Darkest Before Dawn Read online

  fact.”

  Maren’s voice rose in agitation. “Of course I wouldn’t expect you to have a chest tube in a field kit. You’re not a surgeon. You’ll just have to find something you can sterilize and use as a chest tube. Isn’t that what you’re trained to do? Adapt and overcome?”

  Her response was greeted by a raucous round of hooyahs, oorahs and “Oh hell yeah, that’s our girl.”

  Steele scowled but looked absurdly proud of his petite wife with so much ferocity in such a tiny body. “My woman. Not anyone else’s.”

  “I don’t think it’s as bad as you think it is,” Maren said soothingly to the man on the phone.

  “He can’t fucking breathe and he’s bleeding like a stuck pig!” Conrad bellowed loudly enough for the rest of the room to hear. “How can it not be as bad as I think it is?”

  Steele wrested the phone from Maren’s grip despite her heated protest and a glare that promised retribution.

  “You will watch the way you speak to my wife, and you will treat her with the utmost respect she deserves. She’s damn well earned it,” Steele said in a dangerously soft voice. “If she says it’s not as bad as you think, then it’s not. So shut the fuck up and start doing what she tells you or you’re going to have yourself an even more fucked-up mission.”

  Maren rolled her eyes and yanked the phone back down, explaining the need for a chest tube to drain the blood and air that prevented his lung from reinflating. While the bullet didn’t penetrate Hancock’s chest, only the vest, the impact was great enough to break ribs and damage his lung. The bullet to his shoulder was a clean through and through and all that was needed was to ensure there was no further loss of blood and get an IV started immediately to replenish the lowered blood volume. And she instructed Conrad to start him on antibiotics, since the risk of infection was great given the conditions.

  “Are we really all just going to risk our lives for Hancock?” Dolphin asked, as if he couldn’t quite grasp how such an ordinary afternoon had become something out of some bizarre government conspiracy theory.

  Dolphin had more reason than most to dislike the man. He’d been shot by a sniper, though he knew it wasn’t intended to be a kill shot, nor had it been, when Hancock had made his move and taken Grace from KGI. Dolphin had a long memory and he tended to especially remember things that took him out of action for prolonged periods of time.

  At Dolphin’s question, Maren’s frown deepened and she lowered the phone, pressing it to her thigh so she wouldn’t be overheard.

  “Somehow I think Eden would have a different opinion,” she said softly. “As do I. He saved me. Three times. He took care of me. You, none of you, spent all those months with him that I did,” she said, not sparing a single person in the room her piercing gaze. “He was . . . kind. Caring even. Even when he was scary as hell, he was also very gentle with me, and he told me he wouldn’t allow any harm to come to me or my child. He could have died because he saved me. He nearly did.”

  “I owe him much,” Steele said gruffly. “I owe him everything.”

  It was obvious just how much he hated expressing his vulnerability and revealing the shadows that still occasionally haunted his eyes when he recalled just how close he’d come to losing Maren and Olivia.

  “So do I,” Rio affirmed. “What he did more than compensated for me saving his life. Saving a teammate’s life isn’t some goddamn favor. It’s not recorded on a scorecard. It’s your fucking job and if you get your teammate killed, you get one ginormous F on your report card.”

  “We all owe him.” Swanny spoke up in a quiet tone. He swept his gaze over the room. “He’s Eden’s family. Which now makes him my family. And if all of you were speaking the truth about the fact that we are all family, then that makes Hancock your family as well. Eden will never forgive you and neither will I if you leave him to die. That isn’t who we are. It never has been and I pray to God it will never will be.”

  “When you finally speak you take no prisoners,” Sam said in a sour voice.

  “Fuck!” Garrett exploded, knowing they’d been had. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK! And furthermore I don’t give a flying fuck who tattles to Sarah. If this doesn’t call for a hundred F-bombs, then what does?” He made a show of pulling the hair on the sides of his head. “Goddamn fucking Hancock. Swear to God, if even one of us gets killed saving his sorry ass, I’ll undo all Maren’s handiwork and kill the bastard myself.”

