Seal of Honor(13)
“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.” 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 tugging in his groin 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?”
Chapter Four
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 doozie 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. 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 wood crucifix hung over the narrow bed she lay on, but 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.