“No. I have a job to do.” Ryker ran a hand through his still-wet hair, Zara filling his mind. “I do want to talk to you guys, but I’m only here because I thought you’re breaking in would give me information I need right this second. Give me your number and we’ll talk when I’m done.” Zara and Greg were his priority, and time was ticking away. He tossed the phone back to Jory.
Matt frowned. “What kind of a job?”
Ryker studied him. He didn’t have time to bring somebody new in, but the guy seemed to know a lot more about Madison than he did. “Dr. Madison has kidnapped one of my clients as well as my, ah, my woman.” The word girlfriend seemed wimpy, and even though woman seemed a bit much, she held his heart and soul in her hands, so my woman was the absolute truth.
Jory drew back. “What? Why?”
“I don’t know. Just tell me what you know about Madison, please.” He tried to keep the panic out of his voice.
“Okay.” Matt launched into motion for the back door. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll ride with Ryker.”
Ryker stopped. “You’re not coming with me.”
Jory moved around the couch to clap an arm around Ryker’s shoulders. “You’ll get used to Mattie. He’s a little bossy.”
Ryker hurried for the door, not having much of a choice. “I don’t want your help.” Although, the guys could fight.
“Oh, we’re not letting you out of our sight now that we’ve found you,” Jory said urgently. “I should apologize now for what complete pains in the ass we’re about to be. How do you feel about Montana?”
“The state?” Ryker tripped over his own feet, something he never did.
“Yep.” Jory steered him through the back door. “You kind of clumsy?”
“No. Just freaking out.” Ryker stomped down the snowy steps. “My guard is down, too.”
Jory nodded and gingerly turned Ryker toward the fence.
Ryker pulled free. “Knock it off. I’m not a klutz.”
“Uh-huh.” Jory gestured Ryker through the rickety gate, where Matt waited on the other side. “The fact that your guard is down, when you surely have excellent instincts, must tell you something, right? You can trust us.”
Did Jory have odd instincts like Ryker did? Was it a family thing? “Right. I always trust guys holding a picture of my possible twin. Always.”
Jory chuckled. “I knew you’d be funny. I’m usually the funny one, and it’d be nice to pass that baton.”
Matt frowned. “You aren’t the funny one. Not at all.”
“Sure I am.” Jory seemed to hand Ryker off to Matt. “You take him. I’ll grab the truck and meet you at his place.”
“Nobody needs to take me.” Ryker blew out cold air and tried to step away from the duo. “I’m not going to ditch you guys, because you have answers I need.”
Matt leaned in, his face going hard and losing any semblance of friendliness. “Listen, Ryker. I haven’t slept a decent night in four months, since we learned you were out there, by yourself, with a kill order over your head. Now that we’ve found you, no fucking way are you getting out of our sight until we know you’re okay. Now take me to your rig or I’m going to beat the shit out of you, and then you’re going to take me to your rig.”
So much for brotherly love. Defiance and the need to hit something rose fast and hard in Ryker. It’d be a damn good fight—that was for sure.
Jory shoved him in his uninjured arm and knocked him an inch to the side. “Come on, you two. Stop acting like morons. We have to get to Madison.”
Ryker turned on him, his fists clenching. “What? Are you the peacemaker?”
Jory slowly nodded, his gaze solemn. “Yep. Always have been. And you don’t want to cross me, brother. When we were sparring in there, I was pulling my punches because we needed you alive for questioning.”
Ryker leaned in. “So was I.”
Jory grinned. “Good to know you’re not a pussy. We need to move now.” Even though his voice was congenial, a thread of concern rode through it.
The entire neighborhood spun around Ryker. Was this vertigo? “Fine.” He turned and headed down the street to his truck, then suddenly paused. “Wait a minute. Kill order?”
“Yep.” Matt caught up to him. “I’ll explain as we go. For now, where’s your truck? It’s cold out here.”
Ryker slowly moved back into motion. “Who wants me dead?”
“The good news is, not us, because then you would be.” Matt slung an arm over his shoulders. “Welcome to the family, Ryker.”
