They arranged the furniture on the first floor so that it would direct traffic to the staircase and up to the top flight of stairs. Reaper had opted to stay behind with Caroline. If the intruder’s breached the interior of the house, the design would help funnel them up to the third floor, the least used space in the entire mansion, where the team had already set up traps for any person brave enough to attempt a breach from the ceiling.

The third floor was where they’d stowed old furniture from the previous inhabitants. Dust covered the walls and the picture frames. Sheets were thrown over various items, protecting them from the dirt particles in the air. Hicks and his team had chosen a large, cluttered room down the center of the hallway on the west wing to make their stand. With the camouflage of so many sheet-swathed pieces of furniture and boxes, it would be simple and fast for them to ambush the intruders.

Their goal: to kill all but one of the men. The final one standing would be saved for interrogation.

Juarez had remained downstairs near the front door, hidden in the darkness. Out of the entire team, he was the stealthiest and they needed someone to ensure the attackers followed the path they’d set up for them.

“They’re in the library,” Juarez’s whisper-soft voice came through the hidden earpieces they all wore.

Since they were after his woman, Hicks was running the operation. “Good, stay back and out of sight.”

“Scared I’ll take all the action?” Juarez replied and then fell silent. The intruders were getting closer; Hicks could feel it.

He scooted back another inch on the floor. He was tucked in behind a tiny sitting couch covered with an old white sheet. They’d killed the power to all three aboveground stories and blacked out the windows so they were in total darkness. While Hicks and his team would see easily in the dark, the intruders would be blind.

Diggs was nearby, hidden next to an antique dresser. King was across the large expanse of what had to be an old ballroom. They would pull a classic flank maneuver, choking the men off from both sides. Hicks clutched his knife in his hand. He’d use his gun if he had to, but the bloodlust inside him needed an outlet. He preferred hand-to-hand combat. With his enhanced strength, any man stupid enough to get within touching distance was as good as dead.

Juarez’s voice came through his earpiece. “Six-man team. Moving up past the second story now.”

Hicks tensed in anticipation. “Everyone ready for a little fight?”

“Remind me to thank your woman,” Diggs said. “I’ve been itching to get out and do something. She brought them to us.”

King remained silent, as was his way. He was even less talkative than he’d been before the experiment, and that was saying something, but he was the team’s anchor. The fallback guy. Anytime one of them got into a tight bind, King was there to pry them loose. Formidable before, he was nearly invincible now.

Hicks sensed the moment the intruders arrived on the third floor. He closed his eyes and forced his other senses outward, listening to their nearly silent footfalls on the thick carpet as they moved from room to room. They were moving in classic formation—two-man teams breaching and clearing one room at a time. Six men altogether.

As he’d expected, they were well trained. Just not as well trained as his team.

No one spoke when the first team entered the room and split, one moving left and the other moving right. They were all equipped with night-vision goggles, which would help them some, but their vision would still be limited in comparison with Hicks’s team.

Hicks was closest to the door, so he would make the first move. He waited until the second team entered, not wanting to risk the possibility of any of them escaping. The final two would hang back outside the door, as they’d been doing all along.

They were obviously killers here to murder Whitney. A cold rage settled into his bones. These men would never see the light of day again.

Hicks rose up behind the closest intruder, placing his knife at the man’s throat and yanking. The man’s blood hit the floor just before Hicks eased his body, now lifeless, to the ground.

Diggs moved next, rising twice as fast as a normal man. He snapped the neck of the intruder nearest to him. By the time Hicks turned to King, he was lowering a third body to the floor.

The fourth man held his gun high and slowly swept the room near the farthest wall, completely unaware that half his team had just been taken out. King and Diggs melted back into the furniture, disappearing from sight.

Hicks dropped to his stomach and began silently making his way across the room. When he honed his hearing, he could make out the intruder’s erratic heartbeat in his chest. The man sensed the danger but hadn’t yet figured out he was next. That he’d signed his death warrant the moment he’d agreed to take out Whitney.

Hicks bared his teeth and sheathed his knife. He rose up like an apparition and the intruder spun to face him. Hicks grabbed the man’s gun and ripped it from his grip, tossing it across the room. King caught it in midair and tucked it into his belt before ducking back down.

The intruder drew in a sharp breath, ready to shout out a warning. A warning that was choked off when Hicks wrapped his hands around the man’s neck. Barely winded, Hicks lifted him from the ground by his throat, enjoying the way he flailed like a dying fish out of water.

The intruder’s foot glanced off Hicks’s knee, but he barely felt the blow. He was too busy enjoying the way the man squirmed as his grip tightened. Snap. The intruder stopped moving and Hicks eased him to the floor, careful not to alert the remaining two men.

Juarez moved in and took out one of the remaining two guards before Hicks reached the doorway. The sixth man, the only one left alive, dropped his weapon and took off running. Hicks leapt forward, wound up like a hungry animal, grabbed the man by the back of his shirt and flung him backward. The assassin hit the ground hard and rolled. Juarez was already there and waiting, his gun pressed to the man’s temple. “I wouldn’t go for that knife if I were you.”

“What do you want?”

Hicks ate up the distance between them in seconds. Careful not to break this one’s neck, he grabbed him by the throat and lifted him in the air, giving him a taste of panic. “Who sent you?”

“No one,” the man choked out, clawing uselessly at Hicks’s hand, looking around at the rest of the men surrounding him.

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.”