“Where are the original pictures kept?”

“Whitney has them all. He has places we can’t go and keeps the pictures and files with him.” The voice turned sly. “He only shares with me.”

“Where does Whitney stay?”

“If I tell you, he’ll kill me.”

“I’m going to kill you right now if you don’t tell me.”

“He has rooms that no one can get into on the fourth level, down near the tunnels.” He looked up at the staring faces of the women. “Aren’t they beautiful? They like me to touch them and take their pictures.”

Ken’s stomach lurched, threatening to spill the contents. He slid the knife away and caught the man’s head in both hands, wrenching hard, hearing the satisfying crack. Whatever legitimacy Whitney had once had, this house and this man were a testament to his growing lunacy.

I’m going to torch the house.

Damn it, Ken, don’t do anything crazy.

It’s got to come down. I’ll make certain it looks like the doc had a little accident with the gas, but this house has to burn. Because no one else was ever going to see what this perverted excuse for a man had done to those women. He was going to blow the son of a bitch into the sky, and when they investigated, they would find the doctor with his candles and matches and a loose gas hose.

He couldn’t look at the walls as he worked, feeling slimy surrounded by the images of the women Whitney had experimented on and allowed a very sick man to abuse. Who had stood up for Mari as a child? As a teenager? Jack and he had been in and out of a lot of foster homes and their father had been a rotten, jealous drunk who thrived on beating them, but they’d had their mother and then each other and finally a kind woman who had stood up for them when no one else would. His heart ached for Mari. He was going to be sick if he didn’t get the hell out of there, his stomach churning and knotting in revulsion as he set the scene, careful to leave nothing that would indicate anything but an accident.

A slow leak no one caught, the house filled with gas, and the doctor, cavorting with his music and candles, na**d in front of his obscene shrines, blown to pieces along with his house, quite tragically.

Get the hell under cover, Jack. They’re going to comb the countryside when this thing goes off.

I’ll cover you.

I’m going in. I need to get to her.

Damn it, no. Jack snarled it. I mean it, Ken. Get your ass back here. You’re not that dumb.

I’m exactly that dumb. The thought of Mari locked down on that examining table, pinned like an insect while a sick pervert photographed her and touched her was more than he could bear. He had to get to her and hold her in his arms. It might be the biggest mistake he’d ever made, but he was going to her. She wouldn’t be alone tonight.

Jack swore, a blistering round of curses that Ken ignored. He went out of the house and reset the alarms, leaving everything exactly the way he’d found it. Instead of making his way back up to the top of the bluff to join his brother, he began to crawl through the grass to reach the largest building. There was a way in, a duct, a conduit, a tunnel—anything left behind in the cement he could use. There was always a way.

He used sound, a lesser talent he had and one he wasn’t the best at using, but he could bounce it off the cement walls searching for a hollow spot. The cement was thin on top of a spot near the south-facing wall. There were boxes and wooden pallets and crates of all sizes piled around. Obviously the supplies were dropped off nearby and unloaded. He restacked the larger crates and boxes loosely around him to help provide a small shelter while he worked.

It took a half hour to break through the thin layer, and another few minutes to dump the concrete into the hollow space he found inside. He knew there were often wide areas reinforced with rebar that were left open in between the walls of larger, mainly military compounds, and once inside, no one would hear or detect him as he moved around, hopefully making his way to the lower levels.

I’m in. He found a crate and slid it over the opening to hide the hole. It would have to do and probably wouldn’t be noticeable with so many crates piled around the area. Just as he slipped inside, pulling the crate over him, the doctor’s house blew, exploding outward, sending debris raining down and red orange flames billowing with black smoke high into the air.

Men burst out of the guardhouse and began racing in all directions, silhouetted by the raging fire. An alarm began to sound, breaking the silence of the night along with the roaring of the inferno. Ken paused to watch the house burn. Glass showered down and black spots appeared on the walls, then were consumed by the hungry flames. There was intense satisfaction in knowing no one could get near the place, even as they began to try to tame it with water. It was too late. He’d opened every door to ensure the gas had filled the house and it would look like Dr. Pervert had tried to light one of his many candles, accidentally setting off a bomb and blowing himself across the room, where he struck just right to break his neck.

Dogs burst out of cages somewhere, from a hidden tunnel to his left. They had known there were dogs, but they hadn’t known the animals were kept inside. From his vantage point he could see the door swinging open to allow the dogs to escape into the space between the double fences. Whitney was taking no chances that his women might take advantage of the chaos and try to escape.

If they have one tunnel, they’ll have more, Jack observed.

Are you clear? Sooner or later they’ll get around to sending the dogs to look for someone, just to be on the safe side. I don’t think Whitney takes much for granted.

I’m fine, Jack assured. You know he has to have a couple of escape routes. When this place is taken down, he doesn’t intend to be on it. You know he prepared for that. He must have a dozen more laboratories just like this one.

I figured as much.

There was a small silence while they listened to flames roaring in anger, threatening the foliage and nearby trees.

That’s a hell of a beautiful fire, Jack commented.

