Maya Banks - Forged in Steele

“I had hoped that if I removed Maren from the equation, Caldwell would refocus his attention, forget about her, move on. I underestimated his obsession with her.”

Steele’s eyes narrowed. “So the great badass Hancock fucked up.”

“If I’d fucked up, I would have left Maren there,” Hancock said, coldly meeting Steele’s stare.

“Anyway, when Maren was there, Caldwell kept canceling his meetings with Maksimov, citing his surgery and that he wasn’t fully recovered. Even well after the normal recovery period, Caldwell kept blowing him off, and Maksimov is not a man you want to piss off.

“As I said, I’d hoped that if I removed Maren, Caldwell would refocus and move forward and I’d be one step closer to taking them both down. I set up the meeting with Maksimov and then that morning, Caldwell simply disappeared. I went through his correspondence, his computer files, anything I could lay my hands on.

“Then Maksimov shows up and there’s no Caldwell and Maksimov didn’t take that very well. His men worked me over and told me to deliver a message to Caldwell when and if he showed up again. It wasn’t a threat. It was a promise. Caldwell is a dead man.”

“Not if I get to him first,” Steele growled.

“Well, that’s the thing. You’re likely to do just that.”

Hancock glanced at Maren, reluctance in his expression as if he didn’t want to tell her what he was about to say.

“He knows where your parents live. It was evident he’d done extensive research on them and the area in which they live. He’s likely searching for you, but as unstable as he is, he’s likely to completely lose it if he doesn’t find you there.”

All the color leached from Maren’s face. Her eyes were huge, stricken with instant fear. She twisted from his grasp and lunged for Steele’s cell phone, her fingers fumbling with the buttons.

Steele got to her and forced her to look at him. “Breathe, Maren. Call your mom. Make sure everything’s all right. Then let me talk to her. I’ll tell your mom and dad what they need to do and I’ll have Sam get the plane there for them immediately. I don’t want you to worry. We’ll protect them and we’ll protect you.”

She nodded, some of the agitation fading from her eyes. She punched the buttons on the phone and then brought it to her ear, tapping her foot impatiently as she waited. For several long moments, she stood there, her lips drooping more and more as the silence extended.

“Mom, it’s me. Please call me back as soon as you get this. It’s urgent.”

Then she hung up the phone.

“Voice mail,” she said unnecessarily. “Oh God, Steele, what if he already has them?”

He went to her, slipping his hands over her shoulders and then rubbing up and down her arms in an effort to soothe her. “We don’t know that, Maren. Don’t panic. We’ll try again soon. Just keep it together until we know more, okay?”

She nodded, but the worry didn’t ease in her eyes.

Steele turned to Hancock. “You have a hell of a lot of answering to do. First, how did you know Maren was here and where to find me? Did Rio give you my location?”

Hancock’s lip turned up in a glimmer of a smile. “I didn’t contact Rio since I knew Maren wouldn’t be with him. Would have been a waste of time. I have resources you can’t imagine.”

“Who the hell are you working for?”

Hancock regarded him steadily. “Does it matter who signs my paychecks? Titan is no more. There’s talk we went rogue. We just don’t happen to be on Uncle Sam’s payroll any longer. But it doesn’t mean we’re traitors or that we don’t have the best interests of this country in mind. You’re so derisive of me—of us—but how the hell are we any different than your KGI? Just because I don’t work for Uncle Sam doesn’t mean I don’t still have access to contacts and intel, and it doesn’t mean we don’t take private assignments that no one else has the resources to touch. We aren’t bound by politics and bullshit foreign policies. We aren’t afraid to get our hands dirty if the cause is righteous. But what’s righteous to one may not be righteous to another. And we don’t just work for U.S. interests. We take out any threat to national and world security. Think what you want of me, Steele. I don’t give a fuck. But for a man I’m trying to help, you have a shitty way of showing gratitude.”

Steele bared his teeth. “The only goddamn thing I’m concerned about is the safety of Maren and our child. Yeah, my child. Not fucking Caldwell’s baby. Maren and that baby are both mine, so you stay the fuck out of my way when it comes to protecting her because I don’t give a goddamn what your mission is, how fucking righteous it is or how it tips the scale in world politics. This is my family we’re talking about here, and I’ll take you and whoever the hell else out in order to protect my family.”

