Darkest Before Dawn Read online

  Again, she wiggled her toes and feet, seeking reassurance that she hadn’t imagined being able to do so moments earlier. She paid closer attention this time, leaning in an uncomfortable, awkward pose as she concentrated fiercely on whether she felt pain or weakness.

  Then the thought occurred to her that the reason she wasn’t feeling pain or weakness could be that she couldn’t feel her legs at all. As soon as the panicked thought blazed through her mind, she shoved it impatiently aside. Irrational, hysterical thoughts had no place here. If she’d been paralyzed she wouldn’t be able to move her feet or know that she was capable of moving them, and she wouldn’t feel the throbbing pain in her knee.

  Her fears at a more manageable level, Honor braced herself and stared determinedly at the mound covering her lower half. She was absurdly pleased, and excitement coursed through her veins when she felt the soft whisper of night air over the toes of her left foot. She wiggled again, paying more attention, realizing that they were poking out of the rubble.

  A shudder overtook her. Thank God the militants hadn’t gotten close enough to her to see the end of her foot protruding. They would have uncovered her to see if she was dead like the others. Upon finding her alive? She slammed her mind shut, refusing to continue down that thought path. They hadn’t found her. They wouldn’t find her. So there was no need to torment herself with what could have been. She was more focused on what would never be.

  Her lips thinning, pressing together in a vow not to allow a single sound past them, she turned her body with more resolve this time instead of the experimental twisting she’d done at first. A grimace shook the line of her lips and she ground her teeth together, her jaw aching from the pressure.

  Determination was alive inside her. It took over. Became her. In that moment, failure to make her escape wasn’t even a remote possibility. A pained hiss exploded from her open mouth, her breaths hard as she exerted more pressure, straining rigidly to rotate her hips and legs.

  Fire blew down the back side of her legs as they scraped at the jagged edges of rock, metal, wood and glass. Her stomach jolted and squeezed inwardly as if seeking to rid itself of any content when her injured knee banged into an immovable object. She saw stars, and tears burned the edges of her eyelids. It only made her angrier. Her fury grew until she shook with it.

  “Why won’t you help me?” she raged, her gaze casting upward before shame fell over her much as the building had. “Sorry,” she muttered, closing her eyes. “But I could really use your help right now. An angel would be nice if you’re too busy to see to it personally.”

  She huffed in another breath, found the center of calm that was nestled in the rage boiling through her veins. Yelling at God wasn’t going to get her anywhere. And as the old saying went, God helped those who helped themselves, and right now she wasn’t doing anything remotely helpful. Whining, wishing she’d died and constantly battling tears weren’t the hallmark of someone worthy of the gift of life. And yet, here she lay. So close to freedom while the others also lay close by, their souls already gone from this world.

  She had a purpose. She thought it again. It bolstered her spirits and eased some of the fear eating away at her insides. Maybe everything up to now had merely been preparation for her true purpose instead of her having already found her purpose and serving it. She wasn’t going to find out if she didn’t get her ass out of here before the sun rose.

  Turning off all the raging emotion building like a volcano about to erupt and refusing to acknowledge pain or the current limitations on her body, Honor attempted to turn again. This time she didn’t stop when the hideous scrape seared her legs or when her knee, so tender and swollen, screamed its protest of her movements. She refused to stop until finally both heels were planted on the floor, her feet and toes directed upward.

  Her knee throbbed angrily, stretched by the new position and her leg lying flat and unbent. Hastily, she pushed herself upward until she leaned forward, palms planted amid the debris surrounding her.

  Though her eyes had grown accustomed to having no light, it was impossible to see anything with detail with the entire area blanketed in suffocating darkness. Tentatively she reached down, feeling her way along her legs, her fingers lightly brushing over the obstacles that lay between her and freedom.

  She swore when she encountered the heavy beam that she now remembered falling on her in the explosion. It had been what banged her knee up before she’d wound up facedown on the floor, the weight of half the building bearing down on her back. When the world had come crashing down on her, she’d fallen to her back but had instinctively rolled over, trying to protect herself in any way she could.

  For a moment, she paused and dug her fingers sharply into her temples, pressing and rubbing in tight circles, digging in and applying firm pressure in hopes that she could make at least the dull drum in her head go away and clear the residue of murky fog that had stubbornly clung to her ever since she’d regained consciousness.

