Hicks sneered and pulled the man in close. “Don’t waste your time looking at them. They want you dead as much as I do. But I need information, so as far as you’re concerned, I’m your new best friend.”
Hicks gave an extra squeeze for effect, using his physical strength to enforce his message.
“My team—”
Hicks flexed his fingers, cutting off the man midsentence.
“Is dead. Now let’s try this again. Who sent you?”
“He’s turning purple, bro.”
Diggs unsheathed a long, wicked-looking knife, and used the tip to clean his fingernails. “Why don’t you let me have a go? I know exactly how many body parts I can remove without letting him bleed to death.” Diggs flashed a grin and the intruder’s struggles increased exponentially.
“Hey,” Juarez said, “looks like you may have hit the sweet spot, Diggs. But I don’t think Hicks is ready to turn him over just yet.”
Indeed, he wasn’t. Hicks had no intention of allowing someone else to squeeze information out of the weasel. “Damn straight,” Hicks said. “Besides, I think he’d rather have me question him than you. The last time you questioned someone, they couldn’t drive for over a month.”
Everything they were saying was a lie, but any good soldier knew interrogation was all about fear. Physical pain usually only produced words the interrogator wanted to hear, not necessarily the truth.
King, who’d been standing silently to the side this whole time, stepped close enough for the intruder to see him. “Neither one of you are going to get to play if Hicks doesn’t let the man breathe.”
Hicks opened his fingers and let the man drop to the floor. He immediately began gasping for air and clawing at the carpet as if he could dig an escape route into the floor.
Unable to resist the temptation, Hicks pulled his foot back and gave the man a solid kick to the hip, enjoying the satisfying crack. The intruder gave a half-gurgled scream and rolled onto his side. “I’ll tell you!”
Hicks squatted next to him, wanting to see his expression. The man’s narrow, beady eyes darted back and forth between Hicks and Diggs. “I—I don’t get paid enough for this shit. I was hired by a man named Reinhardt. Looks like a bulldog.”
“And what did this Reinhardt hire you to do?”
Hicks felt some of the cold fury in his bones morph into white-hot rage.
“To take out the girl. That’s it, man, nothing to do with this place. I don’t even know the girl. She was just our target.”
Hicks fought to keep his expression neutral, but the man had just sealed his fate. Any person who was willing to kill for cash didn’t deserve to live. But Hicks wasn’t through with him yet. “Did he tell you why?”
“Something about a clean history for his boss.”
His fingers itched to grab the man’s neck again. “Did this boss happen to be named Keeling?”
The guy paled considerably. “So, you know?”
“I do now.” And no matter how much he wanted to finish the job, he couldn’t strangle the man yet. He’d need him as evidence. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t cause him a little pain. Careful to keep his strength at half measure, Hicks pulled back his fist and let it fly. The man collapsed, unconscious but still breathing.
Hicks stood and faced his team. “Y’all up for a little excursion outside the compound?”
Juarez practically lifted onto the balls of his feet, bouncing in place in excitement. “Hell, yeah.”
“Good. I think it’s time we paid a little visit to the senator.” Hicks hefted the man over his shoulder and walked downstairs. “It’s a long story, but he’s the one who’s been after Whitney this whole time.”
“Dr. Averton is not going to like this,” Diggs said without a hint of remorse in his voice.
“I doubt she’ll mind when she finds out that he’s the one that’s been threatening her sister.” King picked up his pace and passed Hicks on the bottom floor, stopping in front of the hidden doorway to the lab. But before he held his hand up to the hidden scanner, he paused. “Does this mean we’re adding a resident to our household?”
Hicks couldn’t live outside of this place, not until he found out the truth about himself. And now Whitney knew everything about them. She could be used against them, and after all the commotion they’d caused over these past couple of days, there was no way their team hadn’t surfaced on General Rainier’s radar. The man had too many spies in too many places for that to even be a hope.
But did Whitney want to stay here with him?
Juarez clapped him on the back, “King, my man, I think that’s your answer.”