  Donovan held up his hand. “No one ever implied we would turn a blind eye on this matter. The decision will be who goes and who stays. Not whether we act or not. That’s a given. What I won’t do for anyone or any mission is make taking part in the mission mandatory. No one is going to be sent into a situation with sketchy intel with no idea just what we’re up against.”

  Maren had resumed giving instructions to the man tending Hancock in a quiet voice, but she kept a wary eye on the proceedings around her, as if not trusting them not to take her along. As if she were staying behind under lock and key when Hancock had saved her life three times. She owed her entire world to him and it was a debt she could never hope to repay in a thousand years.

  “This mission will be volunteer only,” Donovan said quietly. “I’m going.”

  “I’m in,” Rio says. The rest of his men quickly followed suit. Terrence went back far enough with Rio that he had been part of Titan when Rio had trained a new recruit called Hancock, though not many people were privy to that information. Rio doubted even Sam knew it. With everyone ever associated with Titan marked for death, it would be a death sentence to the members and families of KGI.

  Rio wasn’t stupid, though. He had an insurance policy of sorts. A get-out-of-jail-free card. He had enough damning information on high-ranking government officials, domestic and abroad, and he’d made it very clear that if he were to ever die under any circumstances, the information would be made public and entire countries would crumble. This card he held could come in very handy in just this sort of situation and could very well save Hancock’s ass, provided he kept his nose clean in the future.

  “I’m in,” Steele said. “My team makes their own decisions.” He no longer looked to P.J. when missions involving such horrific circumstances came down the pipeline. He respected that she knew herself well enough to know what she could handle and what she couldn’t after her ordeal at the hands of three rapists.

  And it was equally clear she was grateful to her team leader for not singling her out and drawing attention to her past.

  “I’m in,” she said firmly. “I will never allow another woman to endure what I had to endure if I can stop it.”

  Her team—and the others—looked at her in surprise. Pride shone in her husband’s eyes. Cole. For so long, she never spoke of it. It was an unspoken rule. It was there. Always there. But never acknowledged aloud. Until now. Cole squeezed her hand and whispered softly in her ear so only she could hear.

  “I’m so damn proud of you, P.J. I thank God every day that you chose me. That you love me. And that I’m married to the strongest damn woman I’ve ever known.”

  Faint color dusted her cheeks, but over time she’d grown accustomed to him displaying his love and affection and admiration for her in front of others, though it had taken a lot of adjustment on her part.

  “No one should ever have to suffer such degradation and humiliation. No one should ever feel so ashamed that they literally want to end their ceaseless suffering by taking their life. And yet she apologized for almost fucking up the mission,” P.J. said, terrible rage blazing in her eyes. “She apologized for being weak, for fuck’s sake, and not being able to save all those people because for that one moment she only wanted to die so the pain would finally end. No wonder Hancock can’t and won’t hand her over to Maksimov. Swear to God if he did, there wouldn’t be a safe place on this earth for him because I’d hunt him down and I’d repay in kind every hurt done to her.”

  “Singing to the choir, sistah,” Skylar said, anger dulling her usually
sparkling and infectious smile and gaze.

  Nathan and Joe exchanged glances, then looked to their team, where Swanny stood tall and rigid. Before the twins could say anything, Swanny stepped forward, defying the precedent set by Rio and Steele’s team of waiting for their team leader’s decision before falling in behind him.

  “I’m in,” Swanny said in a determined voice.

  “So are we,” P.J. said, as she and Cole stepped forward, P.J.’s hand clasped tightly in Cole’s. There were flickers of surprise at P.J.’s lack of hesitation. It wasn’t a secret that she’d love to get Hancock between the crosshairs of her scope for one of her team members being shot by Hancock’s team when the mission to save Grace went all to hell. She’d sworn to kick his ass if she ever met up with him in a dark alley somewhere.