  It was sheer will that had kept her from simply acquiescing and fading and giving in to the threat of darkness in her mind, the thought that if she just let go, then the pain and fear, everything would simply go . . . away. But the reminder that when or even if she awakened, she would face a nightmare worse than death, that she would be thrust into the very bowels of hell and once again lament the fact that she’d survived, kept her sharply focused on her task.

  It was one thing for the regret over having lived to have insidiously crept through her mind in a moment where she’d opened her eyes to pain, deep sorrow and confusion and to have briefly succumbed to the shameful thought in a moment of weakness before she’d collected her wits and regained her iron resolve—something she’d always possessed—and quite another to be in a situation where she gave the cowards responsible for this massacre the satisfaction of hearing her beg for death.

  That angered her as much as the senseless deaths of so many good and generous people. People who’d never hurt another living soul. Whose only purpose was the driving desire to help those in need who couldn’t help themselves.

  The hell she’d ever show fear or be so cowardly as to beg those bastards for anything. She’d denounce and spit on their “beliefs,” giving them the middle finger even if it wasn’t the actual gesture but pronounced in her every look, her response, even her breath. Her dying breath.

  Even better to flip them the bird alive. Back home, having thwarted their plan to annihilate every last one of the relief workers. Be smugly triumphant and say with more than words, You didn’t beat me. You couldn’t beat me.

  It was a fantasy, a goal that kept her clawing at the remainder of her bonds. She worked with renewed energy. Faster. Angrier. Flinging rock, chunks of plaster, decimated pieces of chairs and exam tables. Everything but the beam that lay across her legs.

  She felt around, noting that she’d cleared everything from atop the beam. Then her hands dipped lower and she leaned forward as far as she was able, her breath squeezing out in tortured breaths as she strained to discover a way out from underneath the heavy piece of wood.

  A thoughtful frown curved her lips downward and her forehead wrinkled. She moved her hands lower to confirm the fact that the bottoms of her legs didn’t in fact lie on the floor, but rather there was a layer of rubble and debris, and her legs were trapped between that layer and the beam.

  She moved her hands outward, feeling to the sides to see if the beam had any support other than her legs. Sure it was heavy, but it didn’t feel like she was bearing the brunt of its entire weight. She wouldn’t have been able to turn over if she were.

  Sure enough, the beam lay uneven across her legs but there were mounds of debris on either side of her that the beam was propped up on. She had maybe an inch of space between her leg with the injured knee and where the beam slanted across her, but on the other side, the beam pressed against her skin, but the weight wasn’t unbearable.

  Excited, she began to dig at the rubble underneath her legs, leaning up an
d this way and that in an effort to wiggle out every single obstacle between the backs of her legs and the floor. When her bleeding fingertips brushed along the rough concrete, hope flared, bursting into an inextinguishable flame. She was going to get out.

  After shoving the rough and jagged pieces farther away from both legs, she reached behind her, leaning back as far as she could, planting her palms on the floor for leverage. Then she began the arduous task of inching backward, praying that enough space had been created between the beam and her legs to allow her to slide free from her final barrier to freedom.

  It sapped every ounce of her strength. She was inhaling and exhaling noisily, trying to drag precious oxygen into her lungs as her entire body strained to pull her legs from beneath the heavy wood.

  Each inch was agony. This time she didn’t curse the tears that not only threatened, but slid down her cheeks. She was too focused on her goal to care. Besides, if she managed to pull off her escape, she could consider them tears of relief.

  She felt a burst of exultation when the going got easier as the thicker part of her legs pulled loose. As her legs grew smaller toward her feet, she was able to move much quicker. Finally the tops of her feet bumped into the barrier and she was forced to stop, take a short break to catch her breath and then breathe away the pain and tension.

  She flexed her feet forward as far as she could flatten them. She turned them to the side, gritting her teeth at the pain the twisting motion caused her battered knee. But it worked. Her feet slid under the beam, rubbing against the coarse wood. She could feel splinters embedding themselves into the soft skin of her arches, but she was too close to victory to even pause.

  She welcomed the feel of the tiny wood shards piercing the tops of her feet, because it meant she was almost there. At the end, she didn’t even feel the splinters cutting into her, though she felt the warmth of blood on her skin from where the beam had abraded the tender flesh.

  Her hands slipped and she nearly fell back when her feet finally escaped the barrier. She scrambled upright, because if she let herself relax even for a moment, she might never muster the will to get up, get out. Flee.