I want the walls burned, inside and out. He had floor-to-ceiling pictures of them all, Jack. Even when they were children. Whitney not only knew, but encouraged him. It was one of the sickest things I’ve ever seen.

Damn good thing the son of a bitch is dead then.

Ken took one last look at the raging flames, wishing it would take the sick feeling from his stomach, but his belly still rebelled, and he had to fight not to vomit every time he recalled the floor-to-ceiling wall of Mari’s pictures. Her life chronicled by a perverted deviant. He wanted to smash something.

It was unlike him to give in to his violent emotions. When he went out on an assignment, it was always business. He was completely devoid of all feeling, uncaring of anything but getting the job done. When someone tried to kill him, he rarely took it personal; it was part of who and what he was. But this . . .

You’re falling in love with that girl.

Go to hell, Jack. It isn’t that. She needs protection.

So do the other women. Are you feeling the same way about them?

How can I fall in love with someone I just met?

You’re shallow. I’ve always told you that, but you never listened to me.

It isn’t love. She just—He broke off abruptly. It wasn’t love. He didn’t dare love. Love could turn into something really ugly with a man like him. He wanted her—wanted to take care of her and see that she had a better life.

Who was he kidding? He wanted to wake up with her in his arms, with her legs wrapped around his waist, his body grinding hard against hers, his mouth at her br**sts and kissing her, hot, long kisses that never ended. It’s sex. Straight-up. I get hard just thinking about her. Straight-up sex.

You lying bastard. Jack snorted in derision. You walk away from sex. She isn’t just sex to you, bro. She’s the f**king Fourth of July and Christmas all wrapped up in one neat package. Kenny’s in love.

Keep it up, Jack, I’ll tell Briony you stuck a gun to her sister’s head.

You wouldn’t dare.

Damn it. He refused to love the woman. He just wouldn’t do it. He wasn’t going to take a chance that he could turn ugly on her. He’d just keep her. Tie her to him. He was very experienced at sex and she wasn’t. Keep her hot for him, wanting him. That was the key. Forget love. Jack was full of it. That way was disaster. This way he could keep her forever and never feel so much as a twinge of jealousy. Keep his emotions out of it and be safe.

Ken wiped sweat from his face and began to walk in the narrow corridor of cement, finding his way through the maze with nothing but Mari’s touch to guide him to her, because one way or another—he had to reach her.

Chapter 15

Mari caught the bars of the window on her door and shook them, her gaze on the two men circling each other.

“We don’t need the guns,” Sean said.

“No, I can beat you to death with my bare hands,” Brett answered.

“Stop,” Mari entreated. “Brett, stop.”

“Shut up, Mari,” Brett slammed a hamlike fist against the door, sending her heart into overdrive. “I’ll take care of you later.”

The camera in the corner made a slight whirring noise as it changed angles to better capture the fight between the two men. Mari’s breath stilled in her lungs.

In that moment she suddenly understood what was happening. The entire compound was a laboratory experiment, and everyone in it was a participant. Whitney wanted emotions running out of control. He wanted to see if he could manipulate men into a killing frenzy. He wanted to see if he could indoctrinate them to murder their own children if the child didn’t meet the stringent standards for supersoldiers. And he wanted to see if the mothers could have a strong enough hold on the men to keep them from doing so. He was testing human nature. Maybe whoever was funding him didn’t know the extremes he was going to, but he’d already killed one of the seven women he’d begun training, and if Whitney had his way, the others could just as easily die.

Mari and her sisters were not soldiers. This had never been their home. They were lab experiments, nothing more, and if they wanted to survive with body and soul intact, they had to escape. They had to quit talking about it and make it happen—and soon. Immediately.

“Sean, don’t do this. It’s what they want—what he wants.” She felt the need to save him, a fellow soldier, a man sworn to do his duty and carry out orders. She’d always respected him as a soldier, respected his abilities even when it had become clear he no longer considered her and the other women part of the unit. Whitney had done something terrible to him to change his personality, to turn him into another Brett, brutal and without the ability to decipher right from wrong.

“Back off, Mari,” Sean hissed, eyes on his enemy.

“If you do this, there’s no going back. He’ll have you for murder. Don’t you see, you’ll be as much a prisoner here as I am.” It was already too late for him; she had known it almost the moment he’d come for her and he’d acted so out of character. The man with a ready laugh was gone, and a stranger had taken his place.

He had made a choice; even after seeing what Whitney’s experiments did to the men, Sean had still made the choice to participate.

“I already am,” Sean said, clenching his teeth. “He isn’t going to torture you anymore.”

Mari felt tears burning behind her eyes. Knives had replaced guns and there was no way to stop what was going to happen. Somewhere, this was all being recorded as if it were a video game instead of real life. A man with dead eyes watched them all with no more compassion than he would have for insects. He played with their lives and recorded everything diligently, all in the name of science and patriotism. Sean was so wrong. Whitney was still torturing her. He’d taken another person she cared about away from her.

She knew no other life and neither did the other women. They had talked of escaping, had planned for months, but until now they’d always found a reason to wait, to hold on one more day. In spite of their training and their enhanced physical and psychic abilities, the simple truth was they were all afraid of what they would find outside the compound.