Chapter 1
ONE
Caius “Sinner” Sinclair believed in two truths: pizza dough waited for no man, and neither did trouble.
He was wrist-deep in one when the base alarm shattered the still morning because of the other.
The blast barely rang out before boots thundered across the floor.
“Dammit.” He hated being interrupted when making dough.
Chase tore past the doorway in gym shorts, still dripping sweat from his workout. Steele followed, tugging on a T-shirt and barking for Mason, who yelled back that he was already moving.
Sinner didn’t join the stampede. Chaos would still be waiting in twenty seconds.
While the alarm kept wailing, boots kept pounding and his teammates kept cursing, he scooped the dough off the floured board. He gently set it in a big bowl, draped a cloth over it and rinsed his hands.
The voice of their commanding officer, Constantine—better known as Con—carried through the mansion that served as their SEAL team’s base. The words he barked got Sinner moving faster.
“Son of a bitch! They tried to breach base using an old code!”
Sinner abandoned his pizza dough and rushed to the war room. Most of the Blackout Charlie team was already gathered around the big table. Surveillance footage of the base from all angles projected on monitors across the back wall.
A sleek black car idled at the front gate.
Mason skidded into the room on Sinner’s heels. “What the hell’s the FBI doing here?”
Con strode into the room, jaw set for battle. “Better question is what the hell they think they’re doing using an old code. No one gets through those gates unless we let them.”
“Con, you have to let them in.” A feminine voice parted the tension, calmer than any other. Sophie might be the only person who could get through to their leader, since their relationship allowed her to appeal to his more reasonable side.
He stiffened. “The hell I do.”
She leveled a look at him. Con sucked in a breath and let it out in a hard whoosh. He snatched up his phone and stabbed a finger into the screen. Immediately, the monitor showed the gate swinging open. The car rolled through it.
Con slanted a look at Mason. “Meet our guests at the front door.”
Mason snorted before he strode out to obey the order.
Sinner drifted to a seat in the middle of the table between Ash and Chickie. Unease rippled through the group, but Sinner remained calm as he leaned back and watched the monitors. On the screen, two men in black suits and dark sunglasses climbed out of the car.
“Well, there goes the neighborhood.” Chickie’s comment had a couple of the guys grunting in agreement. Sinner only smirked. The Blackout Charlie team didn’t take orders from any government agency, and sure as hell not from men in stiff suits.
Sinner didn’t need to look around the table to know every man here wore worn jeans, cargo pants, or camo—and that any one of them could snap those agents in half with a flick of the wrist.
In the next shot, one of the black suits reached into the back of the car to extract a person wearing a black hood.
More noises rose from around the table. It wasn’t often they had a guest on base. If the person wore the blackout hood, they didn’t have very high clearance.
But when the suits walked in with a woman between them, Sinner straightened without meaning to.
The hood had been removed. She wasn’t wearing a suit, and she didn’t match the Charlie team either. She existed in her own category.
The room went still.
Con nodded to the agents, then the woman. They all took a seat at the table.
A beat of silence stretched, but Con wasn’t one for pleasantries. “Who the hell gave you permission to come here?”
One of the agents rested his arms on the table. Sinner automatically studied him, taking in the lightweight Italian wool of his suit and his soft, never-worked-a-day-in-his-life hands.
He pulled off his dark glasses to address Con. “We request a private meeting.”
A rustle ran through the team spread out like a wall of muscle and irritation.
Con fixed the agent in his stare. “What you have to say can be said in front of my guys. I like private meetings even less than I like surprise visits. State your purpose.”
With his ear on the conversation, Sinner’s attention shifted from the two agents to the woman.
Black hair, ink-dark and glossy. Eyes just as dark, absorbing light instead of reflecting it.
Her skin was pale, spattered all over with freckles, suggesting she spent a lot of time in the sun but her complexion didn’t approve.
Though she didn’t sport a suit, she wore all black too, her long-sleeved top molded to her lean frame. She didn’t speak and barely even blinked. He’d seen the tactic before. She was minimizing the attention she drew while assessing her surroundings.
Her eyes swept the room, not with curiosity but with calculation. Her gaze darted from SEAL to SEAL as if she studied their weaknesses in order to stay alive. When her gaze slid to him, he felt her entire focus drill into him.
Their stares locked. She didn’t blink, flinch or give him the satisfaction of looking away.
He didn’t either. He was trained never to give in.