  Triumph surged, hot and wild in her veins. But as she lurched to her feet—or rather attempted to do so—her triumph left her sagging like a deflated balloon. Pain lanced down her spine, all the way down to her feet and then back up again, racing toward the base of her skull, where it seemed to ricochet. For several long seconds her head drew spasmodically from the pain shooting up her neck, almost as though she were having a seizure. She breathed through the pain until at last it subsided to a manageable level and the rigidity finally left her neck so she was able to move once more.

  She shook like a leaf. The effort to stand, something so easy and taken for granted before, had sapped her strength and left her huddled on the floor as limp as a dishrag.

  No. Not now. Damn it. She had not spent the entire night freeing herself from the wreckage of the clinic only to lie there and await her fate at the hands of men who were so evil that she couldn’t comprehend such a capacity for hatred and violence. No. They would not get their hands on her. She’d take her own life before ever allowing her fate to be decided by monsters. And she wasn’t ready to die yet. She had a lot of life left to live. This was only a minor—okay, a major—bump in the road.

  Everyone had them. Maybe not everyone faced gun-wielding, rocket-launcher-carrying crazed maniacs who used explosives as naturally as others breathed and whose mode of transportation was tanks, but she’d survived relatively unscathed. Physically. She’d carry the mental scars from this day for the rest of her life. She had no doubt.

  This time she tested her strength very carefully, pushing herself up with her hands, bending her uninjured knee down to the floor to give her lift, but she was careful to angle her hurt knee out so that it bore no weight and didn’t press into the floor. Getting up with two hands and only one leg wasn’t the fastest mode of travel, but it would get the job done. She was prepared this time and not acting like a hasty fool out to get herself killed by running madly from the destroyed structure that had been home to her for the last year.

  She didn’t allow herself to feel sorrow as she scanned the area, putting only as much pressure on the left foot bearing her swollen knee as was necessary to limp forward and make slow progress through the devastation. She had to have the necessary tools to survive on her own. In a foreign land with no American military presence, no American embassy, no refuge or sanctuary and no way to get back home unless she could somehow get word to her family.

  She couldn’t look at the broken, bloodied bodies she knew were there but thankfully were hard to make out in the dark. She had to be smart, a passive observer, and look for things that would help her escape. Not just from this building and the men who’d attacked without provocation. But the entire country.

  Somehow she had to find her way down the long, winding, arduous path home.

  CHAPTER 3

  “YOU want me and my men to do what?” Hancock asked mildly, not betraying his feeling of What the fuck.

  Guy Hancock, or Hancock as he was generally known, although not many knew his given name, faced Russell Bristow, his incredulity over Bristow’s stupidity not showing, but there nonetheless.

  Hancock’s identity changed with the winds, and at times it was hard for him to keep up with who he currently was. It was a tired existence, one he grew wearier of all the time. But at least he had a purpose. Or at least he had at one time. Now he wasn’t as sure as he’d been earlier on. Time had robbed him of that strict code of honor until he wondered just how close to the line he was and how close he’d come to becoming the very thing he worked so tirelessly to extinguish and protect the innocent from. He knew no other life except killing. Manipulating. Mastering the masters of evil and exacting justice in his own cold, methodical way that had nothing to do with any established legal code.

  He’d long ago forgone any semblance of a conscience. He had an unwavering and deeply ingrained sense of honor, but not everyone would agree that with honor came a conscience. And his personal code was just that. Personal to him. He didn’t see in black and white. His world was steeped in gray. Great looming shadows that threatened to consume him. At times he felt hunted—and he was—but it was as though he knew his time was limited. The urgency of taking down his target, one he’d waited a very long time to get close to, was like a ticking time bomb. Success had eluded him, and now time had run out. Hancock would never get this close again. He knew it. His men knew it. They felt, too, that they would all likely die carrying out their mission. And yet none turned their back on their duty. They embraced death as the result of victory. Nothing more.

  Russell Bristow’s lips curled in distaste, anger flaring in his eyes. The stupid bastard wasn’t smart enough to mask his emotions or control his temper. It would get him killed, and Hancock mentally shrugged. It would mean one less asshole in the world and one less person he had to take out himself in the end. But until his ultimate goal was achieved, he needed to keep the stupid bastard alive, though he’d love nothing more than to break his neck and rid the world of his foul presence. Bristow was a means to an end, and so Hancock had to rein in his utter distaste of the man until he served his purpose. Then he would die, because Hancock would never let such depravity live.

  “Don’t you mean my men?” Bristow snapped.

