Darkest Before Dawn (KGI series) (14 page)

Several times, Honor would have sworn that Hancock and the fierce, uncommunicative man on the other side of her protected her from the worst of the bumps by steadying her body with their own. But it was likely her imagination. They were being thrown around just as she was. There was no softness in them. And they’d certainly given her no reason to believe she was anything more than a nuisance, a mission they’d likely objected to and had only carried out under strict orders.

But from whom? Had word spread of her survival? Did the U.S. government care enough about one lowly relief worker to risk some of their finest men, or worse, starting an unofficial war with A New Era? Or had her story reached the media and swept across the world in sensationalistic style, forcing the United States to act? And God, what must her family be enduring? She wanted to asked Hancock if there was a way they could be contacted. Just to let them know she was alive. But no, that would be cruel. She wasn’t out of the woods yet, and to give them false hope only for her to end up dead after all would be terrible for them.

She wanted answers, but these men were as tightlipped as they came. Hancock didn’t even answer her more innocuous questions without making it a federal issue. As if her fate wasn’t something she had a right to know.

Anger blazed through her veins all over again at his domineering, asshole demeanor. But was she doing just as he’d insinuated? No, he hadn’t insinuated anything. He’d very bluntly told her she was looking a gift horse in the mouth. A good bedside demeanor was purely optional. If they got her out of the country and on her way back home, they could all be flaming assholes for all she cared.

“How badly are you hurting?”

Hancock’s soft question startled her, breaking the silence that had descended in the interior of the off-road vehicle. She couldn’t help but swing her head toward him in surprise, wondering if she’d imagined the question. Or the actual . . . concern . . . in his voice. Surely she’d imagined that part at least.

Turning so fast made her promptly regret doing so. Pain speared through her head and suddenly black dots swam in her vision, her surroundings growing dim, fading almost to black.

Hancock swore and then suddenly she found herself eased downward, her head coming to rest gently on Hancock’s lap. The other man lifted her legs and positioned them across his lap so that she lay between the two men.

“You didn’t tell me you had a head injury. Just the knee injury,” Hancock said grimly.

Already his fingers were delving into her hair and she
tensed, expecting him to be rough. But he was extremely gentle as he felt along her scalp.

“I didn’t know,” she managed to slur out. “How could I have known? I was in shock after the attack and then desperate to form a plan to escape—and survive. The only injury that registered was to my knee. It made walking . . . difficult.”

“I can imagine,” Hancock said dryly. “It’s still very swollen, aggravated, no doubt, by all that walking.”

His fingers glanced over a spot and she immediately cried out, blackness and nausea engulfing her.

“There it is,” he said in his calm, unaffected tone. “You have quite a bump there. A concussion, likely.”

“I haven’t died yet,” she said in a sour tone. “If it were that serious, I would have keeled over by now.”

She heard a noise that sounded like a laugh, but Hancock neither smiled nor laughed, so it was obviously her delirium making its presence known.

“No, you aren’t going to die, but you do need to rest so you can properly recover.”

She started to snort but realized that would just hurt too much. “Kind of hard to rest and relax when you’re running for your life.”

The man holding her feet in his lap handed Hancock something that looked suspiciously like a syringe.
Three
of them. When had he gotten them and where? She hadn’t detected movement, but then she wasn’t all that coherent at the moment.

Fear gripped her and she reached up to stay the man’s hand just as Hancock’s hand closed around the syringes.

“What are those and what are you planning to do?” she asked fearfully.

“You need to calm yourself, Honor. You have enough stress without adding to it with unnecessary worry. I’m merely giving you an injection of antibiotics and pain medicine so it will take the edge off your pain and allow you to rest properly.”

“I gave myself an injection of antibiotics before I escaped the clinic,” she said. “And I took pills with me and I’ve been taking them three times a day ever since.”

“Smart girl. You think well on your feet.”

Was that a compliment? From Hancock the unfeeling, arrogant asshole? Maybe she was more screwed up than she initially thought, because now she was imagining things that simply weren’t there.