  Zane and Skylar stepped up on either side of Swanny, not even voicing what their action implied. There was no need. Their actions did all the talking for them.

  “I think we have mutiny on our hands,” Joe said with a wry smile.

  Nathan shook his head. “Like our team is going anywhere without us?”

  All attention turned to Sam and Garrett, the only two who hadn’t spoken up.

  “Fine. I’m in,” Garrett said, throwing up his hands amid more muttered F-bombs.

  Sam sighed. “Do you all honestly think I’m letting you infants go off on your own? Fuck that. I’m in. If only to save your goddamn asses.”

  A round of flipping the bird erupted, breaking the strain so evident in the room. Then Sam issued the order for them to load and go. Hancock didn’t have much time, judging by the grim lines marring Maren’s delicate, feminine features.

  “And just so you know, I’m in,” Maren said in a voice that rivaled her husband’s demanding tone. “Olivia can stay with Marlene.”

  You could have broken a stone on Steele’s face as he grappled with the knowledge that he’d be putting his wife—his entire life—in harm’s way. But he also knew that Maren was Hancock’s only chance at survival. With a resigned sigh that said he didn’t like it one bit, he gave a clipped nod and was rewarded with a loving smile that melted the big man to his toes.

  Sam gave the motion to move out. He planned to call Resnick when they got in the air and ferret out as much information as possible. Resnick would cream himself if he thought he had a shot at taking down Maksimov and ANE. Sam wasn’t above calling on the two black ops teams at Resnick’s disposal either, because they were going to need all the manpower they could muster if they had any chance of recovering Honor. Whether she still lived was a huge question mark, but if she was already dead, Hancock wasn’t going to be any more alive than she was, if Conrad could be believed.

  Maren still had an open line to Conrad, patiently instructing him as his frustration mounted at the helpless fury he felt over being unable to do more to stabilize Hancock. But Maren assured him that once the chest tube was properly inserted, Hancock’s breathing would become easier and less labored; he would be stable for the few hours the flight would take them, and then she could fully assess the damage. And then sorrow filled her heart, tears threatening, which she immediately hid from Steele because he panicked if she cried.

  And then, because he had seen them, she hastened to give the reason—sympathy—that had prompted her horror that this could have been Steele not returning from a mission. Or any of the other KGI members.

  “I’m sorry about the loss of your teammate,” she said to Conrad, her sorrow genuine. “I will do everything in my power to save Hancock.”

  “Thank you,” he said gruffly.

  “Honey,” Steele said, sliding his big hand gently over her leg and squeezing. “It won’t be one of us. I need you to believe that.”

  She looked up at him and then at them all, tears glistening on her eyelashes. “But it could be,” she whispered. “There’s always the chance that I’ll get a phone call like this one and it will be about one of you, and I love you all dearly. I can’t lose any of you, even as I know this is what you have to do. What we have to do. Just promise me you’ll be careful. And promise me you’ll get that poor woman out of the hell she’s enduring. Hancock protected me from that, but he can’t protect her now.”

  CHAPTER 33

  HONOR came sluggishly to awareness, confusion and alarm vying for equal control of her state of mind. Her head ached vilely and she tried to lift a hand to massage her temple but found herself unable to.

  As her vision cleared, horrific pain—a keen sense of betrayal—sliced her into tiny ribbons until there was simply nothing left of her. Just a vague nebulous being that hovered somewhere between life and death in the spirit world. Purgatory.

  Hancock had promised her he wouldn’t give her to Maksimov. Hancock had drugged her. Hancock had handed her over to Maksimov in a simple business transaction. Hancock was nowhere near this place, wherever it was.

  She wondered just how gullible she’d been. All that crap about being sacrificed for the greater good. That because of her sacrifice, Maksimov—and ANE—would be taken down, no longer a threat to hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. It seemed to her that this was merely a mercenary exchange. For money. Hancock had never denied being a mercenary.