  Hancock lifted one eyebrow and simply stared the other man down, pinning him with a gaze he knew others feared and were intimidated by, until a mottled flush worked its way up Bristow’s neck and he fidgeted like a bug under a microscope. He looked away and then back but didn’t meet Hancock’s eyes this time. His fear was a stench in the air that offended Hancock and disgusted his men. Courage came in many forms, shapes and colors. Courage wasn’t always necessary to succeed. Determination was. But fear bred stupidity. Fear caused mistakes. Fear could lead men to betray themselves, their cause and anyone impeding one’s goal of others.

  Bris
tow was loyal to none save himself, and Hancock never made the mistake of thinking otherwise or of misjudging him—or anyone else, for that matter. Bristow would sacrifice Hancock and all his men if he felt at any time his life was in danger. And it was. It was Hancock’s and his men’s job to ensure that Bristow felt safe and invincible. To feed his natural arrogance and desire for power. If he knew just what he was up against, he’d crawl into a deep dark hole, terrified, and Hancock’s last link to his objective would be forfeit. No, he needed Bristow in all his stupidity and vainness. Maksimov knew what he was dealing with as well. A puppet. A man who thought he was in control and yet was easily controlled by others. In a game of chess, the most important match of Hancock’s life, he had to make it appear that Bristow was easily manipulated by Maksimov and yet move him in such a way that it positioned Maksimov as Hancock wanted. So that in fact, Hancock manipulated both men without either being aware.

  “As you are all on my payroll and take orders from me, that makes all of you my men,” Bristow said, his voice not as commanding as it had been a moment earlier. But then he was a coward, always employing others to do his dirty work for him. If his options were to stay and fight with his men or abandon them and run, he’d run. His kind always did. It was precisely why Hancock had his own team here under the guise of having vetted and employed them for Bristow. Bristow had no knowledge of the fact that Hancock’s team had worked together for years and that their loyalty to one another ran deep. That they answered to Hancock and no other. Ever.

  In a world where Hancock trusted none but a precious few, his trust was given to Titan, though it was no longer Titan. It wasn’t . . . anything. The very government who’d created them, faking their deaths and then raising them from the ashes like the phoenix, had given them new identities and they were to have no ties to the outside world. The mission was all that mattered. Not people. Not politics or the delicate dance of diplomacy.

  The government had created . . . monsters. Killing machines without mercy or conscience, trained to carry out orders at all cost. The good of the many always outweighed the good of the few. And when Titan grew too powerful, when they began to question their orders, their objective and how it aided the greater good, when the missions seemed to grow too personal, too inconsequential for a group of Titan’s training and abilities, they’d been disbanded, branded traitors, loose cannons, murderers. Even terrorists. They’d been labeled the very thing they hunted and it still burned a hole in Hancock’s gut. After living so many years with no feelings, no emotions, turning them off at will and doing his job with cool efficiency, he learned true rage. Not since his foster mother, a woman who’d made Hancock feel that he had worth and had given him the first and only sense of family, had been murdered in retaliation for her husband’s mission, had Hancock felt anger and overwhelming rage. That mission had been personal. The only one. Big Eddie, the man who called him son, had come to him for help. Revenge. And even if Big Eddie hadn’t asked, Hancock would have hunted Caroline Sinclair’s murderer.

  But things had changed since then. That was years ago, when Titan operated under the authority of the U.S. government, though only a select few even knew of Titan’s existence. They had much freedom then to ferret out those who were a threat to national security, to take out any threat at will. And then, their own government turned on them, thinking them expendable and easily disposed of.

  Even now the hunters had become the hunted, and any number of classified military groups had orders to kill on sight. Having gained access to a shadowy CIA operative’s computer files, Hancock had learned a hell of a lot about the country he’d sworn his allegiance to.

  No, not everyone charged with the defense of America and its people was evil and self-serving, betraying the citizens they were sworn to protect and defend. There were men and women who tirelessly took up the charge. But any one of those would kill Hancock on sight, thinking him a traitor to the principles they followed, lived, and would die for.

  Titan had refused to die. They had evolved far beyond what their trainers in the beginning had taught them. And now, they not only fought to protect even those who’d betrayed them and countless innocent American lives but they had expanded their reach into a world filled with the same good and bad reflected in the U.S. government and military.

  Innocence had no boundaries. No one nationality. One wasn’t good or bad simply because one was a certain nationality or held a different belief system. Innocents died every day simply because there was no one to fight for them. Not even their own governments. Titan couldn’t save the entire world, but they saved pieces of it. One piece at a time.

