Read Online Broken Honor by Tonya Burrows - Free Book Online Page A

at her heart. Halfway there. Heavy footsteps thundered behind her, closing in fast. Three-quarters of the way. Up ahead, she saw the snake of an unpaved desert road, and a large black van kicked up dust as it sped toward her.
    Help?
    Unsure, she faltered a step, and that was all the Russians needed to catch up. One grabbed her around the waist and hauled her back against his rocklike body.
    No, no, no! She kicked and screamed, but the thug seemed unfazed. He just banded his arm tighter around her, clamped a large hand over her mouth, and looked at his companion. “I win,” he said in Russian. “Told you she was still here. Pay up.”
    “Later,” the second man said, nodded toward the road, and added something more that she didn’t understand. But it couldn’t be good, because they weren’t at all surprised to see the vehicle.
    The Russians dragged her back to the plane, and Zaryanko smiled. “Well. Quinn was lying after all. Good work, Alexei.”
    “What do we do with her?” the bald thug holding her—Alexei—asked.
    Zaryanko eyed her up and down, made an unimpressed sound, then turned his attention to the arriving vehicle. The van rolled to a stop near the plane, and several armed men wearing the gold-and-red colors of El Sindicato hopped out.
    “What do you have for me?” Zaryanko asked them in English.
    The lead gang member opened the back door. He pulled ten bound and gagged women out, one by one, and laid them facedown on the tarmac like fish at a market.
    “Hmm.” Zaryanko walked down the line, inspecting each of them, murmuring his approval until he reached the last woman. She was older than the others, with silver-streaked hair and a lined face. He grimaced and motioned to his thug with the flick of a wrist. “Pyotr. This one is too old and ugly. She’s worthless to me. Do something about it.”
    Pyotr drew a gun and strode over to the sobbing woman. The shot was drowned out by the terrified screams of the others. Mara’s stomach lurched into her throat and one word kept bouncing around inside her skull. Merchandise.
    “I’ll take the rest at half our usual rate,” Zaryanko said.
    “Fuck no!” the gang leader said. “You kill one of our women and think you can cheat us—”
    “Pyotr,” Zaryanko said softly, and his personal killer raised the gun and fired again. The gang leader dropped. The women’s screams choked off into silence.
    “Anyone else have objections?” Zaryanko asked. Nobody spoke. “Very well. Half our usual rate, and I will not be making the trip back to this wasteland until you have something better to offer me.”
    Money exchanged hands quickly after that, and the gang members didn’t stick around. They were long gone before Pyotr ushered the nine remaining women onto the plane.
    “So what about this one?” Alexei asked.
    Zaryanko walked over and pinched Mara’s face between his fingers, turning her head side to side. “She’s fat and short,” he said in Russian, “but her face is pretty enough.” He added something else that she couldn’t translate, but she swore she heard Travis’s name mentioned. Then, “Bring her.”
    Alexei picked her up and all but tossed her into the cargo area of the plane with the other women. The door latching shut behind her was the most terrifying thing she’d ever heard in her life.
    This couldn’t be happening.
    She sat up on her knees and blinked until her eyes adjusted to the near darkness. She was the only woman not bound or gagged, and she tried to calm the others in both English and Spanish as she worked to free their hands.
    Toward the front of the plane, she stumbled over a leg and groped around for the owner, finding a very large boot attached to the leg. That didn’t belong to one of the women, and her heart fluttered with hope. “Travis?”
    He jerked upright as if she’d electrocuted him. “Mara?”
    “Yes, it’s me.” The darkness was too complete, and she couldn’t see him, but there was no mistaking his