“But . . .”
“Please. For her, Maren. Do this kindness for her. I don’t deserve any, but she does. Make her think you hate me. That I kidnapped you and forced you to see to her injuries. Do whatever it takes to convince her that you are in no way sympathetic to me or she won’t cooperate.”
Maren sighed but then nodded, going over to collect her medical bag. She cast one last sorrowful look in Hancock’s direction before disappearing into the bedroom.
Hancock turned to Resnick. “I have no right to ask you for anything, but I want your best team protecting Honor at the safe house. Tell her the U.S. military intercepted me—she believes I’m the one delivering her to ANE—and rescued her and that she’s safe and on U.S. soil but until Maksimov, ANE and . . . I . . . are taken down for good it’s not safe for her to be with her family. It’s not safe for her family to know she’s alive. Explain the danger to her and to her family and that her family will also be guarded and protected, and that when the danger is no more, your team will take her to her family.”
“Consider it done,” Resnick said without hesitation. “And just for the record, Hancock. You aren’t the heartless bastard you want the world to believe. Mind you, I didn’t appreciate being shot, but I know now the reasons why and it was a righteous mission.”
“You’re wrong,” Hancock said coldly. “I am exactly that and a whole lot worse.”
CHAPTER 39
ALL eyes flew to the door to the bedroom an hour later when Maren stuck her head out. Hancock’s stomach bottomed out because Maren looked as though she were on the verge of shattering. Steele was up and across the space before Hancock could ask about Honor.
“Come inside with me, please, Jackson,” Maren asked in a tearful voice.
She was the only one who called him by his first name, and it sounded odd when Steele fit the man’s personality to a T.
Hancock stood to protest, but Maren held up her hand. “She’s resting peacefully. She won’t be aware of Jackson’s presence. I . . . I need him for a moment.”
Steele pressed in close, enfolding his wife in his arms, pushing them both into the room and closing the door behind them.
Maren burst into tears, burying her face in her husband’s broad chest.
“Don’t cry, baby,” Steele said in a desperate voice. It was a well-known fact that his wife’s crying brought him to his knees and made him as helpless as a newborn baby.
“She’s hurting so badly, Jackson,” she choked out. “They both are. Hancock was right. She’s shattered. She’s not there. There’s no fight left in her. She wants to die.”
Steele held her, stroking his hand up and down her back, offering her comfort he knew she wouldn’t find. She was good to her toes. Tenderhearted and sweet. Light and sunshine. All the things he wasn’t but experienced through her. With her. God, what had his life been like before her?
He glanced over his wife’s head to where Honor lay curled into a protective ball on the bed, and he winced. She looked like hell.
“What did that bastard do to her?” Steele asked, his voice dangerously low, rage rolling from him in waves.
“He tortured her. He used a cattle prod on her frequently. She has marks all over her body. She’s bruised. She’s been beaten. But Jackson, that’s not the worst of it. She’ll recover from her injuries. But she’s broken. She’s simply given up. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t hate. She doesn’t love. She isn’t angry. She’s incapable of feeling anything. She’s an empty shell, already dead except that only her heart still beats. But in every way that counts, she’s already gone.
“She isn’t afraid of being turned over to ANE. She accepts it. She welcomes it. God! She simply doesn’t feel anything. I don’t know if she’ll survive this. She tried to kill herself when Bristow tried to rape her. Both wrists are stitched and the cuts are deep. When she realizes she’s not being turned over to ANE, I fear she’ll simply finish the job and end her physical life, because her soul is already dead.”
“Son of a bitch,” Steele said, rubbing his chest at the sudden ache that gripped him. “That woman has been to hell and back. She survived in the face of impossible odds. She fought. She never gave up. But she obviously loves Hancock, and his perceived betrayal was able to do what nothing else could. Defeat her.”
Maren raised her tearful gaze to Steele’s. “And how can I walk out there and tell Hancock everything I just told you? Did you see him? As dead as she is, as devastated as she is, he is every bit as dead on the inside. He won’t survive this any more than she will.”
Steele cupped her chin gently in his hand and pressed a kiss to her lips. “You don’t.”
“He won’t accept that,” she said. “He’ll lose it. He’s already torturing himself with what Maksimov did to her. Not knowing is killing him.”
“You give him the basics. You tell him of her injuries. But everything you just told me, you don’t tell him. It accomplishes nothing, and in fact, it could compromise our mission in a huge way. Because he will completely lose it if you tell him everything you told me. He will be unstoppable. A liability. His only goal will be to take out the man who hurt her and the men who will hurt her. He won’t care if he dies. As you said, he’s already dead. But he could get a hell of a lot of us killed. We need him as calm and as focused as possible, so tell him only what you need to tell him and nothing more. I will not lose a single member of KGI because Hancock has lost his tenuous grip on his sanity and put our entire mission in jeopardy.”