Seal of Honor(16)

“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 miffed at 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 uber-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.

Fedora 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.”