Darkest Before Dawn (KGI 10)

“I think this is where I take over,” Steele said pointedly, glancing at his wife, his eyes briefly haunted as if he were reliving the experience all over again.

“He showed up at my home beaten to hell and back. Never seen a man so badly beaten, and it was because he let Maren go and could no longer control Caldwell. Maksimov was sending him a message. Don’t fuck with me. Ever. And then he took a bullet for my wife, my child,” Steele seethed. “And when the chopper went down, he covered her body with his own, and I still don’t know how the hell he survived.”

“That’s because the fucker has nine lives,” Garrett said darkly. “Okay, I get it. We have to go in, but we don’t go in not knowing what the fuck we’re up against. This is bigger than anything we’ve ever taken on. Maksimov’s reach extends around the globe. I don’t trust anyone who isn’t in this room, and that’s 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.”