  But why be so . . . cruel? So inhuman? Why even pretend kindness and caring when he possessed neither? It wasn’t as though she could have escaped him anyway. So why all the bullshit? Why even make the effort to comfort her at all? She would have preferred brutality, rape even, over what she thought to be something beautiful and . . . genuine.

  Maybe it was how he dealt with his conscience, but then he didn’t have one. He didn’t have a heart or a soul. So why? The question reverberated in her mind until she wanted to scream her frustration. Why be kind to her? Why pretend tenderness? Why pretend that she mattered? And for God’s sake, why give her false hope?

  That was the cruelest of all. To give her even a moment’s hope that what she’d accepted as her fate wasn’t to be after all.

  She looked wildly around her, trying to discern her surroundings, anything to get her mind from its soundless screams of grief and agony. But what she found only added to her terror and sorrow.

  She was in a . . . cage. Wrists and ankles manacled like an animal. The space was so small that she was forced into an uncomfortable position, her body contorted like some magician’s feat.

  So stupid. So foolish. So naïve.

  How Hancock must have laughed at her innocence. How he must have delighted in knowing he’d one-up Maksimov and even Bristow by being the one to have her first. The innocent little virgin. The supposed gift he was so humbled to have received. Sorrow vied with regret. So much regret that there was no room for fear over her fate. She was resigned to it after enjoying a brief respite. A short window of time where she’d allowed hope to bloom. She’d been so very foolish to foster the forbidden. She knew better and yet she’d allowed hope to grow, unchecked within her heart, encompassing her very soul.

  Her breath stuttered erratically over her lips as she glanced around her prison. She was in a tiny cage suspended from the ceiling, so even if she did somehow manage to wrest free of the manacles digging into her skin and get the cage open, she was at least a dozen feet above the floor. Not that she’d ever be able to free herself anyway. The restraints had torn her skin, and her hands and feet tingled from the decreased blood circulation forced by the tightness of her bonds.

  The height was dizzying, but her fear of enclosed spaces was even more crippling. Having spent an entire night trapped under the rubble of the clinic that lay around her in ruins had given her an intense phobia of tight, enclosed and airless places, even though the cage was well ventilated.

  Sudden unexpected pain screamed through her body—but no, the high-pitched shriek came from her, the sound of someone in unspeakable agony. Her skin was on fire. She could feel the horrible licks of the flames consuming her. Was she being burned alive? A vague recollection of something like a cattle prod, an instrument that when touching her
skin delivered a shrieking electric shock that set her nerve endings on fire, drifted through her shattered memories. For a moment it was as if she simply short-circuited because she had no idea what had just happened. Only that it hadn’t been the first time it had been done to her.

  Then she saw him. The man who must be Maksimov. He held a long rod that he’d pressed to her skin, delivering a devastating electric shock that still had her nerves jumping and quivering. She was in no way in control of her body, her muscles giving involuntary jerks and spasms.

  She huddled there, weeping, not just from the shock delivered to her body, but from the ultimate betrayal Hancock had handed her. It was her fault for offering him her forgiveness. For giving him her trust when he’d proven he wasn’t deserving of it.

  But it didn’t make the agony any less. He had done what nothing or no one else had been able to do.

  Hancock had broken her.

  Not the clinic bombing. Not ANE. Not Bristow’s two attempts to rape her. Not even this asshole standing by her cage, a predatory gleam in his eyes. He enjoyed pain—inflicting pain. He thrived on it. If she could see any lower than his face, she was sure he’d be aroused, just as Bristow had been when he’d hurt her.

  But neither of those men, Bristow or Maksimov, had broken her or would break her.

  Hancock had broken her, and she no longer cared whether she lived or died. She no longer cared what was done to her because nothing could equal what had already been done by Hancock’s hand.

  “I think I may keep you for a while before I let A New Era know of my precious find,” he mused, studying her as he circled the cage. “You’re surprisingly strong. For a woman,” he added with a sneer that conveyed all the disdain he obviously felt for the “weaker” sex. “I think you will provide me many days of entertainment. You’ll be a challenge and I do so enjoy a good challenge. But I’ll break you. You’ll learn what is expected of you.”

