He sent his brother a small, sad smile and lifted his other hand to shield Mari’s eyes. I’ve always loved you, Jack. I don’t want you to have to do this. His finger tightened on the trigger.

“No!” There was fear, agony, in Jack’s voice. “Damn you, no, Ken!” He leapt forward, a hundred years too late; even with his enhanced strength and speed, he could never get there in time.

The way Ken had drawn the gun was smooth and practiced. There was no hesitation, only resolve, as if he had known someday he would have to use that last line of defense for his brother. Even as he lifted the gun, Mari was already in motion. She threw herself off the bed, every move carefully calculated. Her head rammed Ken’s arm. She felt the heat of the explosion as the bullet left the gun, far too close to her face. The sound was deafening next to her ear, but she latched on to his wrist and took both of them to the floor. She landed hard, unable to protect her leg.

She heard herself scream, the cry torn from her throat, but she hung on grimly to Ken’s arm, pinning it with her body weight when she was seeing stars, afraid she’d pass out before Jack got to his twin.

Ken didn’t struggle. Instead he wrapped his arm around her and put his mouth against her ear. “I tried to save you. Whitney has my profile too. He knows me inside, where no one else does, and he thought it would be fun to pair you with the devil.”

She turned her head to stare into his strange-colored eyes. “The devil wouldn’t have tried to take his own life in order to keep me safe.”

There was a moment, one small heartbeat, when she glimpsed raw emotion in those silver eyes and her heart jumped in response.

“You’ll never be safe again, Mari, not while I’m alive.”

Jack kicked the gun across the floor away from Ken and sank down beside them, his trembling hand going to his brother’s shoulder. Mari hadn’t thought he could be so shaken.

“What were you thinking? Ken, you should have let me help you.”

Ken shook his head, gathering Mari closer to him, reaching for the sheet to once again cover her body. His hands were impersonal, as if his mouth had never tasted her flesh, brought her to a fever pitch of sensual pleasure without even trying. “There’s no way to help me, Jack, and you know it. You can only help her. You know what you have to do to keep her safe.”

“This is bullshit, Ken. I can put a bullet in her head and be done with it.”

Mari raised her hand. “Do I get a vote?”

“You’re bleeding all over the place again,” Ken said. He stood, lifting her into his arms, the pain driving the air from her lungs. “You can’t kill her, Jack. You have to protect her from everyone—even me.”

Mari tried desperately to cling to consciousness. The movement wrenched her leg, made her stomach protest with a violent heave, but she refused to faint, needing to hear every word.

Jack shook his head. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

“What? You didn’t see me acting like an animal? You know exactly what it’s going to be like—a long drop into hell. I’m not doing that. I refuse to be him. I’d rather be dead.” Ken placed Mari back on the gurney, careful to avoid jarring her leg. “Take a look, Jack, see how much damage she did.” He stepped away from her side, not looking at her, not touching her, his voice as empty as his expression.

“You look.” Jack reached down and snagged the gun. “Are you going to be stupid again?”

Ken refused to answer. Jack stepped closer to the gurney and suddenly jammed the weapon against Mari’s head. “I swear to you, on our mother, if you even think about doing that again, I’ll blow her brains out.”

Ken instantly came to life, his face darkening, eyes narrowing to slashing silver slits. “Get the f**k away from her or we’re going to have trouble, Jack.”

“She can bleed out for all I care, Ken. Anything happens to you, anything, by your hand or someone else’s, she’s dead. You got that? I give you my f**kin’ word on that. She’s dead. You know me. You know I don’t ever stop. You think long and hard about that before you try this shit with me again.” Jack withdrew the weapon, threw it to Ken, and shoved past him to stalk over to the doorway.

Ken stood for a moment just holding the gun, staring after his twin. He said nothing, just stood in silence, his knuckles white where he gripped the butt of the gun. Finally, he shoved it inside the holster under his arm and took a deep, calming breath before looking at the blood seeping into the sheet.

Mari inhaled sharply, trying to find a way to ease the tension. “Well, that went well. I can see that he does have a bad habit of wanting to shoot people. He wasn’t kidding.”

“No, he wasn’t.” Ken pushed the sheet off her leg. “Did you have to land so hard? You really made a mess.”

“It hurts,” she admitted and reached out to catch his arm. “You didn’t hurt me. I participated. It wasn’t all your fault, you know. I could have said no.”

He shook his head and she felt the tremor that ran through his body. “You have no way of understanding what’s going on here.”

“I have more understanding than you think I do,” Mari said.

Jack leaned his hip in the doorway, glaring at both of them. “Then tell us.”

She flicked him a quick glance. “This is about Whitney’s breeding program of course. We’re all caught up in it. This is one big experiment. Is Briony pregnant?”

Jack stiffened. “Why would you think that?”

“Because Whitney was desperate for me to get pregnant. He was furious with Brett for not getting the job done. Once I found out she was with you, it wasn’t all that hard to realize he wanted her in the same condition.”

Ken shook his head. “It’s far more than that.”