King just shook his head and slapped his hand on the wall, the scanner instantly sliding from his fingertips to his wrist. “This place is turning into a Motel 6.”
The other two chuckled, but Hicks was too busy worrying about whether or not Whitney would want to live with him. They loved each other—of that he had no doubt—but he’d never even come close to living with a woman before. And he lived close enough to his teammates’ quarters for them to hear every sound they made in bed. Hicks pulled up short halfway down the stairs. “I think it’s time we started using the third floor.”
Diggs opened the door at the bottom of the stairs and then waited on Hicks to pass through before he kicked it shut again. As they walked down the dimly lit hallway to the lab where they’d left Whitney, Diggs said, “Then you get to clean up the bodies.”
18
Whitney wrapped her arms around her stomach and hovered in the doorway of the back room of the lab, feeling like she was intruding on an intensely private moment. Melissa managed to blend into the background—even in pajamas, she carried the air of a doctor, hooking Caroline up to various monitors and studying their readouts.
All the while Hicks’s teammate, Reaper, an enormous and extremely scary-looking man sat on a chair two sizes too small for his frame next to Caroline’s bed, cradling her hands and stroking her cheek.
It was a little uncomfortable, and on top of that, she couldn’t stop worrying about Hicks and the rest of his teammates. From the few, very brief reports Melissa had given her, they’d managed to trap the intruders on the third floor. But after that, Melissa had gone all doctor and focused solely on Caroline, thereby leaving Whitney in limbo. Her nerves felt so raw she wanted to rip out her hair and scream, but instead she forced herself to stand there quietly, cognizant she wasn’t alone in the room.
Finally, after an indeterminate amount of time stretched past, Whitney couldn’t keep silent any longer. “Melissa, I don’t know much about this kind of stuff, but shouldn’t we have heard something by now? Gunfire? Shouting?”
Melissa didn’t pay a lick of attention to her, she just kept buzzing around the room, turning on computers and monitors and pulling out equipment.
“No—” it was Reaper who finally answered, his deep, gravelly voice making Whitney jump, “—you won’t hear anything. We don’t need guns to take out the enemy.”
As he spoke, he kept his gaze glued on Caroline, whose petite form appeared so small in that hospital bed.
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to bother you and your…wife, I’m just worried about Hicks.” She bit her lip and looked over her shoulder, wishing for the thousandth time that Hicks would come striding through the door and take her into his arms.
“It’s okay, I get it. You love him. Like I love her.” Reaper continued to stroke Caroline’s cheek so gently it almost brought tears to Whitney’s eyes. “And she’s not my wife. Not yet. But she will be.”
Whitney eased deeper into the room, seeking to distract herself from her worry. “How did you two meet?”
Reaper finally turned to look at her and Whitney was startled to see the raw, burning emotion on his scarred face. If she’d met this man anywhere outside of this room, she would’ve run the other way. But it was obvious this man would give up his very life for his woman. And that wasn’t something to be feared, but respected.
&nbs
p; “She saved my life, and I saved hers. She was being held prisoner by the man who used us as an experiment. You see, Caroline has very special blood. It’s what they used to make the serum that gives us our…enhancements.”
Reaper glanced back down at Caroline, who still had her eyes closed. Her breathing was fast and shallow, which Whitney knew probably wasn’t the best sign, but she was definitely alive. “How awful. How long was she held prisoner before you found her?”
“At least six months. As a matter fact, if it weren’t for your sister, Caroline would probably be dead. We’d all be dead.”
Whitney cast her sister a quizzical glance and Melissa finally looked up, blinking as if just now remembering she wasn’t alone. “If it weren’t for me, you might not have been in this mess in the first place.”
Reaper frowned. “If it weren’t for you, Dr. Winters and General Rainier would still be experimenting on us like lab rats.”
“I’m sorry, but who is General Rainier?” Whitney asked.
