Stolen Honor (SEAL Team Blackout Charlie #8)

Chapter 1

ONE

Angelo Ash was used to people moving out of his path, so when he shouldered his way inside the blackened wreckage of the bank vault and no one moved, irritation ground through him.

A quick glance showed Ash a sea of black jackets with initials on the back. The small space was crawling with feds.

Made sense. When a bunch of safety-deposit boxes exploded, the government took notice.

Not only did they send every alphabet agency they could find, they sent in a special operative from a ghost ops team to determine if the terrorist they’d been hunting for more than a year was responsible.

He stepped up behind the cluster of people examining the twisted metal and the scorched contents. He was tall enough to see over most of their heads. He cleared his throat, and two people swung to look at him, their gazes colliding with his chest.

He looked down at one. “Excuse me.”

The guy shuffled aside to allow Ash to push closer to the wall of boxes.

“Who is that?”

He ignored the whisper as he squared his body to the wall so his bodycam could transmit the footage back to the Blackout Charlie team’s base.

“He’s special ops. Gotta be. Look at him.”

Ash’s lips twitched at one corner at the comment. Then he let his gaze track the damage instead of the people.

The safety-deposit boxes had been blown outward, metal peeled back like shrapnel-flayed ribs.

Some doors hung by a single warped hinge.

Others were gone entirely, reduced to jagged fragments embedded in the concrete wall.

It might look chaotic to an untrained eye, but to him, the blast had been as precise as a surgeon’s blade.

Burned paper littered the floor like black snow.

What hadn’t been incinerated had been soaked by fire suppressant, the slurry turning documents into gray pulp.

Jewelry lay tangled and warped, gold chains fused together and gemstones cracked from heat.

Passports, ledgers and flash drives were melted into useless hunks of plastic.

Ash leaned in closer, eyes narrowing. The blast pattern told him plenty. Whoever had done this had known exactly which boxes they wanted wiped out—and exactly how much force it would take to destroy part of the vault without taking down the whole building.

Someone hadn’t come for valuables. They’d come to erase something.

His jaw tightened as the familiar tension settled between his shoulders.

The comms device in his ear clicked, and his commanding officer’s voice filled it.

“It looks like the work of Cipher.”

Ash didn’t need to respond. His SEAL team had been hunting for the terrorist for months. They knew his patterns, and this lined up.

Cipher didn’t steal.

Cipher erased. Everyone and everything.

Around Ash, the low chatter changed. When he looked over the group, he saw a fidgety ball of nerves in a suit and tie entering the vault. Ash caught his gaze and used a nod that acted as an order to people like this guy.

He pushed through the group to reach Ash. “Excuse me. Excuse me, please.”

The FBI and DHS—the Department of Homeland Security—stepped aside to let him through.

The older guy sporting the ATF on his back grumbled. And three members of the SWAT team glared at Ash.

“You’re the bank manager?” Ash asked when the suit neared him.

He gave him a nervous nod that made his thinning hair flop on his bald head. He moved close to Ash and pitched his voice low. “It isn’t protocol to give out the names of the box owners, but I was told to provide you with his.” He held a sheet of paper that wavered in his unsteady hand.

Ash leaned over the paper, angling his body so his team could see the names on the list.

The people around them continued to converse in low tones, giving their take on who would blow up safety-deposit boxes. Ash listened to their assumptions while memorizing the names on the sheet.

“One of the biggest drug dealers in New York City has been seen visiting banks in this section of the city. We’ve tracked some of his money to secret accounts…”

“We have a gun runner making deposits to this very bank. His name is probably on that list.” The ATF officer craned his neck, trying to steal a peek at the paper.

“More likely the Sovereign Dawn,” someone else piped up about a white supremacy group that had been making the news lately.

His commanding officer Constantine, aka Con’s, grunt projected through Ash’s comms device. “It’s not Sovereign Dawn’s style. It’s Cipher’s MO. We’re analyzing the list now, Ash.”

He nodded to the bank manager that he got what he needed. The manager skirted the outer edge of the group to make his escape.

“Scan the crowd,” Con directed.

Ash lifted his head and turned, letting the cam sweep the room.

“It’s alphabet soup in there,” Con commented.

He made a noise of agreement. Everyone continued to chatter about which agency would take charge of the case. The DEA, convinced whoever blew the box was after drug money, and the SWAT team scrambling to secure the blast zone—all of it faded to background noise.

