Текст книги "Darkest Before Dawn"
Автор книги: Maya Banks
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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 29 страниц)
CHAPTER 28
HONOR lay nestled in Hancock’s arms, her cheek resting on his chest, his chin atop her head. They lay in silence, Honor’s arm wrapped tightly around Hancock’s waist, wanting to keep him here, next to her, for as long as possible. Every minute that went by was another minute closer to dawn and the end of their night together.
He stroked his fingers through her hair, over and over. Just caressing, absently almost, as if he were pondering something important.
She loved him.
Agony seared through her body, worse than any pain she’d ever experienced. All the injuries, the battering she’d taken in the attack, the bullet she’d taken for Conrad, Bristow’s two attacks on her. Nothing hurt worse than loving this man and knowing that in another day’s time he would turn her over to Maksimov and she’d never see him again.
It was the hardest thing, and it mustered every ounce of her self-control not to weep for all that was lost. But she refused to give in. Because Hancock was hurting too. She knew it. He was quiet. He hadn’t said a single word since he’d gently kissed her forehead after she’d thanked him and had said, “No, my darling Honor. Thank you. You are the first time I’ve ever tasted sunshine.”
Then he’d taken her into the bathroom and into a warm shower where he washed every inch of her body, taking special care with her injuries. He’d even shampooed her hair, massaging gently before rinsing the soap from the long strands. After thoroughly drying her, he’d rebandaged what needed bandaging, applying antibiotic cream and a numbing agent to prevent pain. Then he’d finished drying her hair, taken her into the bedroom and pulled her between his legs as he sat with his back propped against the headboard, and he’d combed the tangles.
She was nearly asleep when he eased her down on her uninjured side and simply wrapped himself around her, tucking her head beneath her chin, and held her.
But neither slept, and neither spoke. What was there to say anyway? They both knew what had to be done. What would be done. And she had only one regret. Just one. Not the attack on the clinic, not her running in constant fear, not Hancock’s initial betrayal, not even Bristow’s attack. Because it had all led to this one beautiful night. No, her only regret was that she only had this one night.
He’d given her the most beautiful night of her life, but he’d also shown her what she would never have, and she craved it as she’d never craved anything in her life. Being with Hancock? Having his dominance, his caring, protection, his utter devotion to doing whatever it took to make her happy?
She wanted to weep because as much as she’d wanted this night, she almost wished she’d never gotten a taste of what was now forbidden fruit. You couldn’t mourn what you never had.
Hancock was tense, agitated. She could feel his body vibrating, how tightly he held her. His grip was almost bruising and it was painful at times, but she never said a word, not wanting to lose his touch. If he thought he was hurting her, he would immediately put distance between them, and that she couldn’t bear. A little pain was a small price to pay to lie in his arms for the few short hours they had left together.
She’d asked him for tonight. Only tonight. But would he make love to her again tomorrow night? Knowing that it truly would be their last night together? That the following morning they’d leave for him to turn her over to Maksimov?
Or would he spend that night hardening himself, turning back into the Hancock everyone but her saw? The machine. The emotionless mercenary who thought nothing of turning a woman over to a man if it accomplished his goal.
Yes, that was the more likely possibility. He would distance himself from her. He’d wake her with those cold eyes and implacable features. He’d treat her as the prisoner she was. Oh, he wouldn’t hurt her physically. But he would treat her as a thing. Dispassionately and as though she were of no importance whatsoever. Because it was the only way he would be able to withstand what he had to do. And she knew it hurt him. No one else would know. But she did and would.
That didn’t hurt her, that he would harden himself and become a shell of his true self. She knew it was the way he endured—had endured—all these years of loneliness. What hurt her was that she’d never see him again. Nothing Maksimov or ANE would do to her could possibly compare to the agony of knowing love for such a short time, of tasting passion that couldn’t possibly be common, of sharing an intimate bond with the real Hancock. The Hancock that only she saw. And would never see again.
Whatever Maksimov and ANE did, she could take. She’d even welcome it because it would give her respite from the very real pain of losing Hancock. And when death came for her, she would welcome it, because then she wouldn’t feel at all.
She closed her eyes, a sense of peace enveloping her. Her life hadn’t been for nothing. For one magical night, she’d experienced love. She’d loved and been loved in return. This night was worth everything that had come before and all that would come after. Because it gave her this. And this was worth dying for.
“I can’t let you go.”
Hancock’s words, guttural with agony and despair, startled her, breaking the heavy silence and the thoughts she’d been lost in.
His hold on her tightened until she could no longer contain the wince. He didn’t even notice.
