Darkest Before Dawn

“I’ll send Kyle Phillips’s team and two others. You’re going to need all the manpower you can get. I assume you have every available man on your end.”

Sam didn’t dignify that with a response.

“I’ll send you the coordinates and I need your men wheels up in half an hour tops. And Adam?”

“Yeah?”

“Two things. We’re operating blind here, so I need every single piece of intel you have on Maksimov. I don’t give a fuck how classified it is. I need it and I need it yesterday if we’re going to save her and take the Russian down.”

“Done. The other?”

“Honor Cambridge did die in that attack. You can not leak that she lived. Not yet. If we manage to get to her in time to save her life and get her back home to her family, then it can quietly be revealed that she was rescued by a joint special forces operation.”

Resnick snorted. “As if that kind of information will ever be low key or quiet. It will be a media circus.”

CHAPTER 35

THE rural, rundown cabin in Bumfuck, West Virginia, where Titan had taken refuge smelled of blood and death. Resnick had complained that no wonder no one had been able to find Maksimov when he was meeting people in such a backwoods place.

Rio led the way inside, because he was known to Titan. Although that hadn’t saved him from an overeager trigger finger one of the last times Titan and Rio had butted heads.

Conrad met Rio at the door, pain in his eyes. “Mojo,” he choked out.

Rio closed his eyes a moment. He’d liked Mojo. Quiet but tormented like so many others in the ranks of Titan. But Mojo was loyal to his bones, and his death hit Rio harder than he would have imagined after so long.

He’d given that life up. A life forever in the shadows, always skating the thin edge between right and wrong. Sometimes, wrong was right. And sometimes right sucked. But now, seeing the men who used to follow him as they now followed Hancock brought back many of the things he’d tried to forget.

“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?”