Chapter 5
FIVE
The tight pull across Mason’s chest wasn’t exactly pain. It was a warning. The kind of instinct inside his body that whispered something was off before his mind caught up.
He stood outside the door of the bedroom where the ladies settled Elin. His hand hovered over the wood as he tried to figure out why he could storm a fucking compound full of armed enemies but was afraid to knock on his ex’s door.
Was she even his ex if there was no official breakup?
When his feet carried him to her door, he told himself he was just checking in, making sure she was getting much-needed rest instead of torturing herself over every line of code.
But the silence on the other side of that door pressed against his ribs until he felt like the air itself was holding its breath along with him.
He knocked once. No answer.
The uneasy beat stretched on, then he pushed the door open.
A single sweep of the room revealed it was empty.
The bed was still made, the sheets tight enough to bounce a coin off.
The only sign she’d been here at all was her bag dropped at the foot of the bed and a dent on the side of the mattress where she may have sat for a brief time.As he backed out of the room and navigated several corridors, he realized the countdown clocks in every single one no longer tracked the minutes until the power grid went down. Elin had stopped it in plenty of time.
She must be staying the night before leaving in the morning, and that started a new countdown inside him—until the time she left.
Of course he found her in the lab. Reflections from the screens flickered across her skin.
She sat straight-backed and at attention.
He knew she was deep in the trenches by the way she’d knotted her hair up in a messy twist and jammed a pencil through it to anchor it in place.
Her fingers moved over the keyboard in a blur.
When she focused, the rest of the world was irrelevant. But focused on what task?
“Have you slept at all?” he asked from the doorway, his voice rougher than he intended.
She didn’t give away that she heard him, and her reply didn’t come immediately. Her fingers flicked across the keys before she said, “I had a few hours’ sleep. I’m fine.”
He took a step into the space, taking it slow so she didn’t shut down on him, slam the door of the fortress she’d built around herself when he walked away from her.
Who could blame her? If someone told him she died, he’d be destroyed.
“Surely you can break for a little more sleep.”
“I found something I can’t ignore.”
He stepped closer, drawn into her orbit, the hum of the equipment swallowing the sound of his boots. “Define something.”
“Locations,” she said quietly without glancing his way. “The places that Cipher’s going to detonate the bombs.”
That made him freeze. “Say that again?”
She finally looked at him. The pale light snagged on the shadows under her eyes. “Sophie cracked a cryptogram that contained coordinates for twelve locations. She said that means there are twelve handlers, each one sitting on a bomb.”
He nodded.
“You knew?”
“Yes. I just didn’t know they asked you to stay and find the locations.” In three strides, he crossed the space between them. The closer he got, the more he saw how bad it really was—empty coffee cups, energy drink cans and a lone protein bar, half-eaten and forgotten.
She’d been at this too long.
“Where is Sophie? And Dante?”
“They went to grab some sleep. I told them I’d keep at it.”
“Elin.”
He felt her throw up a wall at the tenderness in his tone.
“It’s Sophie’s code and my algorithm.” She gestured to the screens. “Each dot represents a handler.”
He dragged out a chair and sank to it. “What are you doing now?”
“I’m cross-referencing digital chatter with Cipher’s old networks. As soon as I nail down a handler, Con can deploy the team to take them down.”
He frowned at the slight tremor of her hands that told him she was well past the point of exhaustion and jacked up on too much caffeine. “You’ve been at this since—”
“Since you told me to get in the kitchen.”
“Correction: I never told you to get in the kitchen. You know I’m not that guy, Elin.”
She turned her head and pierced him in her stare. “I don’t know that, Mason. It turns out I didn’t know you at all.”
Her words torpedoed straight to his heart. Her use of his surname, not the one she always called him, cut deeper than it should have.
He deserved it.
“You don’t have to babysit me. I’m fine.”
“You’ve been sitting here for hours. You’ve eaten nothing. You’re shaking.”
“I’m functional.” Her gaze was locked on the code. “That’s better than fine right now.”
“Not if you pass out in the middle of saving the world. Let me get you something to eat.”
But she wasn’t listening to him. Her jaw dropped and her fingers flew over the keys in double time. “I got it! I freakin’ got it!”
“Got what?” But before the words were out of his mouth, she snatched up her phone and texted madly.
