Darkest Before Dawn (KGI series)(92)

“Cool your jets. We’ve got to think about this for more than three seconds. Talk to Maren. Let her help you help Hancock.”

At Hancock’s name, Maren’s head jerked up, her eyes widening in concern. Steele’s hand slipped comfortingly around his wife’s nape, his expression grim.

“They need you honey. Hancock needs you.” He sighed, knowing despite his misgivings over the man, he owed his wife’s and daughter’s lives to him, just as Rio did. “It doesn’t look good,” he added quietly. “You need to talk quick and help his man any way you can while we prepare to roll out.”

Maren briskly took the sat phone but turned off the speakerphone, much to Sam’s chagrin. She frowned at him and shook her head. “I need to think, damn it, Sam.”

She pushed away from the others, talking in urgent, hushed tones, her questions calm and efficient, not allowing Conrad to panic.

“What the f*ck, Sam?” Garrett asked in a low voice. “This is some deep shit. This goes deeper than even we’re up for.”

“What else can we do?” Rio asked simply, his dark eyes flashing. “I get that Hancock is a wild card. But he’s got a code. It may be f*cked up to you and me, but he is an honorable man. Before you laugh me out of the war room, just remember that he could have taken Grace at any time. I carried her halfway out of the mountains attached to my back, and she walked the rest of the way in unspeakable agony until she wanted to die from it. Me and my men were in no way prepared to ward off a full-scale attack from Titan. Instead? Hancock gave me a pass. Said it was my only one, but it was bullshit. Saving face. Looking like he owed me because I saved his life. It was what we did as a team. No one kept score. That was bullshit. We did what we had to do and we offered no apologies or thank-yous. And then he warned me. He gave me everything I needed to know about who and what was after Grace. All he didn’t give me was why, and you want to take a guess why that was?”

“No, but I’m sure you’ll tell us,” Donovan said in a weary voice.

“Because he knew Grace was too goddamn weak to heal a kitten. That she’d likely die if he brought her to Farnsworth right then and forced her to attempt to heal his daughter. So he bided his time, waiting, knowing damn well she was in good hands with me. And when he knew she was well enough to have a chance to save Elizabeth, then he took her. He never hurt her. Never laid a hand on her. But she was also f*cking fierce and he admired that about her.”

“Is this going somewhere, because the clock is ticking,” Garrett snarled.

“Yeah, it is,” Rio snapped back.

“Let him speak because I have a hell of a lot to say too,” Steele said in a frigid tone.

“Only when he was certain Grace had a good chance of surviving Elizabeth’s healing did he take her in. He could have taken out Farnsworth at any time. Why wait? Why would a mere child matter to him?”

Joe cleared his throat. “It wouldn’t appear an innocent woman means much to him.”

“He wanted to save Elizabeth,” Rio said quietly. “And he wanted to save Grace. I didn’t figure it out until the whole thing with Maren went down, and I only told Steele. But you all know. I’ve told you. Titan was the real deal. Failure was tantamount to dishonorable death. And yet he gave up his chance to nail Maksimov for good because he feared for Maren to stay another night as Caldwell’s prisoner. She was pregnant, scared out of her mind, and so he called me and he pulled her out.”

“I think this is where I take over,” Steele said pointedly, glancing at his wife, his eyes briefly haunted as if he were reliving the experience all over again.

“He showed up at my home beaten to hell and back. Never seen a man so badly beaten, and it was because he let Maren go and could no longer control Caldwell. Maksimov was sending him a message. Don’t f*ck with me. Ever. And then he took a bullet for my wife, my child,” Steele seethed. “And when the chopper went down, he covered her body with his own, and I still don’t know how the hell he survived.”

“That’s because the f*cker has nine lives,” Garrett said darkly. “Okay, I get it. We have to go in, but we don’t go in not knowing what the f*ck we’re up against. This is bigger than anything we’ve ever taken on. Maksimov’s reach extends around the globe. I don’t trust anyone who isn’t in this room, and that’s fact.”

Maren’s voice rose in agitation. “Of course I wouldn’t expect you to have a chest tube in a field kit. You’re not a surgeon. You’ll just have to find something you can sterilize and use as a chest tube. Isn’t that what you’re trained to do? Adapt and overcome?”

Her response was greeted by a raucous round of hooyahs, oorahs and “Oh hell yeah, that’s our girl.”

Steele scowled but looked absurdly proud of his petite wife with so much ferocity in such a tiny body. “My woman. Not anyone else’s.”

“I don’t think it’s as bad as you think it is,” Maren said soothingly to the man on the phone.

“He can’t f*cking breathe and he’s bleeding like a stuck pig!” Conrad bellowed loudly enough for the rest of the room to hear. “How can it not be as bad as I think it is?”

Steele wrested the phone from Maren’s grip despite her heated protest and a glare that promised retribution.