Broken Honor by Tonya Burrows Page B

up in time to see Mara break free from the doctor’s grasp. The guy was doubled over, too, one hand cupping his crotch, the other braced against the wall for support.
    Despite another surge of nausea, a smile pulled at his mouth. Christ, she was amazing. “That was fucking stupid, Mara.”
    “Yes, it was. I don’t know why I did that.” She knelt beside him and set a hand on his back. “Are you okay?”
    “C’mere.” He gripped her face in his hands and dragged her closer until their lips touched. Just a quick, hard kiss, but it did all kinds of hot, unwanted things to his body. Which wasn’t part of the plan. If he could even call this sloppy kiss-and-grope a plan. With the drugs numbing his system, he was mostly just winging it at this point.
    Mara’s body stiffened up in shock.
    Shit. He probably should have given her some kind of warning first. He pressed his lips harder against hers, silently urging her to play along as he fumbled with the cell phone, pushing it into her bra, down between her breasts, where it would be hidden.
    “Get them out of here,” the doctor ordered in a strangled voice. He straightened away from the wall, tugging his jacket back into place with as much dignity as a guy could muster after getting kicked in the nads by a woman half his size.
    Yeah. Mara was freaking amazing, and Quinn kissed her again because—well, he had to. She’d stunned the hell out of their captors just now, and he couldn’t be more proud of the way she’d handled herself.
    Alexei pulled them apart, and panic flashed in her eyes as she was dragged toward the door.
    “Mara, it’s okay,” he called after her, not bothering to fight when Pyotr yanked on his cuffed hands, pulling him to his feet. His world was spinning, and his feet were numb. If he tried to fight anyone right now, he’d just get himself dead. “Hey, you hear me? We’ll be okay. Just go with them. I promise you, we’ll be okay.”
    …
    El Paso, Texas
    The clue left on Quinn’s phone was an unsent one-word text message: Zaryanko .
    Jesse’s heart nose-dived into his gut when he saw it. “Are you fucking kidding me? Nikolai Zaryanko has them?”
    “Uh, I’m sorry,” Lanie said and lifted her hands. “Newbie here. Who is Zaryanko and why do you all look like you just bit into a lemon?”
    The hotel room went pin-drop silent, and all eyes turned in her direction.
    Jesse couldn’t pinpoint why, exactly—if he were in the men’s shoes, he’d be suspicious of her, too—but all that mistrust directed toward her pissed him off in a big way. “This is Lanie,” he said. “She’s Mara’s best friend, and I’ve known her since she was knee-high to a grasshopper. We can trust her.”
    The tension eased, then evaporated altogether when Gabe added, “She’ll be helping us on this. Harvard, can you bring up our file on Zaryanko?”
    Harvard nodded and hit a few keys on his computer. A photo popped up on screen. It wasn’t the best picture, having been taken during a recon mission in Afghanistan that went to shit shortly thereafter, but it was the only one they had of the man.
    “That’s Nikolai Zaryanko,” Gabe said, motioning to the photo. “He’s known for trafficking arms, drugs, organs, and humans. He first popped onto the radar five years ago after the discovery of his association with Liam Miller, a disgraced British SAS operative. Since Liam had a nasty habit of cultivating friendships with the scum of the earth, the spec ops community learned pretty damn fast it behooved us to keep tabs on his associates. And Zaryanko was one of Liam’s closest friends. Shit.” He pinched the bridge of his nose as if a tension headache hammered behind his eyes. Made sense, since his wife had been the one to finally take Liam Miller out, and he’d worried about the repercussions ever since. “What are the chances that we cross paths with Zaryanko twice in the eight months after Audrey killed Liam?”
    “I don’t like coincidences,