Only a second passed before he heard a door slam against a wall and heavy steps echoing through the base. Con strode into the lab, looking slightly rumpled as if he’d slept in his clothes. But all trace of sleep was gone, leaving his eyes sharp. Tension radiated off him.
Con leaned over Elin. “Whattaya got?”
Sophie rushed in right behind, hair mussed and a robe cinched around her waist. She went straight to Elin and leaned in to stare at the screen.
“Oh my god! You found one.” Her hoarse whisper might as well have been the first shot fired in a war for the way Mason’s body reacted to it.
He jerked to his feet, standing behind Elin’s chair, a fist pressed to his mouth.
Con scanned the data. “Where?”
“Rural Saskatchewan. He works in a government building.”
Con’s brows furrowed. “You’re sure?”
She nodded, pulling up another window. “Positive. I hacked the system of the local branch of the government and found daily outgoing emails between this man”—she switched to a photo of a middle-aged guy—“and a person on the dark web who operates under the alias ‘EchoZero.’”
Mason jerked. Con rocked on his bare feet. “EchoZero,” Mason repeated.
He traded a look with his CO. Cipher was responsible for wiping out the entire Blackout Echo team years ago. The last man standing was now on Charlie—one of their brothers. Julian Chase.
Sophie’s face seemed to grow paler under the harsh glow of the screens. “That’s got to be Cipher.”
“I already sent you the coordinates, Con,” Elin said. It wouldn’t surprise Mason if she knew about Echo, but she didn’t let on.
His gaze flicked to the feed, a long stream of binary that floated by so quickly it made his eyes go blurry.
Con jumped to action. “Sophie, get me the Canadian Forces Military Police on the line. We’ll coordinate. Mason, get everyone in the war room.”
Even though he heard the command, he didn’t move. He was locked in on the faint tremor of Elin’s fingers. He’d seen her worse, in that mission where they’d first met, the one that started a bonfire between them that didn’t burn out—it ended in fire and loss.
Sophie’s voice cut through his trance. “CFMP is standing by.”
“Mason.” Con’s harsh tone set him in motion.
But before he rushed to wake the rest of Charlie team, he dipped his fingers over the back of the chair and let his fingers trail across Elin’s shoulder, close to that sweet juncture of her neck that drove her crazy the instant his lips landed on it.
This op was so much bigger than the small skirmish that tore him and Elin apart. This was the start of a war.
And that made his blood run cold.
* * * * *
Adrenaline cut through Elin’s veins like a blade. The confusion that had fogged her brain since she got here—since she set eyes on the man she believed dead—vanished the instant the live feed blinked to life on the war room big screen.
The mission was underway, and there was no going back.
They were watching the takedown that she set in motion.
Every second that ticked by, every tactical move unfolding miles away in another country was a result of her work.
The endless strings of code, the deep dive into lines of data she’d followed like breadcrumbs through a digital forest. Every fragment of data told her this was the man handling a bomb for Cipher.
Her stomach gripped as the map pulsed with blue dots moving toward the target’s location—a neat little neighborhood, not a compound. Her breath caught when she saw the house.
God, it was so normal. Middle-class with vinyl siding, shutters and a mailbox with cheerful lettering.
Her chest constricted, making it hard to draw enough air into her lungs. What if she was wrong?
The question punched through her like shrapnel.
She didn’t make mistakes—not big ones. Not ones like this. But watching armed officers move toward the door of the home she’d marked sent a wave of nausea rolling through her gut.
She wasn’t hiding behind the safety of code anymore. She was the reason good men were about to step into danger.
“Team in position,” came the voice on the livestream.
She gripped her seat until her fingers grew cold. Tension throbbed in the room. Con stood at the center, silent and as sharp as a blade, his focus fixed on the screen.
Sophie perched on the edge of her seat near him, her face taut with worry. Dante planted his elbows on the table and leaned forward with an intensity that made her skin prickle.
Then there was Liam, close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating from his body even though he didn’t touch her.
She didn’t dare look at him and risk crumbling.
Every one of them trusted her intel. Now, as the seconds crawled forward arm over arm, knees digging into the dirt, the fear that she’d led them wrong was a flame scourging through her.
“Breach in ten,” the voice over comms said.
Her pulse hammered in her ears.
She wasn’t tired anymore. She wasn’t anything except terrified.