  “You can’t break me,” Honor said softly, speaking for the first time.

  Her tone was absent, disinterested almost, as if she were thinking of something else and he was a mere distraction. He wouldn’t like not being able to command absolute focus and attention. He was a man well used to deference from everyone. Well, too fucking bad because he wasn’t getting it from her.

  He looked faintly puzzled, as if he sensed something other than defiance, which such a statement would normally be construed as.

  “And why is that?” he asked in a mild tone that told her she hadn’t pissed him off. Yet. No, he was genuinely curious.

  She found his stare and knew hers to be vacant. Hollow. Lifeless. Already gone. His eyes narrowed as if he too saw what she knew to be there. And for some reason unknown to her, she got the impression that it bothered him. Which was laughable given he thrived on making others suffer so much that they became as lifeless and as hopeless as she already was, and he’d only just begun. Perhaps he was merely angry because he wasn’t the reason that she was already far gone from this world—and reality.

  “Because you can’t break what’s already broken,” she whispered through numb lips.

  He pondered her words for a moment and maybe she imagined it, but she could swear something in his gaze shifted and softened. Maybe she was just finally losing the final pieces of sanity that had seen her through this far because they were no longer needed. She needed no shield. No protection.

  If only . . .

  She didn’t even bother feeling shame or regret for not having succeeded in taking her own life. If she’d had any inkling of Hancock’s coming betrayal, she would have sliced through her carotid artery in a heartbeat to deprive them all. Hancock, Maksimov and ANE.

  He flipped a switch that caused the cage to lower closer to the floor, and then he reached through one of the bars, his fingers lightly caressing the bandages of her wrists, studying them.

  “I don’t suppose you can,” he murmured. “But I guess we’ll see then, won’t we? But, woman, do not think to defy me. You will instantly regret it.”

  She gave a faint ghost of a smile, one that matched the hollowness of her eyes, and as much of a shrug as she was able in the confines of her tiny prison. “I have no reason to defy you. My fate has been sealed. I know what my destiny is to be. I have no reason to live, so why make my eventual death worse by fighting the inevitable?”

  He frowned again, as though he had no idea of what to make of her. As though he’d never come across someone like her. And judging by the expression on his face, he didn’t much like puzzles he couldn’t solve.

  Any idiot could figure her out. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know when a person had already been driven past their limits. That she was already a hollow shell of a human being. Nothing could touch her no matter what was inflicted on her from now until whenever monsters tired of their sick, torturous games and finally gave her eternal rest and . . . peace.

  She closed her eyes, imagining resting with the angels. She could almost feel the soft brush of their wings and the comfort of their protective embrace.

  “Soon,” she whispered to herself. “Soon.”

  CHAPTER 34

  AS soon as KGI boarded the jets, Sam pulled out his secure phone and punched in the series of numbers that would get him to Resnick no matter what time of day or circumstances. Resnick answered on the second ring, his voice wary and alert.

  “Sam,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Adam,” Sam returned dryly.

  “Now that pleasantries have been exchanged, to what do I owe this unexpected honor?”

  His voice was laced with heavy sarcasm, which Sam ignored. Needling Resnick, just like needling Hancock, was taking enjoyment where he could, but this was business and there was no room or time for fucking around.

  “I’m not calling in a favor,” Sam said.

  “Thank fuck for that,” Resnick muttered. “I’ve learned your favors have a pattern of me nearly getting killed.”

  “You’re still alive,” Sam pointed out. “Look, what if I told you that we’re about to take Maksimov down for good and there’s a good possibility that we’ll take A New Era down with him.”

  There was a strangled choke as if he’d just inhaled a drag from his cigarette and it poured out of his mouth and nostrils in an excited rush. “You’re shitting me. No fucking way. You’re out of your goddamn mind.”

  Then his voice became suspicious. “We’ve been after Maksimov for years. Hell,