Total Surrender (6 page)

“Ignore me back.” Piper firmed her face, her gaze on the computer screen, and her profile to him. Her too gorgeous, smooth-skinned, beautiful profile.

“I don’t know what you think you’ve learned about me, but listen to your instincts.” Jory lost his smile. “Don’t trust the commander, Piper.”

She lifted her chin. “I trust him a hell of a lot more than I trust you.” Her face clouded, and she rubbed her arm.

Jory narrowed his focus to the light purple bruise near her elbow. “What happened to your arm?” he asked, his voice going soft.

She blinked and stopped rubbing. “Nothing.”

“Piper.” This time he allowed the thread of command to echo in his tone. For the past two days, he’d studied her, and she responded to the tenor. Whether she wanted to or not.

She swallowed and turned back to the computer. “We should concentrate on saving your life.”

Yeah, that was important. But the idea of somebody putting that mark on her pretty skin propelled him to his feet, and he didn’t stop to wonder why. “I asked you a question.”

She shivered. “Mind your own business.”

“I’ll hound you until you tell me.”

Her shoulders hunched, and she kept her back to him. “Why do you care?”

Her question hinted at vulnerability, but he pressed on. Things were heating up, and the clock ticking down the deaths of his brothers echoed in his head. Perhaps it was time for honesty. “I don’t know why, but I do care. The idea of somebody hurting you will keep me up at night. So tell me.”

She turned around, emotion sparking in those expressive eyes. “None. Of. Your. Fucking. Business.”

Fire rushed down Jory’s spine, and his jaw clenched. “Did the commander bruise you?”

“Of course not,” she scoffed.

“The boyfriend, then?” Oh, he’d find and kill the sonuvabitch the second he got free. Well, the second after he deactivated the chips and saved his brothers. Then he’d take out the guy who’d hurt the hacker.

Piper’s lips trembled in a sardonic smile. “I can take care
of myself.” She tilted her head to the cage. “Better than you, actually.”

His growl tasted like frustration, because damn, the woman had a point. With a sigh, he dropped back to his chair. “What’s your plan today?”

She glanced at a delicate wristwatch. “Supposedly I’m getting some help soon with working on this code. We need to hurry up and save your butt.” Her fingers began dancing across the keys.

The woman was a joy to watch. Even from the side. His fingers itched with the urge to touch her, to see if her skin was as soft as it had been in his dream. Yet all he could do was watch and wonder. So he let her work for about an hour, contemplating how her boyfriend should die.

Footsteps echoed outside the room, the door opened, and a young teenager loped inside.

Heat filled Jory’s breath, and his lungs constricted.

Piper turned toward the kid. “Um, hello?”

“I’m Chance, and the commander sent me to help you with the computer?” The kid strode to the second computer, all sinewy, trained, smooth muscle, not sparing Jory a glance. He moved with the grace of an animal, the symmetry familiar. Way too familiar.

Piper rubbed her nose. “How old are you?” Doubt filled her voice.

“Old enough, lady.” He pulled out a chair and sat, his shoulders appearing relaxed. The low tenor tickled Jory’s memory.

Jory stepped back and dropped to the cot, his mind swirling. Buzz cut, fighting shape, deliberate movements. Even the contour of the boy’s head seemed familiar. “Turn around, kid,” he croaked out.

The kid stiffened. “Screw you, buddy.”

Jory’s feet slapped the ground as he leaped up. “Turn
around. Now.” This time authority rang in his voice, strong and sure.

The kid whipped around and jumped up, clearing the room to reach the glass. “What do you want, prisoner?”

Jory’s mouth worked, but no sound emerged. His breath whooshed out as if somebody had kicked him in the balls. So he stayed silent, trying to remain upright, as he looked into the kid’s eyes.

The kid’s gray, very familiar, Dean brother eyes.

P
IPER TYPED AWAY
on the keyboard, frowning as Chance’s fingers danced faster than hers. The boy hadn’t looked at her once and seemed more interested in the numbers flashing across his screen. “You’re very good,” she said.

