Broken Trust (SEAL Team Blackout Charlie #6)

Chapter 1

ONE

The war room hummed with the type of energy that only existed when things were breaking bad. Blue light from the monitors cut hard shadows across the faces of the men around the table—men Liam Mason knew better than his own family.

This was Blackout. The team didn’t exist on paper. The operatives had been declared dead, their files sealed and their families told they’d died serving their country. In a way, they had.

The men they’d been before didn’t exist anymore. No social security numbers, bank accounts or digital footprints.

Just ghosts who moved through the shadows, doing the work no one else could claim.

Some days the weight of the choice to join Blackout pressed down on Mason like a physical thing. Most days, he found ways to remind himself that men like him stood between the world and the monsters who’d burn it down without a second thought.

Intel scrolled across screens showing satellite imagery and intercepted communications, a world most people never saw. After three days in the trenches, they were all grubby and tired, yet riding the high of a successful op.

Sinclair, aka Sinner, propped his boots on the conference table and jerked his jaw toward the screens. “We keep pulling ops this clean, they’re gonna have to invent new medals just to keep up with us.”

“Dead men don’t accept medals, and Sinner sure smells like he’s dead.” Mason’s jab sent a ripple of laughter through the group. Dark humor kept them sane in a world that wanted them broken.

Mason leaned back in his chair, feeling the tendons in his shoulder groan. He’d driven it into a man’s gut, rolled through the momentum and tossed him clean over his back. The move left him aching, but the expression on his enemy’s face right before he breathed his last was worth any injury.

The room relaxed into the usual jokes and ribbing that came with the unshakeable certainty that the man next to them would take a bullet before he’d let the others fall.

He’d earned his place here. Bled for it. Died for it, at least on paper. But he’d never forget what he sacrificed to get a seat at this table.

His gaze drifted to the end of the table where their newest team member sat. His shoulders were rigid and his eyes were fixed on the screens. When everyone laughed, his lips twitched at one corner, but he didn’t smile.

Mason knew what Ash was going through. Before Ash signed on, Mason had been the rookie of the Blackout Charlie team.

The position came with feelings of segregation and even resentment at times.

But Ash had an advantage over Mason—he replaced a SEAL who left on medical. Mason’s replacement left in a body bag.

Still, Ash didn’t have it easy. If Mason heard the whispers around base, Ash did too.

Seven years behind a desk? Ash is a pencil pusher playing soldier.

Except if Ash didn’t have the skill set, he wouldn’t be sitting here.

“I saw Ash from the corner of my eye.” Sinner’s recounting of their mission made Ash’s head turn. “The guy was on him, and Ash pulled his knife.”

Sinner slapped a pocketknife on the table and gave it a nudge, sending it whizzing down the center of the table toward Ash. “You remember which end of this thing is which? Pointy end goes toward the bad guy.”

The room went quiet in that specific way that meant everyone was watching, waiting to see if the new guy would crack or crumble.

Ash stood without a word. Two knives materialized in his hands so quickly that Mason barely saw him pull them. In one fluid twitch of his wrists, both blades were airborne.

The first left his hand a split second before the second. The point buried deep in the corkboard on the far wall. The second buried itself so close to the first that they kissed with a ring of steel.

Ash sank to his seat again as if nothing happened.

Impressed, Mason caught his gaze and gave him a nod. “I know knives, and everyone better watch it. He could shave the hair off your nuts.”

Constantine, aka Con, pushed to his feet, positioning himself at the head of the table. Just like that, they were down to business.

The seriousness in Con’s expression said whatever came next wasn’t going to be as easy a win as the last op.

He swept the group in a weighted glance. “As you all know, our favorite terrorist, Cipher, has been silent since Steele shot him. That silence just ended.”

Steele’s lips compressed into a fine line that proved a war raged inside his teammate. Killing Cipher would have resulted in countless deaths around the globe. Not killing him went against everything a SEAL was trained to do.

Cipher was damn near a ghost like the rest of them. He always seemed to be three moves ahead and continued to slip through their fingers more times than they liked to admit.

Con went on, “It’s been almost a month since we had a trail to follow.

There are whispers in the underworld suggesting Cipher’s alive.

Recently, we learned that a veterinary clinic was broken into and medical supplies stolen.