Reaper’s black eyes turned into soulless mirrors. A shiver worked down Whitney’s spine. He no longer looked the part of the doting lover. This man was a deadly assassin, capable of killing without hesitation. It was all Whitney could do not to back up a step.
“Rainier is the man who’s now responsible for Project Mayhem.”
And from what Whitney could gather, he was number one on the team’s hit list. “And where is he now?”
Whitney almost felt sorry for the man. With a group of men like this coming after him, he surely wouldn’t live out the week.
“We don’t know. After we destroyed his lab, he ran. Disappeared completely off the radar, but he’s out there somewhere and he’s hunting us. He needs us to make more serum.”
At that moment, the entrance to the lab opened and King and Diggs strolled in, looking like they’d been out on a Sunday stroll, not taking down a group of cold-blooded killers.
And then Hicks came through the door, a man’s unconscious body tossed over his shoulder. Whitney’s heart leapt and her feet followed, carrying her across the room. Hicks dropped the man on the ground and held open his arms, and she went into them, hugging his neck fiercely. She said, “I was so worried.”
“No reason to be,” he said gruffly against her neck. “We took care of the problem.”
“Almost,” King said.
Whitney pulled back so she could see Hicks’s face. The burning anger she’d seen earlier was still there. “What are you not telling me?”
“Don’t worry, I told you I would take care of it,” Hicks said.
“Some senator hired a hit team to take you out,” Diggs offered as he collapsed into a rolling chair nearby.
Hicks shot him a murderous glance, Whitney grabbed his face and forced him to look at her. “So, it was him?” How could he treat her so cavalierly, after all this time? Try as she might she just couldn’t wrap her brain around it. This was nothing like the man she thought she knew.
Why would a man who’d directed so many resources to charity, helped so many children, and donated so much of his own money to nonprofits try to kill her to keep her quiet?
But Hicks and the other men didn’t seem to entertain a shadow of a doubt that he was responsible. No matter how much she told herself that Senator Keeling had a kind heart, it wouldn’t change the facts. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to pay a little visit to the senator.”
“When?”
“Right now.”
Whitney tightened her grip around Hick’s waist. She might’ve let him go off to fight the assassins with his team, but she had no intention of letting Keeling off without giving him a piece of her mind. “I’m going with you.”
“No, you’re not,” Hicks’s reply came so fast it took her a second to process his words. And when she did, she planted her fists on her hips and glared up at the man she’d come to love. “Yes, I am. If you try to leave me here, I’ll follow you.”
“Whitney, for Christ’s sake, it’s not safe. That man tried to take you out twice. He’ll kill you as soon as he sees you.” Hicks crossed his arms and puffed out his chest, trying to intimidate her.
She lifted her chin, daring him to try and stop her. “Then you’re going to have to keep me safe. I’m not letting him off scot-free, not without making him face me first.”
“You’re not going, and that’s the end of it.”
Less than an hour later, Whitney sat huddled in the back seat of a nondescript black SUV, sandwiched between Juarez and Diggs. King drove and Hicks sat in the front passenger seat, casting angry looks back at her every few seconds.
Ultimately, she’d only been allowed to come if she would promise to stay in the car and wait on them to bring Keeling to her. The plan was to ambush him at his residence. Juarez had managed to pull up satellite images, along with a pretty decent set of floor plans, and even the security guard’s schedule.
Part of her knew it was crazy to put herself at risk like this, but she was too furious to see reason. She’d done everything that bastard had asked her to do. Spanked his ass for almost a year and kept her mouth shut. And he’d taken her money, her home, and her job. Tried to take away her very life. She had no intention of allowing Hicks to take care of her problem.
“We’re almost there,” Hicks spat out, his words as choppy as his temper. “Remember the deal. We bring him to you. If you break from the plan, I’m going to turn around and haul your ass back to the house. I’ll tie you to the bed if I have to.”
She rolled her eyes and said, “You promise?”
Diggs chuckled, “Man, give up now. You ain’t never gonna win an argument with this one.”
The tension in the car ratcheted up another notch, all of it coming from the front passenger seat.