Apparently, so was she.
In his peripheral vision, one of the agents set a file on the table. A very thin file.
Judging by the way the agents and Con spoke, the file was hers.
“When you two are finished with your stare-off, we can get down to business.” Con’s voice cut through the tension, and Sinner jerked his gaze away at the exact moment she twitched hers aside too.
The lead agent settled in as if preparing for a long conversation Charlie team didn’t want to have with a person they didn’t take direct orders from.
“We’re here to initiate a joint operation between the FBI and your unit.”
Con’s expression hardened. “We don’t do joint operations. Ghost ops is the opposite of federal procedure. We don’t answer to the Bureau.”
One corner of the woman’s lips lifted in a brief smirk that would have faded too quick for Sinner to catch if he wasn’t watching her.
The agent’s eyes flicked from her to the file, bringing all the pieces into sharp focus.
She was the joint operation he spoke of.
“This comes from brass above both of us,” the agent continued.
Sinner studied the woman’s posture. She didn’t fidget. Her expression gave away nothing. She just…waited. Like a shadow that shouldn’t exist in a room with no light source.
The second agent began outlining the mission. “We’ve picked up chatter about Cipher.”
That name got heads turning. Cipher—the terrorist the Blackout team and every military and intelligence asset in the country had been hunting.
“Cipher is escalating again. Several government officials have received threats.”
Con drew a deep breath, a sign he was gathering his thoughts. “Cipher was shot. He’s been in hiding. Gone underground. How do we know these threats are from him?”
“Copycats happen, after all.” Chase had once been part of Echo, a team that Cipher wiped out in a devastating chopper accident. Chase hadn’t been with his team that day, and Cipher still had him in his sights. Which made him very invested in any intel on the terrorist.
The second agent swung his attention to Chase. “That’s why we set a trap. And we bait it with people who have the attributes he consistently goes after.”
Con didn’t move his stare from the agent when he gave the order. “Call in Elin.”
The first agent broke in. “Elin Lindgren? We don’t work with independent contractors.”
“She’s not independent. She’s ours. Mason, get Elin.” Con’s tone was like a crack of gunfire, and silence followed.
Mason pushed away from the table to go after Elin, a hacker who’d recently joined the team—and his bed.
And Sinner went back to studying the black-eyed woman.
From the corner of his eye, he noted that Con opened her file. He only skimmed the contents for a second before his head snapped up.
“Sinner, this is your op.”
He jerked his attention toward his commanding officer. “My op?”
“You’re uniquely qualified.”
Hell. He never thought it would come to this.
Across the table, Steele choked on a laugh. “What makes Sinner qualified?”
Chickie stifled a snort. “He makes the pizza. Maybe they’re looking for a new hand-tossed? A good garlic sauce?”
Sinner didn’t flinch at the jab. It was a running joke that nobody knew exactly what he did on the team. He was used to taking flak for being the guy who manned the outdoor pizza oven instead of the grenade launcher.
Con didn’t blink. “Sinner’s dual-trained.”
The room went dead still.
He braced for it.
“What?” Steele’s brows shot up.
“He’s trained,” Con repeated.
“Trained in what? Where?” Steele asked.
Sinner knew what was coming. He felt the air molecules freeze in his lungs.
“Quantico,” Con answered before Sinner could shut it down.
Silence throbbed through the room. Every set of eyes locked on him, including a certain pair of black ones.
Mason had slipped in with Elin standing close to his side. “Quantico? Why the hell don’t we know this?” he asked.
“It’s not relevant.” Sinner’s tone came out with an edge of grit. There was a reason that part of his life was buried. If he said too much, said the wrong thing, it would become a problem.
Chickie issued a shocked huff. “How did we not know this about you, Sinner?”
“Seriously.” Mason’s brows were creased but amusement twitched at his lips. “I bunked with you for three years. What the fuck, bro?”
“Well?” Dante leaned forward, waiting for Sinner’s explanation.
Those black eyes continued to burn into him.
Sinner shifted his shoulders to ease the tight pulling sensation between the blades. “What can I say? The suits didn’t fit.”
Steele’s brows shot higher, and Chickie mouthed, Suits?
Con turned to the woman. “Sinner will be your partner for this op.”
Her stare collided with Sinner’s again—dark, steady, impossible to read.
Too bad he’d already gathered intel on his new partner.
One bag. Thin file. Walls thicker than reinforced steel.