Broken Honor Read Online Free PDF Page A

of missteps and false starts.
    But not this time. This time, they had him. All they had to do was take Marisol Escareno.
    After another long stretch of silence across the line, Urban lost the little bit of patience he had. He might be the low man on this totem pole, but he had just as much to lose as the rest of these fuckers. He had a family to feed, a wife with expensive tastes, and a ridiculous mortgage. If the navy had paid him better for risking his neck year after year, maybe he wouldn’t have turned to the black market to make sure he could send his four kids through college debt-free. But now he’d grown to like the extra paycheck and the lifestyle it provided for him and his family, and he wasn’t about to lose it because Captain No Balls here couldn’t make a decision without debating it for hours first. “I’m grabbing the woman as soon as Quinn leaves.”
    “All right,” the captain said, and he sounded relieved to have the decision taken out of his hands. “I’ll make arrangements with one of our contacts to hold her somewhere OCONUS. Call me for your orders as soon as you have her.”

Chapter Three
    “I’ve never seen anyone sleep so hard,” Mara whispered into the phone and cracked the bedroom door open to peek in on Travis again. Yup. Still sound asleep. “Lanie, he’s been out for over twelve hours. I’m starting to worry. What if he’s sick or—maybe I shouldcall Jesse for advice?”
    “And explain everything to him, including your condition?” Lanie said doubtfully. “And how do you think that overprotective cousin of yours will take the news?”
    “Crap. You’re right. Jesse’s going to flip his lid.” Just like her stepfather and mother had, and she’d prefer not to go through another ugly scene like that again. She winced and pressed a hand to her belly. Would Travis also reject her and the baby? In the weeks since she’d found out she was pregnant, she’d feared the answer to that question was a hard yes. But now…
    “He says he’s staying.”
    “Your cousin?” Lanie asked, confused.
    “No. Travis.”
    “So you told him about the baby?”
    “Um…”
    “Mara! You didn’t tell him? Don’t you think you probably should? It’s kind of a big deal. That’s the whole reason I risked getting fired to track him down for you.”
    “I know! And I owe you for that more than I’ll probably ever be able to repay. It’s just…” She shut the bedroom door as softly as possible and moved into the kitchen, where her conversation was less likely to be overheard. She was fairly certain he was still asleep, but just in case he wasn’t, she switched on her iPod dock for background noise. She sat down at the kitchen table and stared out through the sliding glass door into her backyard. “Lanie, I never expected to see him again. I called him several times, and he never responded to my messages. I mean, with the way he walked out, I assumed he wasn’t interested in hearing from me. I had resigned myself to doing this alone, and then he shows up looking like death warmed over, and he’s obviously upset about something, and ‘hey, you’re going to be a dad’ is not exactly a great conversation opener and—”
    “Whoa, whoa,” Lanie said. “Take a breath.”
    Mara sucked in a lungful, as instructed, and let it go in a rush. “I slept with him again.” Just the memory of the way he’d held her pinned against the wall had her cheeks heating up.
    “Oh, Mara,” Lanie sighed. “You didn’t.”
    “Yes, I did.” Groaning, she dropped her head to the kitchen table and banged it lightly against the wood a few times. “I don’t even know how it happened. It was just like this summer all over again. One minute we were talking like somewhat reasonable adults, and then he was kissing me and I was kissing him back and…”
    “And you ended up fucking like bunnies,” Lanie finished.
    Mara huffed out a laugh. It was such a Lanie comment. “To put it