“However, you have cuts and scrapes in dozens of places that are all susceptible to crippling infection—a complication we certainly don’t need right now. And that knee is still pretty nasty-looking and is still swollen to twice its normal size. So in addition to the antibiotics and pain medicine, I’m also giving you a shot of steroids to help with the inflammation. I have a Medrol dose pack that you’ll start taking tonight and continue for the next five days. You should start feeling relief as soon as tomorrow.”

“We won’t be to where we’re going for five days?” she asked in alarm.

Panic skittered its way up her spine. Five days seemed an eternity. The days spent evading the murderers stalking her every move had been endless. She’d hoped . . . She’d assumed that now that she had help that they would be to safety in a short time. The idea of being exposed for so long scared her. They were a group of seven including herself, and she’d be of no help to Hancock and his men in a firefight. And they were up against an untold number of crazed militants who would never stand down until their objective was achieved. Capturing her.

She could practically see him shrug, though her eyes were closed. As if it weren’t a source of concern to him at all. Was he really that confident in his abilities? In his men’s abilities? She should take comfort in that kind of arrogance and self-assurance. But she couldn’t quite quell the desperate fear that took over all else.

“I won’t know until we get there,” he said vaguely. “Now be still so I can administer the injections. It might burn, but it will go away quickly.”

“It can’t hurt more than it already does,” she said through tight lips.

He obviously injected the pain medication first, a fact she was grateful for, because now acknowledged, pain was screaming through her body in unrelenting waves. She could
feel the glimmer of relief as he pulled the layers of her garment up so her hip was exposed. She didn’t protest with false modesty. At this point anything that gave her relief was more important than the fact he was exposing far more of her than she would have liked.

The man at her feet rotated her just enough so Hancock could access the back of her hip and then Hancock carefully swabbed the area, cleaning it with alcohol before efficiently administering both injections.

In a few seconds it was over and she sagged as Hancock readjusted her clothing. Already her surroundings were a warm, hazy glow and a wonderful leaden feeling had stolen over her body, chasing away the ever-present pain.

Still, she struggled against the heavy layers of unconsciousness and roused herself enough to open her eyes and direct her worried question up at Hancock.

“What if we run into trouble? I couldn’t fight my way out of a paper bag right now,” she admitted.

There was a hint of amusement in Hancock’s tone. “Leave the fighting to us. I don’t anticipate trouble—yet. So take this opportunity to rest up and heal.”

Maybe he was human after all. Or perhaps she’d misjudged him. He was, after all, carrying out a mission. Just like any other soldier or special ops force or whatever the hell he was. Black ops maybe? He was certainly secretive enough, and he hadn’t identified the branch of the military he served. Perhaps he was one of those who didn’t officially exist and he gave her no information that she could inadvertently leak at a later date.

She didn’t care. She would claim fairies rescued her just as long as she got back home. Safe. Alive.

“Thank you,” she whispered, still holding on to the last bit of awareness she possessed.

This time there was genuine puzzlement in Hancock’s voice.

“For what?”

“For saving me,” she said, her words nearly unintelligible. “For helping me. And for promising you’d get me back home.”

He stiffened beneath her. She could feel the muscles of his legs go rigid, and the hand that had been absently stroking her hand stilled and then withdrew.

“I made no such promise, Honor,” he said in a tight voice.

Maybe he wasn’t comfortable with people thanking him. If he was off the books and didn’t exist, then he wasn’t used to being thanked for anything. He and his men were ghosts. What a terrible way to live. Risking your lives for others and never being thanked.

“You trying is enough,” she murmured. “You’re my last and only hope. So thank you.”

“Go to sleep, Honor,” he said, his tone suggesting he had no liking for her words. “You need to rest while you can.”

It was a command she had no difficulty obeying. She was more than halfway there already. All it took was letting her eyelids falls heavily so that her lashes rested on her cheeks and succumbing to the sweet call of oblivion.

CHAPTER 9

IT was many hours later when the group pulled to a stop at an underground compound where they would seek refuge for the night. Dark had long since descended, making the way slower going as they drove a path through the desert where no road existed.