“I can’t do it, Honor. I can’t. I won’t. Goddamn it, I won’t do it!”
He was seething, his entire body tense, his muscles rippling with rage. His face, if she didn’t know the man beneath, would terrify her. He looked like what he’d been labeled his entire life. A ruthless, merciless killer.
She gently pried herself away from him, just enough that she could lean up and face him fully, her puzzlement not disguised.
“Hancock?” she whispered tentatively.
She had no idea what he meant. What he was saying. She was utterly confused.
His face was a wreath of torment. Agony blazed in his eyes and he looked as though he bore the weight of the world on his shoulders. Had this been what he’d been thinking of so intently the last hours as they’d lain in silence, him holding on to her as if afraid she’d simply disappear? Had he been planning this all the while, or had he simply made an impulse decision? An irrational bid to hold on to the night as much as she wanted to hold on.
He reached up to touch her cheek and she couldn’t help herself. She nuzzled into his palm and turned to kiss it but then returned her gaze to his, questioning. Not understanding what was happening here. Whatever it was . . . it was huge. And it made her very afraid. Not for herself. But for him.
“I need you to listen to me, Honor. And I need you to understand. I will not give you up,” he said fiercely. “There isn’t a force strong enough in this world to ever make me give you up. Do you understand?”
Her brow furrowed. “But Maksimov . . .”
“Fuck Maksimov,” he said savagely. “And fuck the goddamn greater good. I’ve been an instrument for the greater good my entire life and I’ve never, never asked for one goddamn thing for myself. I’ve never expected something for myself. I’ve never had one thing that’s all my own. Only mine. But I have you, Honor. And I will not give you up. Ever.”
Fear was sharp and bitter in her mouth. She stared at Hancock, allowing every ounce of that fear to show. She was terrified. For him. And for what she thought he was telling her.
“But Hancock, if you don’t give Maksimov what he wants . . . You’ve told me who and what he is. He’ll kill you. He’ll hunt you down like some animal. From what you told me about him, about the kind of man he is, I can well imagine that time means nothing to him. That he’ll wait months, years, however long it takes, but he’ll kill you. No matter how long it takes to exact revenge. He’ll wait and he’ll strike. I can’t, I won’t let that happen, Hancock. You constantly tell me that I matter. Goddamn it, Hancock, you matter,” she raged. “You matter! You matter to this world. The world needs you. You matter to me! You said my sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain, that it served the greater good. Then don’t let my sacrifice be wasted! I would never trade my life for yours. Never!”
“And you think you don’t matter to me?” he roared. “Do you think I’m going to just hand you over to him and walk away knowing that he’ll repeatedly rape you, that his men will rape you? Whomever he wishes to reward will rape you. He’ll torture you just because he enjoys it. And then he’ll turn you over to ANE and every imaginable horror you can possibly imagine, they will do them all to you. When and only when you are so near death that you can no longer withstand their constant brutality, they’ll kill you, but it won’t be merciful and it will not be swift. They’ll drag you into the middle of whatever village they occupy and they’ll inflict as many wounds as possible so that you die a slow, horrific death, and then they’ll leave your corpse to rot and decompose and no one will move you for fear they’ll be killed for interfering.”
She shuddered at the very real images he invoked. Tears ran down her cheeks. Theirs was an impossible situation and she knew it, even if he didn’t admit to knowing the same. They were doomed. They could never be together. If she didn’t die, then Hancock would.
“I will not trade my life for yours,” she repeated, horrible rage building and swelling until it was an inferno. “You are a good man. I don’t care what or who you think you are. I see you, Hancock. I see you. The world needs you.”
“And I need you,” he seethed. “You are the one thing I want—need—above all else. I need you, Honor. What kind of man would I be if I led you to your rape, torture and eventual slaughter? Do you honestly think I could continue on like nothing had ever happened? Do you think I would survive it? That I could continue on, fighting the good fight, fighting for the greater good when you are the greater good and I killed you. I murdered you. I let you be raped and tortured. Do you think I’d sleep at night imagining you in their hands? Do you think the world would be a better place with me in it? I’d turn into a monster unlike this world has ever seen, and I wouldn’t give a fuck about the greater good because my greater good was destroyed by me.”
She leaned her forehead to his, her tears dripping onto his face. “What are we going to do?” she whispered brokenly.
“We’re going to make the exchange.”
Honor looked at him in shock.
“We’re going to set it up so that it looks exactly as it should. And then my men and I are going to take out Maksimov. I will not give you to him, Honor. Do you understand that? Do you trust me? I will not give you to him.”