Hancock lifted an eyebrow in a mocking gesture. “And they say you’re the ice man. You and I have a lot in common, or so I’m led to believe. But maybe we’re both a lot more passionate than we’re given credit for. But where you’re a black-and-white kind of guy, I’m so buried in gray that I’ll never see the sunshine again. My soul is damned, but as long as at the end of the day I can look in the mirror and know the world is a better place for what I’ve done, then I don’t give one fuck what you or anyone else thinks.”

Steele’s lips curled in a sneer. “You don’t know fuck-all about black and white.”

Hancock regarded him a moment. “No, I suppose that wasn’t an entirely accurate statement. I know about what went down with Brumley and your team member P.J. Rutherford. Or is it Coletrane now? Heard they got hitched. And I know she took out Brumley’s men before killing him in cold blood while you stood by. So yeah, I’d say you have no room to judge me, Steele. You’ve crossed the line, but I suppose that’s okay when you’re the one crossing it as long as no one else does, eh?”

“Fuck you, Hancock. I don’t owe you shit. You protected Maren, but then you could have damn well prevented her being taken in the first place, so don’t expect my gratitude for the weeks she spent in that bastard’s hands, pregnant and terrified. She should have never been in that position in the first place, especially since you supposedly exerted so much control over Caldwell and wielded that much influence. You could have put a halt to his wanting to take Maren, but you didn’t because it advanced your mission. And say what you want about the choices I’ve made, but I’ve never willingly put an innocent person in harm’s way to achieve my goals.”

“Ah, so you didn’t send your teammate undercover in a situation where she was vulnerable and without the backup of her team. Okay.”

Fury seared through Steele’s mind. Blinding rage mixed with guilt, guilt he’d lived with ever since that night when P.J. had been savagely attacked. He lived with that every goddamn day. He regretted that decision and the fact that he’d failed P.J. and the rest of his team. And having it thrown back in his face by this smug bastard made him want to put his fist right through Hancock’s teeth.

“Stop it! Both of you!” Maren cried. “This isn’t helping! I don’t care about what was or is, or what either of you have done in the past. It doesn’t matter! What’s done is done. I just want to know that my parents are all right and that that monster doesn’t have his hands on them.”

Steele turned, regret already registering. She was right. This wasn’t the time or the place, and he was letting his own worry and fear take over. But Maren didn’t need this from him or Hancock. She needed reassurance and she needed his support. He wasn’t going to fail her. He wasn’t going to let someone he was responsible for down again. He’d live with regret for the rest of his life over what had happened to P.J., and he’d be damned if he’d ever let anything happen to Maren and their child.

He ran a hand through his hair and sent her a look of apology. Then he turned back to Hancock.

“So why are you here? Just to warn me and then you’re on your way back to whatever hole you crawl out of when you pull a mission?”

“I’m here because I’m no more willing to let Caldwell get his hands on Maren than you are. Maksimov may have slipped through my fingers—this time—but Caldwell needs to go down. I’ll just have to find another way to take Maksimov out. And I’ll do it. No matter how long it takes, no matter what I have to do. He’s going down. Caldwell is going to take first priority at the moment. He’s unstable, and with his wealth and connections, there’s no telling how far he’ll go to get what he considers his back. He won’t care who he has to hurt as long as the end result is him getting what he wants.”

Maren went even paler until Steele worried she’d drop. Her eyes were huge against her colorless face.

He opened his mouth to offer her reassurance, but he knew they’d be empty words. He had no idea what they were dealing with, where Caldwell was, and as Hancock had said, there was no way of knowing just how far he’d go in his single-minded pursuit of Maren.

“I’ll call Sam. He was going to talk to a local security firm about protection for your family. He was going to have it in place so that when they went home after visiting you they would be protected. But I’ll call him and get him on it immediately. We’ll find your folks and get them here as fast as we can. Once they’re here, we can work out a plan that includes round-the-clock protection for you as well as them.”

She looked a little relieved and then the phone rang, causing her to jump. She glanced down at the phone and then her face lit up. “Steele, it’s my parents’ number! Oh, thank God!”

MAREN yanked up the phone, relief so overwhelming that she had to brace herself on the bar because her knees were shaking so badly.