“I don’t believe this,” Ryker muttered. “I already have two brothers, Heath and Denver.”
“Interesting.” Matt stiffened but kept up the long stride to the truck. “I wonder if any of us share a mother. It’s nice to have three more brothers.” He crossed to the passenger side and jumped in. “If you’re a brother to one of us, you’re a brother to all of us.”
Ryker forced himself to keep calm as he moved into the truck and started the engine. His phone buzzed and he read the message from Heath. They’d found Zara. His body electrified. “Hold on, Matt. It’s going to be a fast drive back to my place.” They’d have to get to the airport quickly.
It was time he and Dr. Madison faced each other again.
* * *
Less than twenty minutes later, Ryker was fully suited up and riding in a borrowed helicopter. He’d quickly introduced Heath and Denver to Matt and Jory, noting belatedly that Denver and Jory had a remarkably similar jawline. Had Dr. Madison created a bunch genetically linked men? It was too creepy to contemplate.
He shook his head to get back to reality. “You guys have a helicopter.” He sat back in his seat and tugged down his bulletproof vest. Oh, the vest was his, but the helicopter?
Matt nodded from the pilot’s seat. “Yeah. We own a security firm that provides services in other countries, from protection to infiltration. Our headquarters is far away from our homes, and we keep the distance on purpose. We hire a lot of ex-military guys to do the work and pay them well.”
Sounded like they made good money. “The business can’t be traced back to you?” Ryker asked.
“No,” Matt said shortly.
Ryker tamped down on emotion. The helicopter had been loaded with enough weaponry to take out a small country, but he had kept his comfortable Glock and knives instead. Denver sat in the co-pilot’s seat while Jory and Heath bracketed Ryker.
Zara had to be all right. Hopefully Greg was sitting tight, but Ryker knew that if the kid found an opening, he’d take it.
“Who are you guys?” Ryker asked bluntly. Sure, they shared features and possibly genetics, but how could he trust these guys when Zara and Greg’s lives were on the line?
“We were born in a black-ops pseudo-military organization in Tennessee and trained as soldiers from birth by Dr. Madison and a guy named the commander who’s now dead. There were different groups, different brothers, all genetically marked by eye color. We have gray eyes. We blew the place up almost six years ago and got free, but Madison is still looking for us,” Matt answered.
Fuck. This was all real. Ryker shook his head as tension rolled from Heath. “I’m getting that we were all Dr. Madison’s experiments. But why did you grow up together knowing you were brothers while Denver, Heath, and I just ended up together, not knowing we were engineered or created by the same scientists?”
Matt growled in a low rumble. “The answer is Isobel Madison was studying us all in different environments.”
“That is screwed up,” Ryker said, eyeing the storm clouds outside the helicopter. “She’d show up periodically at the boys home where we lived, and she’d test us mentally, emotionally, and physically.”
“She thinks she owns us,” Matt said simply. “She created us, raised us, and wants us back. She’s sick, man.” He cleared his throat, pulling back on the throttle. “We think Madison has thrown in with a group called Protect, which wants to rid the world of all genetic testing and scientific advancement and kill u
s all.”
“That’s the opposite of what she does,” Ryker said, frowning and grabbing the side of the craft when Matt banked a hard right.
“Yeah. Our guess is that she’s just using them for resources to get to us, and to whatever other creations she has out there. She lost her main resources when we blew them up four months ago,” Jory said.
“Sounds like you enjoy blowing things up,” Ryker said thoughtfully.
“We try.”
Ryker’s thoughts rushed through his head. What about Greg? His upbringing sounded similar to these guys. Man, he wanted to trust them. “What about our parents? Do you know them?”
“Our genetic donors are unknown. We all share the DNA of a supersoldier with gray eyes who is dead, and we each have different egg donors, as far as we can tell. Either scientists, hookers, poor people, or just donors. We’ve never been able to track any of them down, and we gave up a long time ago,” Matt said tersely.
