Darkest Before Dawn
Page 73

“I’m sorry,” Rio said, allowing the sorrow he felt to creep into his voice. “He was a good man.” He glanced toward the floor, where Conrad had been working on his team leader. “Hancock?”
Conrad walked back to where Maren was already looking Hancock over. Conrad had given him pain medication but not enough to suppress his respirations too much because there was no way to know the extent of the damage to his lungs. A CNS depressant could be lethal to weakened lungs and too-shallow respirations.
Maren bent over Hancock, and he turned dull eyes on her that briefly lit with recognition. And relief.
“Maren. Thank God. Need you.” He licked dry lips. “They have her. Didn’t save her like I did you. Have to,” he said painfully.
“Hancock,” she said with mock severity, her hand on her hip. “What have I told you about playing with guns?”
Steele had silently glided to his wife’s side the moment she’d moved toward Hancock, and he saw Hancock smile. The bastard actually smiled, but just as quickly it was gone and his eyes flashed with so much pain and grief that it took Steele’s breath away. And it took a hell of a lot to elicit that kind of reaction from Steele. Maren had seen it too because moisture rimmed her tenderhearted eyes. While the rest of KGI had an . . . interesting . . . love/hate relationship with Hancock, Maren liked him and made no bones about the fact. He had her loyalty, and well, she was a hella fierce woman when she gave her loyalty.
“How bad is it?” Hancock asked bluntly through a tightly clenched jaw. He had to be in a lot of pain. Perspiration glistened on his forehead and he was pale, with deep grooves etched into his face. He suddenly looked a hell of a lot older, when before he had had a timeless look about him. It was part of his chameleon ability to blend, to look anywhere from midtwenties to midforties or anywhere in between. Right now he looked exhausted and sick to his soul.
“I need to be on my feet. I don’t have much time.” Sorrow flooded his gaze and to Steele’s continuing shock, a shimmer of tears glistened in the hardened man’s eyes. “I may already be too late,” he said hoarsely.
“You’ll live,” Maren said lightly. “Conrad did an excellent job with the tools he had. He’s to be commended. He saved your life.”
“I only did my goddamn job,” Conrad snapped, pissed that saving his team leader would be heralded. As though he would have made any other choice.
Steele’s head whipped in Conrad’s direction, his eyes as cold and as flat as Hancock’s typically were. “Watch how you speak to my wife,” he hissed.
Conrad’s eyes were bleak. “I meant no disrespect, Dr. Steele. But he’s my leader. I’d give my life for him.”
“Stand the fuck down, Conrad,” Hancock snapped. “We don’t have time for this shit.” Then he looked at Maren, catching at her hand, squeezing her fingers in what might have been construed as an affectionate gesture if Steele didn’t know better.
“Level with me, Maren. I’ve got to get to her. Every hour . . . Every goddamn minute she’s in his hands . . .” He broke off and closed his eyes but not before his grief and fear was broadcast throughout the entire room, leaving the KGI members to look on in astonishment.
They were witnessing something more momentous than watching Steele, formerly the ice man, be taken down by a petite blond blue-eyed woman and a precious baby girl who looked just like her mama.
The looks ranged from bewilderment, to amusement, to disbelief and outright “what the fuck?”
P.J. didn’t look haunted, as one might expect. Yes, it had taken time for her not to react to the knowledge of a woman being abused, but she’d become more adept at hiding her reaction.
Then Hancock’s gaze settled on Resnick and flickered dispassionately over the teams standing behind the man who dangled an unlit cigarette from his lips. That gaze went back to Sam, studying and measuring, asking the silent question.
“He can be trusted,” Sam said. “We need all the firepower we can get. It’s not going to be a walk in the park to take Maksimov down, but first we have to find him, and that’s where Adam has proven himself to be particularly useful in the past.”
“You should know,” Resnick said in a sour tone. “You shot me and hacked into my computer.”
Hancock didn’t bother giving fake remorse. They all knew that their jobs made for less-than-desirable missions, and every single person in the room had been forced at one time or another to go against their personal code in the name of good.
Hancock ignored Resnick’s dig, and his gaze found Maren’s again. “Cope is hurt. I need you to look at him. Viper too. You said it yourself. I’m not dying. Yet. Take care of them.”
Then he gazed fiercely at Rio and included Sam, who stood beside Hancock’s former team leader. Though Sam led KGI, it didn’t bother him for Hancock to look to Rio. Rio had been to Hancock what Sam was to Rio and the rest of KGI.
“The priority is Honor. I don’t give a fuck about Maksimov. Another day. Another time. There’ll always be another time. But not another Honor. She has to come first. Swear it. She has to be the priority.”
Rio knelt and grasped Hancock’s uninjured arm in the grip of one warrior to another.
“You have my word on it, brother.”
It was the first time Rio had acknowledged the once strong bond between himself and the man he’d trained. And Sam knew how Hancock felt. Every man in the room knew how he felt. They’d all been in the position of knowing the woman they loved had to come before all else. The mission. The greater good. That in some cases, the good of the one did goddamn well outweigh the good of the many.
“I’m already on locating him,” Resnick interjected. “He could goddamn be anywhere, but I’m working on the logistics given our present location and what I know to be some of his hidey-holes. The problem has never been not knowing where Maksimov is, but rather being able to nail the bastard down. He’s a fucking escape artist. There one moment, gone the next.”
“I was arrogant,” Hancock admitted painfully, looking up to find Swanny. His brother-in-law of sorts. “I should have put a tracking device on her like you did Eden. There just wasn’t much time and I was so sure I could just take him out and Honor would never even wake up.”
“Why did you drug her?” P.J. asked angrily.
Her teammates eyed her warily, and Cole’s expression turned grim even as he gathered his wife close to his side.
“You made her helpless and you didn’t plan for the worst. You always plan for the worst,” she said hoarsely.
Hancock closed his eyes. “I had no choice. I was working without a net. No backup plan. It was the way Maksimov wanted her delivered, and I had to make it look good or we would have never gotten close enough to take him out. Not that it did us any good.”
His tone was bitter and filled with self-condemnation.
“I found his mole buried in Bristow’s organization, but there was obviously another. That or one of my men is or was dirty, and I can’t believe that.”
“You know you can’t assume anything,” Rio said bluntly, reprimanding his former man.
“You know them too, Rio. You look at them. You look at their faces and see how they feel about Honor. Then you tell me one of them sold her—us—out.”