His lover squeezed the vise around his cock and balls tighter, stopping only when the cry of surrender ripped from his throat. If he hadn’t been sterilized as a child as punishment when he’d lost his sixth-grade election to become class president to a girl, this torture would have likely done the trick. But he didn’t care. He was flying high on endorphins, the hot rush of expectation simmering through the blood in his veins.

He couldn’t have planned it better. Since Evans and Fink had fucked it up, he’d acted presidential and had adjusted the plan accordingly. What were two more murders in the scheme of things? The two were nothing, weaklings who in Darwin’s evolutionary scale would fall below the canines. They were followers, their sole existence perpetuated on their ability to serve the alpha. Since his birth, he had been treated like the omega, but it was time to show everyone he was the alpha in his family. With his wife by his side, they’d return the country to better times, when the international communities didn’t just respect the United States, but feared it.

Dropping the atomic bombs in Japan had been one of the bravest acts of the US government since the Civil War. It’d shown the world it wasn’t afraid to take bold risks in order to ensure the safety of the American people. He shared the same vision as those men, yearned for a time when the rest of the world looked to the United States for guidance. With the Leopold virus and its patented cure in its grasp, the country would be in the position to threaten its enemies and protect its allies, all the while, secretly making him and his wife, Sari, rich beyond their wildest dreams. Since none of their stock holdings or the Antiguan accounts were in their names, the money would be virtually untraceable thanks to modern technology and a simple ATM card. Besides, who would believe the country’s hero could be responsible for releasing a hemorrhagic fever virus? And exposing himself to it?

Most men might be scared of a virus with an 80 percent mortality rate, but then again, they hadn’t suffered through fifty-eight years of torture. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d be laid up bleeding from every orifice, pain suffusing his joints and muscles. However, it would be the first time he’d received medical attention for it. There was a slight risk the hospital would question his multitude of healed and unhealed injuries, but his wife knew to pay them well for their silence.

As his lover commenced the next portion of the torture and the scream tore from his throat, he came violently, ejaculate splashing the floor and mixing with his blood. He bowed his head in a prayer of thanks and waited silently for the torture to end.

More blood would be shed this afternoon.

He couldn’t wait.

Chapter Twenty-One

“SO ONCE YOU get into the mechanical room, you’re just going to what exactly?” Oz asked, munching on Rachel’s new addiction, chocolate-covered potato chips. “Walk off with the tank and . . . ?”

She looked at Logan and shrugged. “As long as we stop the virus from releasing, the rest we’ll play by ear.”

They had spent the past three hours going over every step of tomorrow’s operation to save the world. While Logan’s friends wanted to come with them to the Tuscany Hotel, they all agreed that they’d need to stay behind to provide any necessary intel and serve as the second line of defense should anything go wrong. The fact was she and Logan didn’t want to draw them into it any more than they already had. They’d already broken several federal and state laws that would put them behind bars for the rest of their lives. If things got ugly tomorrow, she and Logan didn’t want the guys’ lives on their consciences.

“Any luck finding out if Evans and Fink have gotten any large deposits of money in the past few months?” she asked Rowan.

Every time she looked at him or Oz, her cheeks heated. Last night’s memory of them was burned onto her retinas. Even though they knew she’d watched them, Oz remained the same smart-ass as yesterday and Rowan was just as reserved. It was hard to believe only hours before, Oz’s tongue had been on Rowan’s cock while today the two of them barely interacted except to discuss something technological.

“I did find something,” Rowan said flatly. “Fink’s mother has received a deposit of just under ten thousand dollars every week for the past five weeks from an Antiguan bank. The foreign account is registered to a dummy Antiguan corporation that was set up to shelter its multiple clients by keeping their names off of it, and unfortunately, the list of who those clients are isn’t kept online.”

She sighed. “So it’s impossible to trace.”

“No, not impossible,” Rowan said. “Just more difficult. I need more time, but I’ll be able to get you that information.”

“Why did you even think to look at his mother’s bank account?” Logan asked, his shoulder knocking into hers as they sat next to each other on the small couch in the corner of the room.

Rowan turned to them. “When I didn’t find any deposits into his account, I checked his closest relatives. Sometimes people hide money in their spouses’ accounts, and since Fink doesn’t have a spouse, I checked his next of kin, which was his mother.”

“Maybe the money his mother is receiving is legitimate,” she offered. It was unusual but not unheard of. Maybe it was some kind of investment that was finally paying off.

Rowan avoided looking in her eyes, choosing to keep his gaze on Logan. “Probably not. Before the deposits, she had less than twenty dollars in her account. Her police records show multiple arrests and short prison sentences for drug possession and intent to distribute. She’s a junky and, from the looks of it, a bad one.”

She shot up from the couch. “You can get into the police reports?” At the rise of his brow, she switched tactics. Of course he could; the man had already proved his hacking talents. “I mean, since you can get into the police reports, would you mind pulling up the one on Logan and me? I want to know what evidence they’re using to support their claims that Logan killed Rinaldi.”

They couldn’t have any evidence since Logan hadn’t committed the crime, right? Everything she’d heard on the news so far was mere conjecture about his motive for wanting Rinaldi dead. Nothing had been released about the evidence.

She paced the room as Rowan worked his magic. It wasn’t more than a couple of minutes later that Rowan pulled up the report.

“Here it is,” he said. “According to this, the Beretta M9 pistol used to shoot Anthony Rinaldi was registered to Logan Bradford.”

Logan jumped up from the couch. “No way. Yes, I used the Beretta M9 in the army, but I have a Glock now. There’s no way that gun was registered to me.”

She joined Logan’s side and rubbed the back of his neck in reassurance. “Obviously, once Evans and Fink had someone to pin Rinaldi’s murder on, they doctored the records. Any fingerprints on the gun?”

Rowan scrolled down the screen. “Wiped clean. They also didn’t find any of Logan’s prints at the scene of the crime.”

“But of course, they did find Evans’s and Fink’s,” Hunter pointed out. “What does it say about why the agents were there?”

Rowan paused, reading. “Evans and Fink were assigned to follow Rinaldi once he was released from prison to see who he communicated with. According to the report, Rinaldi went home and discovered his wife and his children had gone into hiding. Evans and Fink observed through a telescope as Rinaldi went on a rampage through his house and broke down. An hour later, he snorted three lines of what was later confirmed as a potentially fatal combination of exceptionally pure cocaine and heroin and got into his car, driving west and parking in front of Cole DeMarco’s home. Evans and Fink couldn’t pass the gate, and since they were to remain out of sight, they parked farther down the street, keeping their eye on Rinaldi’s car.”