“Oh.” Ryker rubbed the center of his chest. “I’ve been looking for them my whole life.” What about the odd senses? “Do you have super hearing and strength? Know stuff you shouldn’t?” Ryker said, his voice hoarse.
“Yep. Good ole Isobel Madison spliced all sorts of special genes into us when she made us,” Matt said. “You’re not alone, Ryker, and it’s time you leveled with us. What exactly is going on here?”
It was all too surreal, but all that mattered was saving Zara and Greg. Time to trust. “I have a client who wanted to find Madison, and that brought up my childhood, so we set a trap, you got caught in our trap, and here you are.”
Matt stilled. “Somebody hired you to find Madison?”
“Yes. We have a business called Lost Bastards Investigative Services, and we find the lost. Have a good track record.”
Matt glanced back. “We need to know about your client. Who is it?”
Ryker glanced first at Heath, who nodded, and then at Denver, who shrugged. All right. It was best if they all knew what they were getting into. “A kid named Greg hired us to find Dr. Madison. The kid was nearly desperate.”
“Kid?” Matt swung around.
“Watch the sky,” Ryker snapped as the helicopter banked.
Matt righted the craft. “Did you say a kid named Greg?” His voice was a little too loud through the helmet comms.
Jory shook his head. “Couldn’t be, Mattie. Take a breath. It couldn’t be Greg. We dug up his grave, remember?”
Ryker’s chest heated. “Um, the kid showed us a disturbed grave in Utah where he was supposed to have been buried. Dr. Madison sent him on a mission, he failed, and she told him he had to get home on his own. It took a while.”
Emotion suddenly choked the cab. Matt kept his gaze straight ahead while Jory watched his brother, worry in his deep gray eyes.
“Should we call home?” Jory asked.
Matt shook his head. “No. Not until we get him back and make sure it’s him.”
Jory nodded.
Heath gave Ryker a concerned look. “I take it you know of Greg?”
Jory glanced at his brother and then breathed out. “Yes. We rescued three boys from Dr. Madison who’d recently lost a brother named Greg. Figures it was another mind fuck by her. Shit. We reburied him on the ranch.”
Sounded like another crazy experiment. “We’ll get him back,” Ryker vowed.
Jory met his eyes and nodded. “Yeah.”
Blood or not, Ryker had just met Matt and Jory, and it was a stretch to ask them to put their lives on the line. He cleared his throat. “We can go in and meet you later. You have families at home and shouldn’t take this risk.”
“You are family, dumb-ass,” Matt said, peering out the front window at the raging storm. The helicopter pitched, and he quickly righted it.
Even so, this was dangerous. Ryker turned toward Jory.
Jory held up a hand. “Family is family, and we all go in.”
Ryker nodded, his throat closing. Heath gave him a supportive nudge from his other side. Jesus. “Thank you,” he said into the comms for everybody.
A series of nods acknowledged everything else he hadn’t been able to say.
“What do you know about the Protect group?” Ryker asked.
Matt banked left. “They’re a fundamentalist vigilante group, fully armed and dedicated to eradicating the world of all genetic experimentation. They subsist on donations and I suspect illegal methods like drug running and fraud. They’ve had some training but not anything close to ours.”
“The Protect group isn’t well trained enough to have taken Greg and Zara.” Jory breathed out. “Those guys had to have been former soldiers of the commander, so Dr. Madison has at least a few of them still loyal to her after all these years.”
“Even after we shut down Protect and Madison, we’ll never be out in the open. Just not going to happen,” Matt said. “I know you’re trusting us right now, and we’re doing the same. We have to start somewhere.”
Ryker nodded. “Understood.”
“You’d like the property in Montana,” Matt said, partially turning his head. “Lots of acreage, trees, water, mountains.”
“And security,” Jory added. “Some we invented.”
Ryker pushed back in his seat, trying to focus on the conversation and not the fact that Zara was in his enemy’s hands. “I’m not moving to Montana.”
“We’ll see,” Matt said.
Jory snorted. “Denver and Heath, you guys would like it, too. You’ll see.”
Ryker cut him a look.