“Yep.” He kept typing, creating a new code with fresh commands to bypass the old safeguards put into place. While he concentrated on reactivating the connection between Jory’s chip and the old computer program, Piper worked on her new program to see if she could forge a new wireless pathway to the chip. Plan A and Plan B both in motion.

“You’re an intern here?” she asked.

He shrugged.

Jory hadn’t said a word since the brief but odd interaction between them at the cell wall. Piper glanced to the side to see him lying on the cot as if asleep, every hard line of his body relaxed. She’d bet her last penny the man wasn’t really asleep.

When Chance stepped up to the cell, no expression had crossed Jory’s face. But something had happened. What, she truly didn’t know.

The door opened, and Franklin stepped inside, smoothly crossing the room to stand outside the cell.

Jory unfolded from the cot and stood on the other side. A moment passed when the two men stared at each other, neither moving, neither saying a word. Jory’s face remained hard and closed, and even his gray eyes remained veiled.

What type of silent communication were they having? Piper abandoned typing to watch what appeared to be two deadly predators sizing each other up. They seemed to be communicating in a silent mode of threat only they could decipher.

Franklin slid open the divider for lunch trays and took out a gun. Jory’s head lifted, and he kept the commander’s gaze. With nary a twitch, the commander calmly fired three darts into Jory’s stomach. Jory doubled over, shuddered, and dropped to his knees.

Piper leaped to her feet. Heat roared through her ears, and her lungs compressed. “Wh-What?”

Jory’s gaze flicked to her, and then his eyes shut. Almost in slow motion, he pitched face first onto the concrete. He landed with a loud thud.

Franklin whistled and typed in numbers on a keypad near the door. The cell door slid open.

Three orderlies rushed inside and dragged Jory onto a stretcher. One groaned as they carried him from the room.

Piper shook her head, her lungs seizing. “Why?”

Her father shrugged and strode for the door. “We need to conduct some tests, and we don’t require him to be conscious for these.” Without another word, he exited the room.

Piper swallowed and swiveled to face Chance, who’d continued to work through the entire action. “How are you still typing?”

He shrugged, his fingers tapping, his gaze on the screen. “Have work to do.”

She blinked and slowly sat down, her knees shaking. The entire scene had been violent, and yet Chance didn’t seem remotely affected. Her fingers trembled, and she stretched her hands out to the keyboard.

Enough of the secrets. She was a hacker, damn it.

Angling slightly away from Chance, she opened another window and began to tap. Layers upon layers of security hampered her, but she doggedly pursued information. Finally, she found the right section of the servers.

Within thirty minutes, she’d written a weak program, created a buffer overflow, and gained administrator privileges. This was much smoother than the brute force attack she’d employed previously in order to learn the computer program dealing with the kill chips.

Then she found the file.

Jory. Interesting. No last name listed. She pulled up documents listing his recruitment, training, and assignments. A photograph of Jory at eighteen showed him as already seasoned and hard, his eyes blank and his jaw appearing to be made of rock. Had he ever been happy?

The next few documents showed proof, with pictures, of his dealings with the Russians. Shit. She even recognized one of the Russian soldiers meeting with Jory from her time at the NSA. Definitely a bad guy.

Exhaling slowly, she closed the screens. Her father had told the truth.

A chill swept down her spine, while her cheeks heated. She shouldn’t have doubted him, especially for a prisoner in a cage. And now she’d hacked into a very secure area. What would her father do if he discovered her infiltration this time? This time, her motivation wasn’t to help him. It was to find the truth about Jory.

Chance stopped typing and stretched his neck. “You done hacking?”

Her head jerked up. “What?”

“Don’t worry, lady. I don’t really give a shit.” He still didn’t look at her.

She shook her head. “How old are you, anyway?”

“Old enough.” His voice was already low, so maybe early teens?

“Are you an intern here?” she pressed, her instincts humming again. Who was this kid?

“Yep. Just on loan for a few days earning some high school credit.” He popped his knuckles. “Back to work?”

Movement sounded beyond the door, and the three orderlies carried in a still-unconscious Jory to drop onto his cot. The second they’d locked the door to the cell, all three men breathed out heavily.

