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T he two men cowered on their knees in the dirty abandoned warehouse.

Neither of them dared to make any further moves in the face of the five large men who’d come for them.

“We didn’t know she was your girl! I swear,” Benjamin Carter said through swollen lips, and he regretted not leaving town like he’d been told to. “It wasn’t personal.”

“It was personal to me,” Levi snarled, looking over his handiwork. Blood dripped from Carter’s mouth down his chin and darkly soiled the front of the fucker’s gold colored shirt.

The other guy, Mike Roberts, was barely conscious and had sagged on the ground beneath Levi’s fists.

“Here, use these.” King handed Levi a pair of brass knuckles. Better late than never.

Carter’s eyes widened with fear when Levi slid the brass over his reddened fingers and made a fist.

“The thing with these?” Levi said almost conversationally. “I don’t need to hit you in the face to have you pissing blood.”

When the man remained silent, Levi moved in and delivered a blow to Carter’s kidneys.

Not one fucking ounce of remorse filled him. They had tried to rape Sara. They were already dead men walking, they just didn’t know it.

“Tell me who hired you and all this can be over,” Levi said, keeping their hope of escaping alive.

“I…can’t, he’ll kill me.”

“I don’t think he’s the bigger threat right now,” Levi said, running the brass knuckles over Carter’s cheek and beneath his jaw, forcing the fucker’s head up and back, arching his neck.

Carter closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and spat. Blood covered Levi’s face, and he wiped it away. King handed him a sharpened blade.

Levi was thankful that the guys hadn’t interfered. This was something he needed to do alone.

“The cops are going to arrest you fucks!” Carter screamed with fury.

“Newsflash, asshole, we don’t answer to the law,” King growled.

Which was true in a sense. They answered to the SecDef. And Will had a whole other set of rules for Aries to follow. Number one was to take care of their own.

And to Levi, Sara became one of their own the minute he had laid his hands on her. Actually, it had been even before that. It had started way back in her Seattle kitchen before he had walked out the door and she had run to California.

He just hadn’t realized it then.

He walked over to Roberts, lifted the man from the ground, and sliced open the guy’s throat. The man fell dead to the floor.

Carter gasped and when Levi turned with the knife, the perp fell backward off his knees, trying to scramble away.

“No! Please,” Carter begged, his eyes on his dead partner in crime.

“Tell me who ordered the attack,” Levi said.

“Chester…Miller,” the man choked out.

“The cleaners have arrived and taken care of everything,” West announced, glancing up from his phone and shifting in a spot on the couch.

They had arrived back at the rental house about half an hour ago, but Levi couldn’t sit still.

He paced.

What he’d done back in that warehouse was part of who he was as an Aries operative. No, he didn’t enjoy it, but he’d do it again to anyone who ever lifted a finger to Sara. And just thinking about the fact that they had tried to rape her started his blood boiling again.

He rubbed both hands on his face, trying to get his anger under control.

The smell of bacon drifted in from the kitchen, and the scent reminded him of being back at the Aries training camp in Arizona. He couldn’t stomach the thought of eating food right now, but he did smirk at the smell. Most of them were carnivores, so frying bacon in the middle of the day or night wasn’t an odd thing in their world.

“You find a local cleaning team?” Nash asked West.

“Nah, Aiden and Slade were already out here and said they’d handle it,” West said.

“Since when do they do cleaning jobs?” Nash looked puzzled.

“Since it was a rush and we needed to get the hell out of there,” Rowan cut in.

Rowan was tapping away on his laptop again, searching for a back door to tap into Sara’s new phone.

The screwed up part now was that one of the higher ups at Aries had put a nix on King’s database override access.

Even when Levi had previously used Spencer, another techie at Aries, Spencer still had to receive override access from his superior—Levi had left that part up to Spencer, and the man had come through.

However, this time, without King’s log in, Rowan wouldn’t be able to do what he does best and find people. That King was pissed was an understatement, hence the need for lots and lots of bacon right now.

Because of the bullshit access, it was taking too long to find Sara.

“I think we need to go question Mandy after all,” Rowan suggested.

“Let’s stick to the original plan then,” King said, coming out of the kitchen chomping on bacon. “You guys go question the friend, and West and I will go to the lounge to get him hired.”

“Good thing we have our fake backgrounds ready,” West muttered.

Rowan cackled and slid his laptop into its case.

It was a silent bunch who left the house.