Matt twisted a knob and flew incredibly low. “We’re five minutes from landing, and once we’re down, it’s a three-mile hike to the lodge. If I land any closer, they’ll detect us.”
“You’re assuming the Protect group or Madison doesn’t have the technology to track us?” Ryker asked.
“Affirmative,” Matt said. “They have numbers and dedication, but they’re lacking so far in other areas. Greg could give them an edge in that direction, which is another reason he should still be alive.”
The kid had to be alive. Ryker had no option but to trust these men as they began to descend into a snowy clearing in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere. Dusk disappeared and the night pressed in on them. Matt landed the helicopter and shut it down.
Silence suddenly roared in.
Ryker waited until everyone had exited the craft and inserted top of the line comm devices into their ears. “All right. Head out.” Both Zara and Greg had to be all right. He’d promised to protect them.
Banishing all emotion, he launched into a run.
Chapter
37
Zara struggled against the ropes binding her to a metal chair, but they were tied tight. She was back in the same cinder-block room, and a definite chill pierced the air. The exposed light bulb swung gently back and forth. It was like every torture room she’d ever seen in action movies. A shiver escaped her, and she jerked against the bindings again, wincing as the rope cut into her wrists.
The door opened, and Isobel Madison walked in. She’d donned a thick blue parka and furry brown boots with matching gloves.
“Bitch,” Zara muttered, her bare feet freezing.
A man followed Madison, carrying another chair. Tall and broad, midforties, blue eyes and blond hair. He was fit, and an unreadable gleam filled his eyes. Unlike Isobel, he wore only a thick T-shirt over dark jeans. He shut the door and eyed her. “Pretty,” he said.
Isobel nodded.
The guy unfolded the chair and placed it in the far corner. Madison hopped almost happily over to sit down, primly crossing her legs and drawing a tablet out of her front coat pocket. She tugged off her gloves and shoved them into her coat. “Zara, this is Sheriff Elton Cobb.”
That’s what she’d figured. “This is slightly against the law, Sheriff.”
He lifted a muscled shoulder. “Eh.”
She swallowed and tried to banish the raw terror climbing up her throat. “What do you want?” she asked.
His upper lip twisted. “Oh, so much. But for now, we’re gonna talk. Where’s Ryker?”
“I assume he’s trying to find me right now,” she said evenly. If somehow she could get past Cobb and out the door, how was she going to find Greg? Was his outbuilding close by? It seemed like they’d be built close together. Well, hopefully. “How did you find us, anyway?”
The backhand came out of nowhere and threw her head to the side. Agony exploded in her cheek—again. Tears pricked her eyes and she gasped, turning back around.
“I ask the questions,” Cobb said calmly, his nostrils flaring.
Oh, the man needed to die.
“Or I do,” Isobel said, tapping something on her tablet. She glanced up, her foot bobbing. “How did you meet Ryker?”
Zara frowned. “My firm hired him for a case.” Duh. “We hit it off.”
“How much of his past has he told you about?” Madison asked.
Zara blinked. “He has a past?”
The next hit came open palmed to the opposite side of her face. She rocked back, and tears filled her eyes. Her face ached from her jaw to her forehead, and her skin kind of itched. “That was so not necessary.” She glared up at the sheriff, whose breathing had begun to get heavy.
“Lose the sarcasm,” Madison advised.
“That’s my strongest characteristic,” Zara shot back.
Cobb laughed low. “I like her.”
Wonderful. Zara’s eye began to twitch.
“Back to my question. How much of Ryker’s past do you know?” Madison asked.
“None of it,” Zara said wearily. “Just that he, Heath, and Denver grew up together and got out of a bad situation.”
Madison tapped on her tablet. “No mention of the murders?”
Zara turned her head to face the woman directly. “What murders?”
Madison focused on her, both eyebrows lifting. “Interesting. I thought the two of you were intimate.” She tapped her lips with a finger. “Maybe those three aren’t capable of love. I didn’t think the Gray brothers were, either, but all four of them found mates.” She began to type wildly on the tablet.