” He pointed to a screen with a street view of the clinic.

“The perpetrator disabled the cameras so his face was never recorded. But he stole supplies needed for an emergency field surgery.”

Steele had opted for a shot in the high right shoulder, ensuring Cipher wouldn’t die outright…but that he would require medical treatment before he bled out.

Con directed their attention to long strings of code on the screen. “Sophie solved a cryptogram that points to an imminent cyberattack. Something big. Timeline suggests that we have less than a week to prevent a devastating power grid outage across multiple major cities.”

A few seats away from Mason, Chase jumped into the discussion. “Someone hacked a power plant’s system?”

Con dipped his jaw. “That’s right.”

“Can’t Dante hack in and see who’s behind it?”

Con and their tech guru Dante were both shaking their heads before Chase finished the question. “Dante’s good, but this goes beyond him. We need a specialist.”

Dante didn’t look up from his laptop, but redness climbed his throat—the only indication that Con’s statement stung.

Mason glanced at Ash and saw their rookie wore a sympathetic expression. Nobody liked their shortcomings aired to the team. Didn’t change the fact they needed to be aired so someone could take up the slack.

But who would take up the slack from Dante?

Con scooped up a thin file and flipped it open. “Her name is Elin Lindgren.”

Everything in Mason stilled.

“Swedish national. Freelance hacker for hire, and she’s known for only choosing the right side. She works with humanitarian organizations and whistleblowers. Sometimes she takes government contracts. Sophie vetted her through the FBI database—Lindgren always picks the good guys.”

Mason stopped listening to his leader because his world was fucking tilting.

His heart threw itself against his ribs.

Swedish.

His mind raced. But Elin, the equivalent of Helen, was common in Sweden. And Lindgren was the same as Smith or Jones in the United States.

Odds were good it was some other Elin Lindgren.

It had to be someone else.

Please let it be someone else.

But his pulse hammered as memories raced through his mind of meeting Elin, who was working closely with his SEAL team, their connection instantaneous, undeniable…and explosive enough to level a battlefield.

When a handoff involving Elin went sideways, he was only able to shoot off a one-word text to her: Abort.

Within hours, Blackout recruited him and he disappeared from her life completely.

Leaving her life kept her out of his dark world. Kept her safe.

The sound of the war room door opening might as well be a gunshot given how Mason jumped.

The air thinned, every molecule charged. No one spoke. Even Con paused mid-sentence, following Liam’s line of sight.

Jesus Christ. Elin.

She froze in the doorway, eyes as sharp as ever, her professional mask slapped over her stunningly beautiful face.

Without a doubt, she was every inch the specialist they needed. But Mason only saw the woman he’d left behind. The one he convinced himself he was protecting by vanishing from not only her life but the whole world.

Her gaze swept the room, cataloging each man like they were threats or allies—then landed on him.

Liam’s heart punched against his ribs again. Years of training, discipline, denial. All useless now.

She wasn’t supposed to be here. Not in his world. Not where blood and secrets were thicker than anything he’d ever seen in the world of the living.

And yet here she was.

Looking at him like he was a ghost.

* * * * *

The minute Elin laid eyes on Liam, the floor dropped out from under her.

God. He’s alive.

Every ounce of healing she’d clawed her way through felt undone in an instant. So much therapy. So many months of rebuilding her life from the smoke and ashes he left behind.

She’d received his flag. His personal effects. A military commander had handed them over with sad eyes and a tight jaw and told her Liam died in action. The circumstances were, of course, classified.

She grieved him. She hit rock bottom, couldn’t function for several months. Then she forced herself to dust herself off and get back to work, because what choice did she have?

Immersing herself in work helped. Work was rules and logic and patterns she could depend on, and she’d always been a pattern person.

Even as a kid, she saw order in chaos and caught threads others missed.

Later, that instinct made her one hell of a hacker.

She was able to slip into people’s heads, predict their moves and follow the digital breadcrumbs they didn’t even know they left behind.

But that only made her delve into Liam’s head more. She questioned what his moves would be if he were alive. And what kind of breadcrumbs had he left behind?

One night, while tangled together in the sheets, talk turned to what Liam’s strengths were as a SEAL. He told her he preferred knives because close combat was silent and efficient.