“We already knew what he was doing, Ken,” Jack said. “We’ve known since he sent his team to retrieve Briony. He wants the babies.”

“He did what?” Mari pushed at Ken, demanding an answer.

He ignored her, shaking his head at his brother. “Don’t you understand? He knows. He did this. He knows about me.”

“You aren’t making sense,” Jack said.

“He means Whitney,” Mari interpreted.

Ken nodded, brushing his face with his hand, smearing Mari’s blood along his jaw. “I’ve always suspected he was psychic. He knows about me. He knows what I’m like and he set this up. It can’t be anything else, Jack. He knew if he sent her to me what I’d do.”

“He thinks he knows you, just like he thought he knew me. I still have Briony. And I’m fine with her. You see us together; I might get a little jealous now and then, but I’m not like him and you aren’t either.”

Mari looked from one to the other. “Who is him? You’re no longer talking about Whitney.”

“I am,” Ken said to Jack. His voice was a low, soft whisper of sound, but the impact it carried was lethal. “I am exactly like him.”

“That isn’t true, Ken,” Jack denied.

“The hell it isn’t,” Ken snapped. “Do you know what I wanted to do to her when I knew another man had been inside of her? Touching her? Hell, Jack. I don’t even know her. I don’t know the first thing about her. I’m not in love. She’s not in love with me; how could she be? But it didn’t matter. I wanted to pound into her, make her forget anyone else, punish her for daring—daring—to allow another man to touch her that way. I wasn’t gentle with her; I didn’t want to be. I wanted her to know who she was with.”

Jack hit the back of his head against the doorjamb. “This is insane.”

“I’ve always known he was alive, living in me. I’ve always known it. And that son of a bitch Whitney knew it too. He wants to see what will happen to us. How his little game will destroy our family. Fast. Slow. A big explosion, a quiet bullet to the head. He’s just sitting back and watching us, Jack. The bastard is wired to us some way. He wants to force the issue to see if you’re up to the job of putting a bullet in me.”

“And what good will that do him?” Jack asked.

“He wants to see what it does to Briony, to see if both of you are strong enough and worthy enough for your kids to be his supersoldiers. Mari is expendable to him; she always has been. Why do you think he tried to get a baby out of her by someone else? He didn’t want his work to be a total loss.”

Mari turned her head away from both of them. She could hear the anguish in Ken’s voice, and it ripped her up inside. He didn’t love her. How could he? She didn’t know whatever was in Ken and Jack’s past, but she heard the ring of truth in Ken’s voice and things were making sense. Whitney detested her because he couldn’t control her very well. He had to use threats against the other women to keep her in line. And she was strong, always a threat to him and his programs. She asked too many questions. Whitney had been furious when Brett was unable to get her pregnant.

She tried to separate herself from what he was saying. It was all happening to someone else. A woman she didn’t know. She was a soldier and needed to get back to her unit. It’s where she belonged—what she understood. She wasn’t the type to lie helpless, tears burning in her eyes, while a man used her body, but she’d done just that, helpless to resist Ken’s mouth and hands.

With Brett, it was a fight every single time he came near her. She was committed to defending herself and her right as a person to choose whom she wanted to be with. With Ken, she desperately needed him near. Every moment she spent in his company worsened the addiction to him, until she felt frantic with wanting his touch.

“Could Whitney do that?” she asked, searching her memory for an unguarded moment he might have let something slip. “What’s your last name?”

“Norton.” It was Jack who answered, his eyes still locked on his brother.

Again her heart jumped. She recognized the name and she should have known. Snipers. Not just any snipers. The elite.

Ken wiped the blood from her leg, all the while avoiding touching her skin. Pride should have kept her from looking, but she was fascinated by the way his body moved, by the glide of his hands, always so careful to keep from contact. The memory came out of nowhere, triggered by the mesmerizing ripple of muscle beneath skin. Whitney’s face contorted with anger.

Damn the Nortons anyway. How did you let them slip away from you, Sean? I made it easy and you still blew it.

It won’t happen again, Doctor.

Sean had been standing close to her while Whitney jabbed her with a needle right before one of their missions. She remembered the surreptitious brush of his hand to encourage her. She’d always hated needles, and only Sean had known that little weakness.

Ken stiffened, his fingers circling her foot like a vise. “Who is he?”

Mari blinked, glanced at Jack and back to Ken. “I don’t know what you’re asking me. And you’re hurting me.”

Ken let go of her as if she’d burned him, wiping his palm along his thigh. “The man you were just thinking about. I caught the impression of him. Big man, standing by Whitney. You like him.”

“You caught all that just by touching me?”

“Damn it, answer me,” Ken ordered.

“Ken, back off,” Jack warned.

“You had your chance, Jack.” Ken shot him a hard glare. “Now we all have to live with the consequences.”

Mari laid her head on the blanket stuffed under her head, her eyes narrowing on his face, lending her a kind of tunnel vision. She recognized the familiar signs of her temper kicking in. “Wait a minute. I have a horrible feeling I’m beginning to understand what’s going on here. Call me slow, but for some reason, although you’re men, I expected you to act with intelligence.”