Darkest Before Dawn (KGI 10)

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.