She swallowed, the beginnings of hope blossoming, and she tried, oh how she tried, to tamp them down because hope was such a dangerous and delicate thing. So easily broken and yet so easily nurtured.
“I trust you,” she said without hesitation.
He leaned in and kissed her.
“Then trust me to do this. I have to go now. I want you to rest. Really rest. And Honor, if you don’t, I will have Conrad sedate you. I have to get with my men because we now only have a little over twenty-four hours to come up with a completely different plan.”
She smiled ruefully. “After the bombshell you just dropped on me, you better go ahead and go get Conrad, because there is no way I’ll sleep. I’ll just stay up and worry . . .”—her voice trailed off to a whisper, as if by saying the last too loudly she’d somehow jinx them—“. . . and hope. I’m afraid to hope, Hancock.”
“My name is Guy,” he said quietly, surprising her with the abruptness in the change of topic. “No one but my family calls me that. Well, really only Eden, my sister. Foster sister if you will. My foster father and my two foster brothers mostly call me Hancock. I’d like you to call me by my name, but only when we’re alone.”
“Guy,” she said, testing the sound on her lips. “Guy,” she said again. “It suits you. I like it far more than Hancock.” She paused a moment before staring at him, locking gazes with him, allowing everything she felt into her eyes, hoping he could see.
He swallowed visibly, mirroring emotion simmering in his own expression.
“I like it far more because you shared it with me,” she added quietly.
She caressed his jaw, staring at him with the love she felt and hoped he saw it, because she couldn’t—wouldn’t—say it. Not now. It reeked of emotional manipulation and they weren’t out of the woods. Things could go terribly wrong. She would do nothing to make things worse.
He kissed her again even as he was rising to pull on a pair of jeans. “I won’t let you down,” he said fiercely. “I’ve let you down time and time again, Honor. But not this time. Not ever again. I know I’m asking a lot when I ask you to trust me. I’ve betrayed that trust. I don’t deserve it from you, but I’m asking anyway. It matters to me. It matters a lot.”
She gave him the words, unreservedly, her eyes never leaving his, the words directly from her heart. She might as well have said I love you for the way she gave the words. And judging by the fierceness that entered his eyes, she thought he heard the echo of that I love you when she told him she trusted him.
And for her, trust was love. Love was trust. They were one and the same for her.
CHAPTER 29
“YOU want to run that by us again, boss?” Viper asked, clear bewilderment in his eyes.
His other teammates wore similar confused expressions, but one common thread he found in every reaction he studied was . . . relief. In Conrad’s face he found not just relief but fiery satisfaction. He looked like he wanted to physically react and do something absurdly uncharacteristic like throw his hand up and do a fist pump. Conrad, who liked no one, had been won over by a woman with more heart than ninety-nine percent of the men they’d served with. She had his respect and now his protection. Of all the men, Conrad’s relief was the most pronounced. It had eaten at him that a woman who’d saved his life was being served up as a sacrificial lamb and he was participating in that repulsive act.
“You heard me,” Hancock said curtly, no patience for restating what they’d all clearly heard. “The mission has changed.”
“Good mojo,” Mojo said, with a more animated voice than his usual monotone. The man actually looked happy.
“Not that I remotely object and if I were still in the military, I’d be saying hooyah,” Cope interjected. “But do we get a clue about what changed since our last meeting a little over twelve hours ago?”
“Everything,” Hancock snarled. “We aren’t going to use the torture and murder of an innocent woman to finally take Maksimov down. I’m fucking tired of the good of the many creed and I swear to God, I’ll have the balls of whoever says it in my hearing again.”
“Fuckin’ A,” Conrad snapped.
“Good mojo.”
“Rock the fuck on, bro,” Henderson piped up.
Viper and Cope both nodded their agreement.
“We’re going to take Maksimov out by making it appear we’re giving him what he wants. And then we take him and any other threat out. I don’t give a fuck how messy or clean. And I don’t give a shit about dismantling his empire. For once, someone else can clean up the goddamn messes.”
“You’re on it tonight, man,” Conrad said in a dry tone.
“Tell me how Bristow died,” Hancock asked abruptly, his tone turning lethal.
Conrad shrugged. “He might still be alive. Or not. I figured a few hours, but he’s a pussy. I doubt he lasted more than an hour. More’s the pity.”
The other team members muttered and expressed their disgruntlement at the idea he would die so quickly.
“His instructions were to drug her for the delivery,” Hancock said, turning the conversation back to its original subject.
Conrad’s brow lifted. “Is that what you’re doing?”