It had taken Hancock longer than he would have liked, but he wasn’t about to risk his men by stopping in the open in an area that wasn’t defensible. At least here, they would be underground in a blastproof bunker, and they’d take turns at watch so they’d know if anyone ventured close.

His men were well used to operating on little to no sleep. They could stay up for days and still be alert and aware in a fight, so a few hours spent on watch would hardly impair them going forward.

He eased from the vehicle and then reached in and lifted Honor’s small body into his arms, anchoring her against his chest as he strode toward the entrance Conrad had already hurried to open.

“Get the vehicle to cover,” Hancock ordered, pausing at the entrance to issue orders to his men. “Mojo, you and Conrad take first watch. Two hours. Henderson and Viper, you take the next shift.” He glanced at Copeland—or Cope as he was called for his cool-under-pressure way of being able to
cope with anything. “Cope, you and I will take last watch. I’ll get everyone up when it’s time to get on the move again.”

“Why we stopping now, boss?” Conrad asked, his gaze inquisitive.

Hancock could well understand why his men would wonder at his uncharacteristic stop. They usually pushed themselves, going days without sleep in order to achieve their objective as quickly as possible.

“The woman will be useless to us unless she has time to rest and recover.”

“Bad mojo,” Mojo muttered.

“I don’t mind saying that this mission blows,” Cope spoke up.

Hancock looked at his man in surprise. He couldn’t ever remember any of his men taking issue with the many missions that were in that nebulous area between good and bad. Some of them soul sucking, taking a piece of them at a time until there was little humanity left in any of them. Hancock included. This mission was hardly one of their worst. They’d done far worse in the name of “good” and the protection of others. The innocent who couldn’t stand for themselves. That was Titan’s job. To stand for them. To protect them while they slept the sleep of the ignorant, never knowing how close they came to death.

“She doesn’t deserve her fate,” Cope said by way of explanation, his expression grim, actual anger brimming in his usually cold, emotionless gaze. “And I don’t like the fact that we’re deceiving her. She’s . . . courageous,” he said, as though struggling to come up with the right word to describe her. “She
deserves
to be spared. She held off those fuckers for over a week and evaded capture. I don’t know of anyone, much less a woman, who can claim the same. She’s already a fucking national hero, not only to the people here, but in the U.S. as well.”

“Bad mojo,” Mojo said again, making Hancock realize that Mojo’s feelings mirrored Copeland’s own, and that was why he’d uttered the first “Bad mojo.”

Well, fuck. This wasn’t
ever
a complication he’d encountered with his team. Not once. Not even when they’d forcibly taken Grace from KGI, shooting one of KGI’s men in the process and
damn near killing Rio later. And Grace as well. Not when they’d allowed Caldwell to abduct Maren when she was pregnant and vulnerable and keep her under lock and key until Hancock was forced—by his goddamn newly developed conscience—to intercede and blow his mission all to hell to get her out.

“One hero? Or the hundreds of thousands of innocent people who will fall victim to Maksimov if he isn’t taken out for good?” Hancock asked in a challenging tone, reminding his men of their role in the world. Reminding them of their purpose. Their
only
purpose. Their mission wasn’t to judge, to decide who was worthy or unworthy. Their only job was to rid the world of the predators who preyed on the innocent, which meant that sometimes
they
were the very ones preying on the innocent in order to achieve their goal.

The dissension in his ranks mirrored his own thoughts too closely—thoughts he’d firmly shoved away, not allowing himself to feel guilt. Or regret. He didn’t like it one goddamn bit, and he had to nip this in the bud before it got out of control and he had mutiny on his hands—something he’d never considered in a million years. His men were too steady. Too solid. Too focused. Just as he was. They followed his lead, never questioning.

Until now.

“I get it,” Cope muttered. “But I don’t have to like it.”

“We don’t
have
to like it,” Hancock said tightly. “But we do have to do our job. Even at the cost of one innocent. The good of the many—”