Darkest Before Dawn

“Hey, hold up,” Rio said, jogging after his former teammate.

Hancock stopped, but all he wanted to do was just go. To be left alone.

“Want a ride to Honor’s place? By the time we get stateside, she’ll be at her family’s house.”

For a moment he couldn’t breathe for the pain splintering through his body, heart, soul.

“No,” he finally said in a low voice.

Rio shot him a look of surprise. “What the fuck, man? You’re walking away?”

Hancock turned on him, his features savage as anger rushed hot through his veins.

“I betrayed her. I broke so many promises I can’t even count. I don’t deserve her and she certainly deserves a hell of a lot better than me. She hates me but not more than I hate myself.”

“Don’t do this, man,” Rio said, his eyes dark with sympathy. “Don’t do something you’ll regret for the rest of your life.”

“Too late,” Hancock bit out, and he turned and walked away.

CHAPTER 42

KYLE Phillips stood in the living room of Honor’s parents’ home facing her entire family. Her mother, father, four brothers and her sister. There was stark grief in their eyes because he knew they assumed the worst.

The news had broken just the night before that the terrorist group responsible for the attack on the relief center Honor had volunteered at had been completely taken out by a joint U.S. special forces unit and SEAL teams. Her family was fully prepared to be told that their daughter’s death, although already broadcast over the news for endless days and nights immediately following the attack, could now be officially confirmed. There’d been no survivors, according to reports, though Honor’s body had never been returned. It was through that, that her family had clung stubbornly to hope. But now? They fully expected official confirmation of Honor’s death.

After formally introducing himself, Kyle asked them to sit and waited until they complied before he said what he’d come to say. There was no easy or delicate way to say what he had to say, and he wasn’t one to tiptoe around an issue. It was a lot less time consuming to get straight to the point.

“Your daughter is alive,” he said, no inflection to his tone as he took in all their faces and the sudden change from resignation to wary hope.

There was complete silence. Stunned expressions. Shock. And then it seemed to register what he was telling them. Her mother burst into tears as did her sister. Her brothers rocked forward, faces in their palms, and her father went ashen.

“W-what?” Mandie’s voice quivered as she stared at the Marine in disbelief. “But we were told she was dead. The whole country was told she was dead. It’s all the news has talked about since the attack on the relief center where she worked. What on earth are you saying?”

“She survived,” Kyle said quietly. “I understand this comes as a shock . . .”

He got no further before he was bombarded with questions.

“Where is she?” Honor’s mother said hoarsely, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Is she all right?” her father demanded. “Why isn’t she here? Why are you here and not her? What aren’t you telling us? Is she hurt?”

“Why the hell weren’t we informed before now?” Brad bit out angrily, his eyes ablaze with relief but also suspicion.

Kyle held his hands up to silence the torrent of conversation.

“I need you to listen to everything I have to tell you. It’s very important and it’s why I arrived first. She’s on her way here now. She’s not very far out, but I needed to come ahead to . . . prepare you.”

“Prepare us?” Honor’s mother whispered, her voice thick with tears, and now fear.

Sensing the importance of what Kyle had to say, everyone went silent and leaned forward, concern etched into their every feature.

Kyle gave them the details—most of them—of Honor’s escape and recapture. He gave an accounting of everything that had happened. Except anything relating to Hancock. Hancock was Honor’s to either reveal or not, but he’d not take that choice from her.

“I had to force an IV on her while we waited until it was safe to reunite you with her. She gave up,” Kyle said in a pained voice. “She was fierce. Brave. Courageous. I’ve never met her equal. But in the end, it was simply too much. Too much pain and torture and worse, the final loss of hope that had kept her sustained for so long. She doesn’t believe I’m telling her the truth, that she’s free. She believes me to be taunting her—psychological torture—delaying her eventual physical torture and death that she’d come to accept. She’s broken, ma’am,” he said to her mother.

In a quiet voice, he told them what they had already deciphered for themselves. “Your daughter is not the same young woman she was when she left here, and I want to prepare you for that. She’s retreated deep inside herself. She’s starved. Refuses to eat. I had to force the IV or she would have already died. She’s wounded in multiple areas, in multiple fashions. She’s going to need your love, support and, above all, your patience. She needs medical care. But most of all, she needs a reason to live.”

“Oh my God. Oh my God,” her sister said, her sobs echoing through the room.

“She’s alive!” one of her brothers exclaimed. “She’s coming home!”

“We’ll help her,” her father vowed. “Whatever she needs. Whatever it takes. I will not have the miracle of my daughter back only to lose her again. I won’t let it happen.”