Piper glanced at the silent soldier in the cell and then at Chance’s profile. What exactly was going on in this place?

Jory kept silent in the cell while Piper and Chance typed away on keyboards. He’d awakened nearly ten minutes ago, instantly sitting up to watch. For now, he wouldn’t worry about whatever his PET scan and MRI had shown. Hopefully his brain had looked normal.

Did Chance have extra abilities, too? The kid had dark brown hair like Shane and Nate, Matt’s square jaw, and Jory’s mouth. Shit.

Just how many brothers did Jory have out there? This would fucking kill Matt. The idea of another one of them being held captive and trained to kill was almost too much to carry. The Dean brothers had only escaped five years ago, so where had this kid been?

Jory couldn’t ask the questions with Piper in the room, but he’d damn well get answers.

While the kid typed away, he’d looked over his shoulder several times, curiosity in those gray eyes. Apparently he knew better than to question Jory in front of Piper.

Good.

Piper ignored Jory completely, her shoulders stiff, tension all but cascading from her. The woman seemed to be getting angrier and angrier every time she was in Jory’s vicinity. He sighed. Whatever was going on, he’d have to handle it. The clock was ticking down not only on Madison discovering his extra abilities, but with his chip about to explode, he had to get to his brothers.

Finally, Piper excused herself to head to the ladies’ room. She’d barely cleared the door when the kid stretched to his feet and approached the cell. He kept his face stoic, hard, but his eyes burned bright.

“Who are you?” Chance asked.

Jory flicked his gaze to the camera in the corner. The meet-up was deliberate, and surely Madison was scribbling in a notebook right now. “Jory.”

“You look familiar.”

“Yeah.” Would telling the kid the truth put him in danger? Or rather, more danger than he lived with daily? Jory stood and approached the glass. The wave of protectiveness nearly floored him. “How many kids are here?”

Chance shuffled his feet, his lip curling. “Why?”

“Because I’d like to know how many brothers I have that I didn’t know about,” Jory said slowly. Forget the cameras. This was a brother, and he never lied to a brother.

Chance blinked. “I’m not your brother, asshole.”

Jory grinned. The kid had balls. “Right. Because gray eyes are normal. I was created by the commander and Dr. Madison, trained as a soldier, and I’m not the only one.”

Chance’s shoulders went back, and his Adam’s apple bobbled. “What do you mean?”

“I have three older brothers.” Jory cleared his throat. And now one younger brother. At least. “That is, you and I have three older brothers. Same sperm donor.”

Chance glanced at the closed door and back. “This is a setup.”

“Yep.” Smart kid. “But not by me.”

The kid’s hands clenched into fists, and he glared up at the hidden camera. So much anger rolled off him, Jory’s gut heated. “Chance?” Jory asked.

In a clearly Matt Dean
Fuck You
head bob, Chance began to speak, defiance in every nuance. “Our sperm donor’s name was Bruce Wilcox, he supported the program and voluntarily gave up sperm, and then he died on a mission.”

The blood roared between Jory’s ears, and he stepped closer to the glass. “You found him?”

“Yeah. I hacked the records.” Chance shrugged, rawness in his eyes. “I can hack.”

Something had hurt the kid and bad. Jory’s throat closed with the need to help. The brutal need to break out of the cage and clasp the kid made Jory’s hands shake. “Any records of our mothers?”

Chance exhaled, his already broad chest moving with the effort. “Just the program directives of buying top-grade genetic material and then hiring surrogates. Some grad students, some single moms, some whores. All records of who and when have been destroyed.”

The records had been in Utah? That made an odd sense. The kid knew more about Jory’s history than he did. Pride lifted his chin. “You’re smart, kid. Now how many gray-eyed brothers are running around with you?”

Chance blinked, silent for several moments. Jory let him work out the thought on whether to reveal information or not, impressed when not one emotion crossed the kid’s face. Well trained, now wasn’t he?

Finally, Chance scratched his chin, a veil dropping over his gaze. “Two brothers younger than me.”

Jory blinked. “There are three of you?” God. There were three more brothers. “Three brothers.”

