Seal of Honor(66)

“Goddammit!” Quinn threw the cell phone as hard as he could and it crashed against the wall, leaving an indention in the cheap plaster before clattering to the floor in pieces. Then he went so numb he didn’t even feel Jesse’s hands on his shoulders, shoving him into a chair, until the medic knelt in front of him with a penlight.

Gabe was in trouble. And he couldn’t do a damn thing to help.

As soon as the light hit his eyes, he snapped back to himself and pushed Jesse aside. “Get away from me. I’m fine.”

“Uh-huh,” Jesse said, but packed up his bag and stood. “Still haven’t seen those medical records, Quinn.”

Christ, he was sick to death of doctors. And cowboys who wanted to be doctors. “A little busy here, Jesse.”

The address, he thought. He may not be able to help Gabe now, but he could damn well follow orders. He shoved to his feet and rifled through the papers on the table, looking for—

“What did Gabe say?” someone asked softly behind him. It sounded like Marcus, but he was so focused on finding a street map of Bogotá under all the papers that he didn’t turn to look.

“He gave us orders.” There it was. Finally. He spread the map out and found the correct coordinates at an intersection a mere mile from Bryson Van Amee’s apartment. He tapped the spot with his index finger. “He said Van Amee might be at this location and we need to check it out.”

“But what about Gabe and Audrey—”

This time he did look up to spear Harvard with a hard stare meant to shut him up. The others didn’t need to know the details of what they’d heard over the phone or he might have a mutiny on his hands, despite the team’s newfound cohesiveness.

“Gabe’s got it handled.” He hoped. “The best thing we can do for him now is follow his orders.”





Chapter Seventeen

The gun went off and Gabe thought, Oh shit.

Only he never felt the impact of a second bullet ripping another hole in his body. He felt blood trickling from the one already in his side, but no new damage that he could tell.

In the silence that descended on the room, he looked around, trying to get his bearings. The adrenaline surge burned off, leaving him muddled and shaky, and for a long second, he couldn’t figure out where the gunshot had come from. Or where it had gone.

Across the room, Liam’s eyes widened in shock and pain as blood bloomed on his chest and his gun fell from his hand. With blood bubbling from his mouth, he took two lurching steps toward Audrey—who held Mena’s gun in a perfect stance, ready and willing to fire again.

Gabe circled the desk and caught Liam around the middle, tackling him to the carpet. He went down easily, already half-unconscious, and choked on his own blood as his eyes rolled back into his head.

“Did I kill him?” Audrey whispered.

Yeah, she probably had, but Gabe wasn’t about to tell her that. Hearing the telltale wheeze of a sucking chest wound, he pushed himself upright and stared down at Liam’s graying complexion. Audrey had gotten the bastard square in the lung.

He looked up. Her complexion matched Liam’s, except without the blue cast of approaching death.

“I had to. He gave me no choice. I had to. I had to.” She still held the gun clenched in her shaking hands.

Gabe swore and shoved Liam up onto his injured side to protect his good lung from filling with blood. The guy deserved to rot for the rest of eternity in the innermost layer of Hell, but Audrey wasn’t going to be the one to send him there. The guilt of killing a man would crush her.

Liam moaned in pain.

“Shut up.” Ignoring his own wounds, he stripped out of his jacket and made a compress. “Audrey, honey, snap out of it and search the desk. Find me something plastic or something else I can use to seal the wound. Scissors, tape.”

She blinked and finally lowered the gun. “Wh—what? Why?” She looked at Mena’s corpse in the desk chair, then at Liam, struggling to breathe and spilling blood onto the Aubusson rug. “We need to leave!”

“He’ll die if we do.”

“I don’t care.” Color rushed back into her cheeks. She hurried to his side and tried to tug him to his feet. “Better him than you. You’re bleeding everywhere. You need medical attention. Let’s go!”

Gabe grabbed Liam’s gun and lumbered to his feet. Shit, he was weak as a kitten from blood loss, and getting weaker. Still, he met her stare, wanting her to understand. “If we leave and he dies, you’ll have killed him. Are you prepared to live with that?”

Her chin hitched up. “I wouldn’t have picked up the gun if I wasn’t.”