Darkest Before Dawn

“So that I have enough time to carve a hole in my brain so I can crawl into it and die.”

He instantly recoiled with a flinch. She heard a blistering curse from across the room and then someone stomped away, slamming the door so hard it finished the job of knocking the painting from the wall that Hancock had already set teetering the time he’d left after she’d asked him to kiss her.

What a stupid, hopeless, naïve fool she’d been.

“What an honorable soldier you are,” she said in a mocking voice.

But her pain betrayed her. Like so much else had of late. She tried to sound bitter, angry, furious even. But she could barely choke the words out because she was still screaming on the inside, her pain so great that she could feel herself shattering into a million pieces.

“Whoring yourself out to get the job done. What exactly is the going rate for stud services these days?”

Anger glittered hotly in Hancock’s eyes, but she was too far gone to care. Already she was retreating within herself.

His silence damned him. She knew he’d done just those things for previous missions. No, his jobs. Missions somehow invoked something with meaning. Value. Honor. Loyalty. Good. She was a job, just as other women had likely been jobs as well.

“Get out,” she said, holding desperately to the last of her crumbling composure. “All of you. Get out!”

And as she lay there, broken, weeping silently for all she’d lost, she realized that the very thing she’d vowed Bristow wouldn’t take from her—Hancock, her talisman and protector—had never been hers to begin with.

She had nothing further for anyone to take from her.

She had nothing, was nothing at all. Just a tool. A bargaining chip. A plaything for ruthless, evil men. And for just a little while, she’d slept with the enemy, figuratively speaking.

She’d made the mistake of trusting when she knew better. But at least she wouldn’t have to live long with such heartbreaking regret. Her time was very short indeed. She closed her eyes, anguished by what was to come: the suffering and agony that would be inflicted upon her before she finally escaped into death’s protection. She regretted that her death couldn’t come sooner.

CHAPTER 20

RAGE ate at Hancock, though he was careful to keep his emotions in check—an art he’d perfected until it came as second nature to him as breathing. But he’d never felt this close to losing his tightly leashed control.

He held out his hand in the direction of his team, and one of them scrambled to hand over a med kit.

“Get Conrad back in here,” Hancock snapped. “I need him to take a look at her stitches.”

Cope, Viper and Henderson immediately exchanged grim, silent glances. At Hancock’s barked order, Honor went utterly still and then rolled away so she faced the wall and curled in on herself, forming a protective barrier.

With grim resignation, he slid onto the bed next to Honor, one knee bent, so he was sitting facing the headboard and so he could take in the mass of honey-colored hair—she’d managed to get the original color back with repeated washings—and move the strands covering her face. And the evidence of her tears.

He pushed the strands away, ignoring her recoil and the fact that she was pulling herself further and further away from him, not only physically but mentally. His temper, raw and savage, spiked as he took in her torn lips, the thin trickle of blood that still seeped not only from her mouth but from her nose as well. A wicked-looking bruise was already forming where that bastard had touched her. Hurt her. Put his fucking hands on what didn’t belong to him.

Hancock had known he was living on borrowed time. It was only a matter of when—not if—she discovered his intentions and that they were not those of the man she thought she saw when she’d looked at him before.

But now, the knowledge and understanding were there, staring back at him with dark accusation but worst of all, hurt and devastation that was beyond repair. He’d done that to her. And she’d been right when she’d said that what he had done—was doing—was far worse than what A New Era had planned.

The men hunting her hadn’t lulled her into a sense of false security. They hadn’t given her hope. Or tenderness or caring, all the while intending to sacrifice her. Trade her life for thousands of others.

Hancock had done all those things, and he’d known she would hate him. What he hadn’t known was how much he would hate himself, nor had he known that her deep anguish would twist his gut into knots he had no hope of ever unraveling.

He rolled her over, mindful of not hurting her more than necessary, but he had to be commanding and firm. The very asshole she was now convinced he was. And he didn’t deny he was just that.

“You’re bleeding,” he said grimly.

She shuddered beneath his seeking fingers, and he saw what the movement cost her.

“Where the hell is Conrad?” he bellowed.

He didn’t want her in any more pain than necessary. Her mental anguish he could do nothing about, but he could at least alleviate her physical discomfort. He’d never regain her trust again. Not that he deserved it. But this, too, was unexpected. The pain he felt over the loss of something so precious.

Conrad entered, his fury a living, breathing thing. He wouldn’t even meet Honor’s eyes, not that they were available for him to meet, but he didn’t know that because he didn’t spare so much as a glance in Honor’s direction. He only looked at Hancock, simmering with barely controlled impatience, awaiting his team leader’s instruction.