Hancock uncharacteristically paused. Usually his responses were quick, assured. Situation completely in hand and on point. His men picked up on it. He would have been pissed if they hadn’t, even as it pissed him off that he’d allowed himself that brief show of uncertainty. His men had been trained to pick up subtleties. It was the smallest of details that saved one’s ass.
Hancock sighed. “I am.”
The others looked at him in surprise.
“If I thought the other option was the best option, then I wouldn’t drug her.”
No one asked the obvious question, but it was there in every single face and in their eyes. They waited in silence for their team leader to explain.
“Honor can’t know that we’re actually pretending to deliver her, and she can’t be conscious for more reasons than the fact that Maksimov made it a condition. She’s simply too honest. All you have to do is look at her face, into her eyes, and you see the truth. Maksimov would never believe her to be what she should appear as. A scared, beaten-down captive about to be turned over to a monster. So I have to drug her, and . . . I have to fucking lie to her.”
He said that last with blistering rage, a bitter taste filling his mouth. It was a necessary evil, one that would save her life and, if they were lucky, take Maksimov out in the process. But it didn’t mean he liked deceiving her. Again. He fucking hated it. Especially after what they’d shared the night before. And even more, she’d given him her unconditional trust. The mere thought that for even one moment she could think he’d betrayed her made him sick to his soul.
“We do what’s necessary,” Viper said, his tone quieter than normal.
“Good mojo,” Mojo said by way of agreement.
“You know it’s the only way,” Conrad said, but Hancock could see the other man’s equal dislike of the deception. And his guilt. He could read Hancock. Conrad had always had the uncanny knack of reading his team leader, and he knew just how much Hancock hated what had to be done just as he’d known how much he’d despised the initial mission of handing Honor over and walking away.
“Yes. It is,” Hancock said. “Now, we need to come up with a plan. A damn good plan. There is no margin for error. Maksimov has to be taken out, and Honor can not be harmed in any way. She, not Maksimov, is the primary goal. Yes, we’re using her as a way to get close enough to Maksimov to take him out. But Honor’s safety comes before all else. Even if it means Maksimov escapes us. Again.”
“We’re on it,” Cope said immediately.
And then, as a team, they all turned to face Hancock, at attention, something they hadn’t done since they’d left the military.
“You have our word. We will protect Honor Cambridge with our lives,” Conrad said formally.
In turn, each of the remaining men repeated Conrad’s vow, and Hancock’s heart swelled with pride. They were hated, reviled. Their own government, whose dirty work Titan had done for years, had turned on them and tried to execute them. When that hadn’t worked, the government had put a bounty on their heads.
His men were good men. Good men who’d done terrible things in the name of justice. And for the fucking good of the many. Had saved lives, even the lives of the very people who sought their death. They worked under no banner, no country. They had no true homeland. And they would always be hunted by the few remaining who even knew of their existence.
The very country they had fought so tirelessly to protect—and still protected—had denounced them all. Branded them with the worst insult they could have possibly levied given just how many acts of terrorism they’d prevented. Terrorists. Traitors to their country. The country they would have given their lives for. They were stripped of honor, already declared officially dead before becoming the black ops group Titan and they’d been robbed of their citizenship. They had no home, no place anywhere to call home. No loyalty to anyone save themselves. Their cause, their mission, was still the same. That much had never changed even when everything else had. Protect the innocent. Hunt the evil. Regardless of nationality.
And his men had never once wavered. They’d stayed true to Hancock and to the principles they’d set forth when they were forced to go out on their own. Rogue. Through it all, Hancock had never been able to summon hatred for the country he still considered his, even though she did not claim him as one of her own. He loved America. He loved her people. His hatred was reserved for the few who’d betrayed them and put into motion a decade of eluding assassins, all the while fighting the good fight.
Last night had shaken him on many levels. But perhaps the most profound of all was that for the first time since his country had rejected him, leaving him no place to call home, he’d finally found home in Honor’s arms. She was home. And nothing had ever felt so right—so peaceful and soul soothing—in his life.
“I have one more request,” Hancock said, as formal as his men had been. “If I go down. If something happens to me, get the hell out of there with Honor. Under no circumstances can she end up in Maksimov’s hands, even if it means abandoning the mission and letting the bastard go free. I know our creed has always been to never leave a fallen teammate. But I ask this of you because I would gladly trade my life for Honor’s. She deserves no less. She deserves to live. She serves a greater purpose and the world is a better place with her in it.”
“If we fail, it will only be because we all are dead,” Viper said by way of a vow.
The others nodded in agreement.
“We’ll get her home,” Conrad said softly. “One way or another. I’ll protect her with my last breath.”
