“Where is she?” Honor’s mother said hoarsely, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Is she all right?” her father demanded. “Why isn’t she here? Why are you here and not her? What aren’t you telling us? Is she hurt?”

“Why the hell weren’t we informed before now?” Brad bit out angrily, his eyes ablaze with relief but also suspicion.

Kyle held his hands up to silence the torrent of conversation.

“I need you to listen to everything I have to tell you. It’s very important and it’s why I arrived first. She’s on her way here now. She’s not very far out, but I needed to come ahead to . . . prepare you.”

“Prepare us?” Honor’s mother whispered, her voice thick with tears, and now fear.

Sensing the importance of what Kyle had to say, everyone went silent and leaned forward, concern etched into their every feature.

Kyle gave them the details—most of them—of Honor’s escape and recapture. He gave an accounting of everything that had happened. Except anything relating to Hancock. Hancock was Honor’s to either reveal or not, but he’d not take that choice from her.

“I had to force an IV on her while we waited until it was safe to reunite you with her. She gave up,” Kyle said in a pained voice. “She was fierce. Brave. Courageous. I’ve never met her equal. But in the end, it was simply too much. Too much pain and torture and worse, the final loss of hope that had kept her sustained for so long. She doesn’t believe I’m telling her the truth, that she’s free. She believes me to be taunting her—psychological torture—delaying her eventual physical torture and death that she’d come to accept. She’s broken, ma’am,” he said to her mother.

In a quiet voice, he told them what they had already deciphered for themselves. “Your daughter is not the same young woman she was when she left here, and I want to prepare you for that. She’s retreated deep inside herself. She’s starved. Refuses to eat. I had to force the IV or she would have already died. She’s wounded in multiple areas, in multiple fashions. She’s going to need your love, support and, above all, your patience. She needs medical care. But most of all, she needs a reason to live.”

“Oh my God. Oh my God,” her sister said, her sobs echoing through the room.

“She’s alive!” one of her brothers exclaimed. “She’s coming home!”

“We’ll help her,” her father vowed. “Whatever she needs. Whatever it takes. I will not have the miracle of my daughter back only to lose her again. I won’t let it happen.”

“There is nothing I won’t do for my baby,” her mother said fiercely. “Nothing.”

Kyle nodded. Yes, he thought. Her family would bring her back. He could see the love and resolve in their eyes. They were fierce. He could well see where Honor got it from.

But who would save Hancock?

•   •   •

HONOR cautiously opened her eyes and then slammed them shut again, fear shuddering through her fractured mind. Hope—something she’d been denied time and time again until she’d refused to allow herself to even entertain it—was insidiously creeping through her veins, accelerating her pulse until she was nearly breathless. She shook her head. No. Not again. Never again. She’d given in to hope one last time and it had destroyed her completely. Some lessons were learned the hard way.

When the SUV turned onto Oakwood Street, she lost any and all of her carefully constructed control and burst into tears. Her hands flew to her face, covering the guttural sobs tearing from her throat. She rocked back and forth as they drew closer and closer to . . . home.

“Stop!” she cried. “Oh God, please stop!”

The driver immediately slammed on the brakes and Honor bent over, putting her head between her knees as she struggled for breath, panic scraping her insides raw.

Kyle Phillips, who had returned to their “waiting” point and slid into the seat beside her, giving the driver the order to go, put his hand on Honor’s back and rubbed up and down and then in gentle circular motions.

“Honor? Are you going to be sick? Are you all right? Come on, honey, you have to breathe for me.”

“I can’t go in there,” she wept.

She lifted her tear-drenched gaze to Kyle’s surprised one.

“I don’t understand,” he said, clearly puzzled by her reaction. “They know you’re coming, Honor. It’s why I made you hang back. I wanted to prepare them. I didn’t want to just spring you on them.”

“They can’t see me this way,” she cried. “Look at me!” She made a sweeping motion of her emaciated body, the still-healing wounds, the fading burn marks and the still very vivid gashes on her wrists, a match to the ones on her ankles, but at least those were hidden.

“This will kill them,” she whispered. “I can’t do this, Kyle. Please, if you have any compassion, any mercy, you’ll tell them I’ll talk to them on the phone. And I’ll see them. After I heal. I’ll eat. I swear it. I’ll do whatever you tell me to do. But please, God, don’t make me go in there like this.”

Kyle looked gutted, his eyes swamped with so much sympathy and understanding that it spurred another round of gut-wrenching tears.

Gently, he pulled her upward and then into his arms, hugging her to his chest, rocking back and forth in a soothing manner.

“I understand how you feel, Honor,” he said quietly. “I swear to you that I do. But, honey, they know what to expect.”

“You told them?” she asked in a horrified voice.

“Not everything,” he said even more gently. “Only what pertained to your physical and psychological condition. I never mentioned Hancock. That is yours to tell or not. But think of this from their point of view, Honor. They’ve just been told that the daughter they thought was dead is very much alive and will be home shortly. Of course they’re upset and angry that you endured so much. But what they want, what they need most right now, is to see you. To hold you. To have proof that you’re alive. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

He tugged her away from his chest so he could cup her chin. He rubbed his thumb over her cheek and forced her to look into his eyes.

“Now, show me the Honor Cambridge who escaped and evaded capture by the most powerful and ruthless terrorist group in the Middle East. You will not walk into your home ashamed with your head down. Your family is overcome with joy. They are even now counting the seconds and watching for our vehicle to pull into their driveway so they can see you. Touch you. Hold you. And tell you how very much they love you. Would you deny them that?”

“No,” she choked out. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. You were kind to me, but I learned that betrayal follows kindness, and so I wouldn’t acknowledge you. I couldn’t. It was the only way I could survive because I couldn’t allow myself the one thing that had the power to completely destroy me. Hope.”

“Shhh, you will not apologize. I would serve with you any day of the week, Honor Cambridge. You have the heart of a Marine, and that’s a fact. Now, can I tell Anthony to resume driving?”

She smiled and then impulsively hugged him, craving what she’d long been bereft of. Human touch. Contact. Comfort. Not since . . .

No, she wouldn’t go there. What she’d shared or rather what Hancock had taken from her didn’t count. Because it wasn’t real.

As if sensing her need for that contact, humanity, he hugged her back ever so gently but no less encompassing and for long moments he merely held her, allowing her to clutch at him while she collected herself.

Finally she pulled away and braced herself, and allowed hope and relief to flood the very depths of her hollow soul.

Excitement began to burn as she caught sight of her house at the end of the cul-de-sac. She half expected her entire family to be on the front lawn waiting, but Kyle had said he’d gone ahead to prepare them, which likely meant he’d told them how fragile she was.