When Con’s voice filled his ear, Ash snapped to attention. “Sophie sees the name of a shell corporation tied to Cipher on that list.”

Ash looked at the group. “Sorry, boys. It’s ours.”

“Not so fast,” a woman’s voice projected from the back of the group.

Ash turned, completely aware that his camera picked up the woman bustling forward. Though the space was cramped with people, she managed to walk with confidence. Head high, shoulders back and breasts thrust forward. Her hips swayed slightly like she’d practiced for the runway.

As two people shifted to let her through, he got a better look. She was average height, but that was where the ordinary stopped. Her cardigan sweater and knee-length skirt should’ve read sensible.

On her, it was anything but. The fitted fabric turned modest into a danger zone. And the neat row of buttons down her sweater led his eye—and his thoughts—astray. He flexed his fingers reflexively, itching with the sudden, unwelcome urge to undo every last one.

His gaze traveled up to her face, and his gut tightened at the sight of dark-rimmed glasses meant to look serious but were the stuff of men’s fantasies.

Silence filled the vault and hummed in his comms too. The guys back in the war room watching the bodycam footage were in committed relationships with amazing women…but they’d have to be blind not to be seeing what Ash was seeing.

Then he noticed she wasn’t in a jacket bearing the letters of an agency.

She stepped up to him, thick hair stirring around her shoulders.

“And you are?” Ash asked her.

“I’m The Accountant.”

In his ear, he caught the voice of Elin, his team’s resident hacker. “Look at her hair. Did a breeze pick up in the room, Ash? It looks like her hair is moving.”

Another voice, Sophie’s this time. “Really bouncy. Like a shampoo commercial.”

Ash forced his attention to the woman. “Who do you work for?”

She tipped her head to meet his gaze, her eyes a vivid blue behind her glasses. Nobody’s eyes could be that blue. The lenses must be tinted.

“Do we need labels or answers here?” she asked breezily. “Should we build walls or bridges?”

He narrowed his eyes. “And what agency does that bridge lead to?”

“I’m interagency.”

Hell, those lips were adding an entirely different layer of distraction.

Con’s command made Ash stiffen. “Bring her to base.”

He fixed his stare on her. “You’re supposed to come with me.”

“Oh, really?” She tipped her head to the side in the cutest, coyest, most ball-clenching move he’d ever seen.

“Yes. I have orders.”

She didn’t outwardly react to his claim. “Well. You have your orders.”

That was easy. Too easy. As if she’d known this was going to happen—expected it.

He tried not to think about what would have happened if she’d argued. Tried to erase the image of tossing her over his shoulder and hauling her out, his hand full of that perfect ass wrapped in that tight skirt.

Ash waved a hand, indicating she should go ahead of him.

“Aren’t you the gentleman?”

He stifled a groan, locking away about a dozen very ungentlemanly things rolling through his head right now.

As he followed her out, agents broke off mid-conversation, their gazes sharp and curious. Whispers followed in their wake.

“Who’s that again?”

“Civilian?”

“She must work at the bank.”

Civilian? They didn’t move with this much purpose unless they were used to pressure.

They passed ATF first. The agent stiffened, hand lifting as if to stop them. Ash didn’t break stride.

The FBI tried next. “This evidence—”

“You’re blocking my way.”

A beat passed, then the agent stepped aside.

Once clear of the vault, Ash guided the woman through the bank toward daylight. The main doors were wide open and guarded by local SWAT. One of them gave Ash a single nod as they passed.

The late afternoon air was sharp after the stale heat of the crowded vault. Ash didn’t slow until he reached the black SUV waiting at the curb.

“Get in,” he told the woman.

She paused for a beat, then complied without comment. Again—no resistance. No questions.

That was starting to bother him.

Who the hell was she again? She called herself an accountant.

Ash got behind the wheel and she slipped into the passenger seat with an ease that seemed unlikely in that tight skirt.

Once she was seated, he merged into traffic. Two blocks later, he reached into the console and pulled out the hood. He held it up to her.

Her sigh was quiet. “Is that really necessary?”

He almost started coughing. She knew what it was and what it was used for.

“Yes.” His voice was too rough.

He could feel her weighing her options. When she finally nodded, he was even more surprised.

She took the hood from him, sounding resigned. “If that’s how this has to work.”

She unfolded the black hood and slid it over her head. He heard her breath change just slightly, the only indication that she could be ruffled.