Seal of Honor(65)

“Gabe!” Shaking, terrified for him, she lurched over to where he had crumpled in front of the desk, but he was already army crawling under it, scrambling for the gun Mena had dropped.

“Hide!” he shouted. “Take cover!”

She couldn’t. There was no place to go, so she lunged toward the phone several feet away. If she could get it, she could tell Quinn where they were and—

Liam plucked the phone out of her hands and dropped it into its cradle. “No calling for help.”

Dismissing her, he shoved her aside and kicked at Gabe’s bad foot before it disappeared under the desk. “We have a score to settle, Bristow. Stand up!”

To her utter horror, Gabe did just that. He rose from behind the desk, limping as his weight settled on his feet, and raised hands covered with blood in surrender.

“I’m unarmed, Liam.” He caught Audrey’s gaze and tilted his head ever so slightly to the right. She looked over and down and saw Mena’s gun had landed closer to her than him.

No. Oh, God, no. He couldn’t expect her… She met his gaze again and shook her head once. He just stared back, expression composed, gold eyes grim.

When violence is the only language your enemies know, you gotta learn to speak it, too.

He said to Liam, “There’s no honor in shooting an unarmed enemy. Is that really how you want this to end?”

“Yeah, mate.” Liam smiled and leveled his gun on Gabe’s chest. “It is.”

…

Tough love worked. Who’d have thought it?

After Quinn’s beat down of Jesse and the hundred push-ups, the team stopped bickering and treated him with a little more respect. Which was a nice reprieve. He’d been so, so tired of battling them.

Now, an hour later, they stood around the table, throwing about ideas, trying to plot their next step.

“I don’t think that will do us much good,” Harvard said in response to an idea Jesse had tossed out. “We might as well go door to door to Jacinto Rivera’s neighbors and ask if any of them have seen him or Bryson Van Amee.”

“Not in that neighborhood,” Marcus said, and others murmured agreement. “Nobody’s gonna say shit to us.”

“They’re more likely to shoot us,” Ian added. “And what are we doing about that warehouse? I vote we make it go boom before the bad guys move it on us.”

“You always vote to make things go boom,” Jean-Luc said with a friendly elbow nudge in Ian’s side, and Ian didn’t rip his head off for it.

Quinn, still in the chair with his feet on the table and a computer on his lap, was feeling rather proud of them all when his phone rang. All eyes turned toward him and the room went so silent you could hear the proverbial pin drop from a block away. Everyone who would be calling him was present in the room—minus one—and they all knew it.

He slowly lowered his feet to the floor and sat up, checking the phone’s screen.

“Restricted,” he said. “Probably won’t get a trace.”

“We can try. I’m on it. Give me a sec.” Harvard shot over to his computer, fingers flying across the keyboard with the grace of a concert pianist. After another ring, he put on a set of headphones and looked up. “You’re good, boss. Answer it.”

Quinn drew a fortifying breath and raised the phone to his ear. “Yeah?”

“Quinn,” Gabe said.

And his composure soared right out the window, leaving him mired in a mix of relief and worry. He surged to his feet. “Holy shit! Gabe, where are you? What the hell happened? Is Audrey okay? Are you okay?”

“Listen up,” Gabe snapped out in his no-nonsense voice, and Quinn realized he was babbling. He ground his teeth and strived for calm again.

“I’m listening.”

“You need to destroy your phone as soon as we disconnect.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. Yeah, this can’t be good. Gabe would only ask him to destroy the phone if he was afraid someone on that end would try to trace the call back to him. “Aye aye.”

“Then scramble the team and recon this address.” He gave the address in code. Another bad sign and Quinn committed it to memory. “Our principle may be inside. I’ll be—”

He broke off.

Disturbed by the sudden silence, Quinn said, “Hello?”

Bang!

One gunshot, followed by the soft umph of a body hitting the floor.

Bang!

A second, and Audrey screamed, “Gabe!”

“Hide!” he shouted. “Take cover!”

The call disconnected and Quinn spun toward Harvard, who removed his headphones and shook his head. The kid looked as ill as Quinn felt.

“Signal was too scrambled, boss. I’m sorry, but it was bouncing me all over the globe and I couldn’t lock on.”