Deadly Silence (Blood Brothers #1)(49)

“Yes.” Greg seemed to be barely breathing. It was costing the kid to be honest. What did he fear so badly? What he was saying was beyond belief.

“Did they hurt you?” Ryker asked, anger beginning to take hold for the lost boy.

“No.” Greg didn’t move. His eyes hardened.

Lie. That was definitely a lie. Ryker let it go, not wanting to flay the kid open any more than he already was. “Where are your parents?”

“Dead.”

Ryker tried to concentrate on the kid’s emotions, but they were so jumbled he couldn’t get a grasp. “When did they die?”

“When I was too young to know the difference.” Now the tone turned matter-of-fact.

Lie or truth, Ryker couldn’t tell. “All right. So Madison somehow found you and your brothers and took you to some weird depot in Utah.”

“Pretty much.” Greg kept his gaze level.

Lie? Yeah. That was a lie. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me everything.” Ryker eyed the burning metal on his screen.

“Sure you can. I’ve told you plenty,” Greg said, his voice low.

“Who’s the commander?” Ryker had been holding that one close and he almost hated to spring it on Greg.

Greg swallowed and looked younger for just a moment. “He’s the guy who ran the depot and dated Madison. Well, I don’t know if they dated, but they were together, if you know what I mean.”

Ryker nodded and bit back a wince. Hopefully Greg hadn’t seen the same stuff Ryker had with Madison and Cobb. Seemed to be her MO, considering she’d screwed Sheriff Cobb. “What exactly did the commander train you to do?”

Greg’s lids lowered. “Hand-to-hand, weaponry, hacking skills. You know, your basic military school shit.”

Something told Ryker it was a hell of a lot more than that, and his chest ached for Greg. “If Madison tested Heath, Denver, and me. . . all at a boys home, that’s weird, right?”

“Not really,” Greg said. “I’d bet anything she had a hand in you guys all three ending up at the same boys home. No way is that some sort of weird coincidence, you know? She loved her experiments.”

Nausea swirled in his gut. Were they all experiments? Ryker clenched his jaw and tried to find a controlled place inside him. Had Madison messed with his life like that? Had she maneuvered his entire existence into where it was right now? Bile rose in his throat, but he kept his face stoic and decided to underplay for the kid’s sake. “This is getting beyond odd.”

“Saying all this is true, how did you get free?” Heath asked.

“I didn’t. I went on a mission, failed, and Madison left me on my own overseas. Said I could get back myself or just die.” Greg hunched into himself. “I made it back, but the place was already destroyed. I have to find my brothers.”

“How many brothers do you have?” Heath asked, kicking back in his chair when his vibe was anything but relaxed.

“Three.” Greg’s voice cracked.

Are your brothers also looking for you?” Ryker asked. If they’d set up searches on the Internet, he may be able to create a trap for them to find and then he could backtrack and locate them.

“No.” Greg swallowed.

“Why not?” Heath asked softly.

The kid breathed out. “They think I’m dead.”





CHAPTER


17


Dr. Isobel Madison leaned over the desk, her perfectly manicured nails clicking rhythmically across the keyboard. She had more traps set on the Internet than Lewis and Clark could’ve dreamed about, but her prey, unfortunately, was as brilliant as she’d made her traps. So far, she’d been unable to find the men she sought.

But they wouldn’t be able to hide from her forever.

They were hers and hers only. Oh, she’d shared other creations with her one true love, the commander, and he’d trained them, but the Lost boys from the home were all hers. She missed them, truth be told.

The air-conditioning kicked on in her small office, and she stopped typing. “I thought you had that fixed,” she said, turning away from the computer.

Todd Polk looked up from the stack of papers in his hands. At about fifty years old, the survivalist was getting a little soft around the middle and would soon outgrow his usefulness. Isobel had convinced him to shave his buzz cut a month previous, and now he looked more the part of a soldier, at least. His jaw was square, and his eyes were blue and rather blank. But he had a fighting force, and that she needed.

She smiled at the man who’d get her what she wanted, and then she’d throw him away. “It’s November, darling. We live in Colorado, and it’s snowing outside.” For the love of all that was holy. “The A/C?”

He nodded, his gaze dropping to her chest. “I’ll take care of it.”

Good. “You do take such good care of me.” She allowed her voice to lower to a purr even as her mind went elsewhere.

His eyes flared. “My soldiers are getting restless. We need to make a strike or conduct a mission soon.”

A mission. How silly. The home-trained militia wouldn’t know a true mission if it rode in on prized ponies and whinnied a bit while spitting caviar.

For the moment, she needed the survivalist, and it was almost too easy to manipulate him. “There’s a lab in Denver conducting experiments dealing with stem cell research. If your men would like to blow up the facility, that would make a statement.” Not that his cause interested her in the slightest.