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“Save yourself the bother,” Bradley called to Eric. “You never been to one of those table-side steakhouse restaurants, where they bring you stuff to your table? They always save the choicest, best cuts for last!”
Eric couldn’t look the girl in the eyes. She evidently felt the same, staring fixedly above the heads of the men examining her, dissociating herself, even when one lifted her top, checking out her breasts.
“Nice, right?” he asked Eric, catching him watching. Eric tried to wipe the snarl from his face. “I’m a tits guy. Always have been.”
Eric didn’t know how they got through the first sale. Rhianne looked as nauseated as he felt, but eventually, it was over. He couldn’t even have said who got in the winning bid or how high the price had gone.
“And onto the second lot,” Arturo announced. “This one is a natural blonde…I checked!”
Rhianne stiffened even before the girl was led out, and when she was, Rhianne cried out.
It was Robyn.
Eric was so thankful that the applause and exclamations covered it. He didn’t blame Rhianne for her distress—this was her sister, and she was visibly terrified. His heart sank—even from a few feet away, it was clear Robyn had been crying.
“Stay here,” he counseled Rhianne, getting to his feet, as were all the male guests, some already hurrying to the platform. To his dismay, Rhianne stood as well.
“Rhianne.” Eric tugged her down to her seat, hoping that Arturo wouldn’t notice. “You have to sit still and be quiet. Just think about what you’re doing, for Christ’s sake.”
What she was doing was staring fixedly at the stage, where Bry was circling Robyn. The spotlight picked up fresh tears in Robyn’s eyes. “Look at the ass on her!” Bry examined, the theater’s acoustics carrying his voice to where they sat. “Made for spanking!”
Before Eric could stop her, Rhianne was on her feet again. “I’ll pay any amount of money for this girl!” she shouted, then repeated it in flawless Spanish, her tone impassioned.
Fuck. Double fuck.Eric felt the exact second the atmosphere changed. It hardened and sharpened, Arturo and his guards bristling with suspicion. As if in slow motion, Eric watched Arturo turn his head from Rhianne to the girl on stage…and see the resemblance between the two.
What it added up to was one blown cover. Theirs.
Arturo shouted, and his men ringed him as those in front of him turned their guns on Eric and Rhianne.
“Down!” Eric ordered, yanking Rhianne to the floor with him and crashing the table onto its side to serve as a shield a millisecond before a shot rang out. Screaming from what felt like every woman in the room joined the crack of bullets. He cursed. This was just what he’d told Rhianne they needed to avoid—a goddamn firefight. And like some sick, unfunny joke, all he’d brought to it was a knife.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he raged at her. She’d just put her sister inmoredanger—and both of them, as well. Their covers were blown, and they had absolutely nothing to show for it.
“Maybe about what kind of SEALyouused to be,” she spat back. “Where’s the guy who worked a rescue with me four years ago? The one willing to do anything to get his men to safety? I need that guy tonight. Instead, I’ve got someone I can’t rely on, who’s not willing to take a risk to help the person we came here to save!”
Eric bit back any reply he might have made as his focus shifted to the guard approaching their table. The moment the man came within range, Eric grabbed him, knocked him unconscious, and disarmed him. He handed Rhianne one of the handguns, took another for himself, and they scrambled to get back-to-back. “Stay here!” he ordered when she raised her head, and she turned to glare at him.
“Like hell!” she spat out, and his stomach sank.
He’d thought he could count on Rhianne—on the mission and perhaps in other things, as well. For the first time, it felt like he’d found a woman who truly understood him. One who wasn’t scared by the sniper side of him but who appreciated that there was more to him, too. But he’d been wrong. He couldn’t rely on her, and she certainly didn’t accept him—not when he was telling her something she refused to hear. He should have never gotten into things with her. He—Damn!Eric made a grab for her, but was too late.
Ignoring his command, she was out from behind their cover, making a push toward the stage. Cursing, Eric had no choice but to go with her, laying down covering fire to protect them as they ran.
15
Eric’s hand on Rhianne’s back pushed her to the floor, stopping her from reaching her goal…but saving her from the bullet that had been aimed at her head.Theirheads—he was with her, pulling her back when she struggled to get to the stage and the cowering girls.
“No!” she protested, fighting him as well as their enemies in the room. But she might as well have been pushing against a mountain. Eric was strong and as unmovable as stone, skidding them behind another overturned table and keeping her down with one hand while he fired a shot around the side of the table with the other.
“Let. Me. Go,” she gritted out, readying her gun. She knew how to use it and was prepared to do so. If she took out any of the scum holding her sister prisoner, she’d be doing the world a favor. And she wanted to be doing something, not be pinned here by Eric’s hand. “I need to get to the platform.”
“You won’t make it.” Eric’s face was set into almost unrecognizable lines that were as harsh as his words. “See that line of firepower there?” He jerked a thumb to the right. “You’ll be cut down before you get within a few feet of the stage. You won’t save Robyn; you won’t save yourself—all of this will have been fornothing.”
His words were intended to shock her, but Rhianne wouldn’t back down. “At leastI’llbe trying to rescue my sister, not just cowering here,” she hissed at him, then flinched as a bullet, then another, thudded into the table, their improvised shield. The bullets hit in almost the same spot, and another followed.
Rhianne wasn’t an expert in ballistics, but she understood that the table couldn’t hold together forever under such a barrage of firepower. If the guards focused their firepower on a small area of the table, they would break through it, leaving them exposed.
That thought had barely formed in her mind before another bullet tore off a huge slice of wood from the top of the table. It happened so quickly that she hadn’t really registeredwhathad happened before she felt something wet on her arm. It took her staring at it, then dabbing the fingers of her other hand on it for her to realize she was bleeding. How—