But the men in the back didn’t seem to care at all. Juarez joined in, “I like her.”
Whitney couldn’t help but preen a little at that.
King slowed the vehicle and pulled off on a side road, parking the SUV just inside the edge of a thick growth of trees.
Hicks put his hand on the back of King’s seat and turned, ignoring her completely while he addressed Juarez. “Good, then you can stay here and guard her.” With that, he got out of the car and slammed the door.
“Hey!” Whitney said, but her protest was ignored. All of the guys got out of the car and shut their doors, leaving her sitting alone in the middle of the back seat. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but from Hicks’s hand gestures she figured it wasn’t pleasant.
A few seconds later, he ducked his head inside, his deep blue eyes no less formidable than they had been a moment before. “Juarez is going to stay here with you and make sure you’re safe. Do us all a favor and do what the man says.” He paused a long moment and just stared at her. When Whitney didn’t respond, Hicks blew out a sigh and said, “Please.”
Whitney rewarded him with a brilliant smile. “Anything you say, hon.”
She followed that line with a long, hard kiss, taking hold of his hair and holding him to her. When she finally broke free, Hicks’s eyes glowed with an entirely different kind of intensity.
“You drive me crazy.”
Incapable of resisting the temptation, she leaned in for one more kiss and then said, “I love you.”
His annoyed expression broke and he gave her a heart-stopping sideways grin. “I love you too. Promise me you’ll do what Juarez says. If anything happened to you…”
Her insides melted. “I promise. Now go and watch your back. Remember, watch out for Reinhardt. He’s a real bastard.”
19
Hicks, Diggs, and King moved like silent apparitions through the thick grove of trees lining the back of Sen. Cory Keeling’s property.
They’d purposely waited an hour before leaving the compound to attack, so the sun could set and darkness would provide them with more cover. Although each man had enhancements, all of which included some level of speed, they were still capable of screw
ups. Screw ups could get someone killed.
That was why they’d each strapped on bulletproof vests before leaving the compound, and much to Whitney’s annoyance, Hicks had locked one around her chest too. Moving in this quickly was a risk. He preferred to have more time to plan and map out all the possible scenarios. One of the guards could have changed the schedule. Keeling could’ve figured out Hicks had taken out his entire team and called in for backup. And so on, and so forth.
But as they neared the chain-link fence edging the woods, Hicks spied the guard walking around the secondary perimeter, right on time. “Damn, Juarez nailed the time right on the head.”
“Don’t tell him that, his head is big enough as it is.” Diggs lifted the air gun and pulled the trigger, sending a non-lethal dart straight into the guard’s neck. It contained enough tranquilizer to knock out a grown man for a good twenty-four hours. The man didn’t even know what hit him, he simply dropped where he stood, unconscious and out-of-the-way.
Hicks took off at a crouched run, pulled out his portable blowtorch and made a man-sized hole in the fence. He kicked out the new door and shouldered his way through, crouching to lift the radio off the guard’s waist before he continued on to the large brick and wrought iron fence that formed the inner perimeter around the senator’s country estate.
Hicks braced his back against the wall and bent his knees. Then he threaded his fingers together, forming a basket with his hands. Diggs came toward him at a run, planted his foot in his palms and leapt. Hicks tossed Diggs the rest of the way over the twelve-foot wall and listened as his teammate landed on the other side.
King came next, a foot taller and fifty pounds heavier, but Hicks was still able to easily boost him over the fence. Then he ran back about twenty feet and took off at a full-on sprint, launching himself into the air at the last minute. He landed on the other side, having completely cleared the black metal spikes lining the top of the brick wall. This was the other side of his enhanced strength—he couldn’t just lift people and things; he could also lift himself.
He quickly ran for the cover of a cluster of bushes lining the wall to his right, squatting down in the camouflage with his teammates. “Juarez said the staff maids usually stick to the bottom floor at this time of night. Keeling’s wife is at the beach and he should be in his bedroom.”
Mayhem's Desire: Operation Mayhem Page 18