“We’re not your brothers, so don’t get any ideas. You’re on your own.” Chance still refused to look at him.

Jory eyed the kid. What was he hiding?

High heels clicked down the hall, and Jory stiffened along with Chance, their movements an exact mirror. The door swept open, and Dr. Madison clipped inside, four soldiers behind her.

She smiled sparkling white teeth. “What a nice reunion.”

Chance shifted to the side, keeping her in sight. Everything in Jory stilled with the need to protect this newfound brother, and his body settled into fighting mode. “More experiments, Madison?”

“Yes.” A gleeful gleam filled her blue eyes. “Same but different.”

“Meaning?” Jory tilted his head to the side.

She shrugged. “Chance, get back to work. Jory, your brain showed some interesting activities on your tests earlier, and now it’s time for a physical.”

“No.” The last thing he wanted was more poking or prodding. Although getting out of the cell held certain appeal.

“Yes. We need you awake this time.” Madison jerked her head at the soldiers, who immediately fanned out and drew weapons. Madison then drew a small pistol from her lab coat and pointed the barrel at Chance.

Jory growled.

To the kid’s credit, he didn’t flinch, although his muscles tightened in anticipation of a fight.

“Fine.” Jory backed away from the glass, and Madison turned the gun on him.

A soldier punched in numbers on the pad next to the door, and it slid open.

Jory gauged the men’s stances and their weapons. He could get two of them quickly, but he’d have to kill the other two, and who knew if Madison would shoot him or not. He debated his options, his decision made the second Piper walked back into the room. Too much danger for somebody untrained.

Her eyes widened, and she faltered. “Wh—”

“Please get back to work. We’re running out of time,” Madison said, her cheerful voice contrasting with the gun in her hand.

Piper swallowed and glanced from Jory to Chance and back.

Jory tried to make his smile reassuring. “I would appreciate it if you found a way to deactivate the chip near my spine.” There wasn’t a chance, but he needed her focused and out of the way. So he allowed one soldier to shackle his wrists and ankles, shuffling out of the room, an ache pounding in his gut as he left his brother behind.

Again.

The walk through hallways took over two minutes. They reached a medical lab, and he hitched inside to jump on a table. “How could you?” he asked Madison.

She blinked, glancing up from a computer tablet. “Excuse me?”

“More creations?” he asked, fire bubbling up his throat.

“Yes.” She squinted. “Four boys, an experiment to see if they’d bond like your family did. We wanted to see if the four behaved like you four boys did.”

Jory stiffened. “Which is why you made Chance the oldest? To see if he’d behave as Matt did.”

“Yes.” Madison slid to the side as a pretty nurse entered the room. “He has. Treats those younger boys just as protectively as Matt did you.”

Jory swallowed. “You said four boys, and Chance told me there were three of them. Why?”

Madison clicked her tongue. “We lost one months ago on a mission.”

A rock slammed into Jory’s gut. “How old was he?”

“Eleven.” Madison sighed. “He showed such potential. What a pity.”

Fire burned Jory’s ears, and his hands clenched with the need to wrap around her slim neck. “You fucking bitch.”

The door burst open, and heavy combat boots clomped inside. “Watch your mouth, boy,” the commander muttered.

Jory lifted his head to meet the black-eyed gaze. “So you finally got one of us killed. Nice job, dickhead.” With his hands shackled at his back, and his feet all but tied together, he’d need leverage to tackle the commander while keeping Madison from shooting him. So he shifted slightly on the table.

Madison smoothly shoved a needle into his leg and depressed the plunger.

Instant warmth filled his thigh, and his vision swayed. Damn it.

The commander widened his stance. “Soldiers die all the time, and it’s a miracle you’ve never lost a brother. Hell, I can’t figure out why you’re still alive. As a kid, you were pathetic.”

He was still alive because his brothers had made sure he survived. Without question, without his brothers, he never would’ve made it through early training before he grew. Now, he was a stone-cold killer who’d do what he had to do—even use Piper against the commander. He wavered on the table, trying to remain conscious. “You’ll pay for getting that kid killed.”