  Taking out Maksimov—finally—would save a lot of lives. The sheer time it would take for someone else to pick up the remnants of his empire, to pick up the reins and take over operations, would enable other countries, other special ops groups to infiltrate and shut it down before it ever got back off the ground.

  Because after Maksimov . . . Hancock shut his mind down, returning to the issue at hand, before Bristow truly understood the depth of Hancock’s lack of respect and the fact that he in no way feared this man, that he was so confident of his superiority that he knew he could get to Bristow at any time and end his miserable existence. Despite his attempt to silence the many voices in his head, all replaying past events and ensuring his absolute focus on this mission above all else, a whisper slid insidiously through his mind, tracing each pathway so he had no choice but to hear it. It settled deep within him, taking root as it had done so many times before, and this time Hancock didn’t even bother to uproot it, push it away, force it free so he could forget it was ever there.

  After Maksimov you will be free of this life. It will be time for you to rest.

  He nearly gritted his teeth. The whisper bothered him when so little else did. When so little else had the power to affect him. Rest could mean many different things to a man like him. But the one prevailing thought, the suspicion that took hold when nothing else would, was that in this case, rest meant eternal rest. And worse than the thought of it being final was the fact that he didn’t fear it, didn’t feel sadness or regret. All he felt was . . . anticipation. He didn’t share his acceptance of this with his team or with the four people he considered family, the only people in the world who mattered to him. The only people he felt real emotion for. Love. Loyalty. Respect. And the knowledge that he’d die for any one of them. No, if they knew, they’d make it much harder for him. They’d never understand. They’d want him away from this life. They’d want him to live. For them. With them. They’d never understand that he could never adapt to civilian life—normal life. He didn’t even know what normal was. He didn’t fit into a world where everything was black and white, where gray wasn’t accepted. He couldn’t live or exist in a life where if something happened to someone he loved he couldn’t go after the people responsible, couldn’t make them pay. He would be expected to rely on and trust law enforcement and then the justice system to get justice for the person he loved. How fucked up was that?

  He was a law unto himself, and that would never change. God help him, he didn’t want it to change. Never would he sit back and allow someone else to do what was his duty alone.

  Bristow was seething with impatience, taking Hancock’s prolonged silence for disdain and insubordination. As much as Hancock wanted to tell him to get fucked, there was a higher purpose at hand, and Bristow mattered only as much as a pawn used to achieve that higher goal. Hancock wouldn’t get rid of him yet. But he would allow the man to know who was really in control. Bristow would know not to cross Hancock, even as he wouldn’t be certain why. It would be nothing Hancock said—directly. But Bristow would know absolutely.

  “You pay me,” Hancock said mildly. “I hired and pay my men. They follow my orders. Never think otherwise.”

  Though the statement seemed bland, a simple truth, there was a soft warning that Bristow didn’t misunderstand. For a brief moment fear flashed in the career criminal’s eyes befor
e he visibly chased it away with a shake of his head, a scowl replacing any hint of intimidation. He hated the feeling of inferiority. That Hancock, so rough around the edges, hard and unyielding, not handsome or appealing by anyone’s standards, could possibly make a man like Bristow feel so . . . subservient. And yet he was too aware of Hancock’s power to challenge the man who worked for him. He was . . . afraid . . . of him. And that rankled most of all.

  Hancock almost smiled, but he was too disciplined to do so. He wanted the little bastard afraid of him—of his men. And he damn sure wanted the power-hungry warlord to know just where his men’s loyalties lay. It wasn’t with Bristow, and he’d be a fool to ever believe so.

  “Now, about this woman,” Hancock said, deliberately bringing them back to the original subject. “What could be so important about a lone woman that you would risk pissing off one of the most powerful men in the world?”

  Once again, anger flashed in Bristow’s eyes. Impatience caused a twitch to his right eyelid, and he was barely maintaining a grasp on his temper. With anyone else, he would have already acted. He would have ordered the person who dared to question him and suggest he wasn’t the most powerful man in the world to be killed. And it wouldn’t be a quick merciful death either. Hancock had witnessed Bristow’s depravities firsthand. He’d been forced to participate in order to prove himself. To enter Bristow’s inner circle, gain his trust—and confidence—and position himself as Bristow’s second in command.

  The man was foul, and only the knowledge that when Hancock brought down his primary target he would then take out Bristow and dismantle his entire