didn’t say anything else to me. When the limo arrived, he had a short conversation with the driver. I couldn’t hear all of it, but I think the driver introduced himself as Jacinto.”

Gabe snapped his fingers and turned to Harvard. “Any clear shots of the driver’s face?”

“Not clear, boss. One profile. Pretty grainy, but I might be able to clean it up. If I can get a clear enough picture, I’ll find you a name, birthday, and the name of his last one-night-stand.”

“Do it. How’s the EPC research coming?”

“Getting there. I have some possible EPC hangouts that need checking.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” He clapped Harvard on the back before turning to the rest of the group. Watching him take command was like seeing a tank roll over everything in its path, and Audrey stood back in awed silence as he addressed his team.

“We’re going to split up, check out those addresses. Jesse, you said your Spanish is passable, so you and Marcus will be alpha team. Quinn, Jean-Luc, and Ian, bravo team. Each will recon half of the addresses Harvard dug up. Stay in constant radio contact in case one of you needs reinforcements. Harvard will stay here on the computers.”

Quinn frowned. “What about you?”

“I’m going to talk to the real limo driver, the one that reported Bryson missing, Armando Castillo.”

“How do you plan to do that?” Quinn asked. “Your Spanish sucks. You should take Jean-Luc with you.”

“Sí,” Jean-Luc agreed. “You shouldn’t go alone.”

“No,” Gabe said, and his tone dared anyone to argue. “Quinn’s Spanish is just as bad as mine, if not worse. Unless Ian…”

Ian shook his head.

“Then Jean-Luc goes with bravo.”

“Gabe, man.” Quinn sighed and dragged a hand over his short hair. If it was anyone else protesting, Audrey suspected from the way Gabe’s shoulders tightened that he’d bite their head off and pick his teeth with their spinal cord.

But the others wisely kept their mouths shut and let Quinn do the talking. “When we were on the teams?—”

“Teams?” Audrey knew of only one branch of the military that referred to itself as the teams, and studied the men with renewed interest. “You’re SEALs?”

At her interruption, they both turned. Having two big, hard men give her such flinty stares should have scared her. And, okay, it did a little.

“Were,” Gabe said at the same time Quinn said, “Yeah.”

“Okay.” She bit her lower lip. “Uh, wow.”

Now that she knew, she wondered why she hadn’t seen it before. Gabe carried himself not like a general but like a Navy SEAL. She’d met a few guys retired from the teams while living in Costa Rica, and Gabe walked like a SEAL, talked like one. He even blinked like one. How could she have not noticed that? Having them on her brother’s side suddenly felt a whole lot more like a benediction than a curse.

“On the teams,” Quinn repeated, returning to their conversation, “we always use the buddy system.”

“Goddammit, I know that,” Gabe snapped.

Quinn didn’t back down, didn’t even blink. “Good, ‘cuz it’s not changing now that we’re out. You’re taking someone who knows the language with you.”

“Mind telling me who? We don’t have enough men.”

Quinn’s jaw tightened. “Maybe HumInt has an asset in the city we can borrow. We’re already borrowing a pilot, so?—”

“I can go with him.” Again, every eye in the room turned to her. Even Harvard stopped working to gape, and she bristled. “What? You need a Spanish speaker, and I’m fluent.”

“Hell. No.”

“Why not?” Anger flaring, she whirled on Gabe and jabbed a finger between his pecs. There was no give at all under his shirt. Like poking a concrete wall. She barely resisted the urge to flatten out her hand and rub it across all those hard muscles. Had to remind herself—twice—that she was annoyed with him. “I’ve lived in Costa Rica for close to ten years now, and I’m as fluent in Spanish as I am in English. And Armando—well, he doesn’t know me personally, but he knows who I am, so he’ll be more likely to talk. I’m an asset, numb nuts. Use me.”