Chapter 4
FOUR
By this time tomorrow, Sinner would be a man with a stiff back and a drug habit he couldn’t shake.
The lie was already built. He just had to drop into the war zone.
For now, he’d distanced himself, settling into a corner of the base where no one visited. It had everything he needed—a wall to lean against and a view of the wooded area behind the mansion.
He braced his back to the wall and stretched out his legs, hands loose on his thighs, listening to the silence. It took him months of living with so many people before he found a spot that didn’t demand any version of him and offered more privacy than the kitchen.
He tipped his head back against the wall and let his eyes slip shut. He wasn’t tired—but he needed the noise in his head to settle into some sort of order.
He was no stranger to solo missions. He and Mason were often given orders to perform tasks that didn’t involve the entire team. Not even his brothers-in-arms questioned when he was off base, believing he just made supply runs.
This op was different. Use him as bait to get to Cipher and he had no problem with it. But Opal? He didn’t like it, and it wasn’t just some outdated belief that women were the weaker sex and required protection.
It was the thought of Opal scoring prescription narcotics in a dark alley or sitting in an office waiting for a terrorist to make contact. And where would he be during all this? He couldn’t just stand around doing nothing while his partner took all the risks.
He blew out a hot breath through his nose.
Tomorrow they both had to be convincing.
The fake injury was simple. He could alter the way he moved so well that people would never doubt he was in pain.
The addiction was a different kind of mask, one he hated putting on because he understood it too well. Back in Chicago, before he was absorbed into Quantico or
Blackout, he’d watched men rot from the inside out from addiction.
He could sell it to the world with a hunger in his eyes and a tremor in his hands. What he couldn’t predict was what came after the performances ended for the day and he and Opal were alone.
He grunted. He wasn’t hitting it off with her. A fact that bugged him. Most people liked him, including all the women in the house. Alyssa and Kennedy were a close duo that saw him as a worthy friend from the start. May often wandered outside to talk weapons with him, a topic they had in common.
Sophie was one of the smartest women he’d ever known, and they shared discussions on everything from philosophy to the future generations of the country. Not to mention Izzy, who liked trying to outdo him when it came to making pizzas, since she worked in a local shop in high school.
And Elin…
He heard his friend’s footsteps but didn’t open his eyes. When she rounded the corner, she slowed, expecting to find him where he was, his back to the wall while he enjoyed a moment of solitude.
“There you are.”
He opened his eyes. “I was never lost.”
“But you’re avoiding.” Elin folded her arms across her chest. “The op goes live tomorrow.”
“I figured. Guess I’d better dig out my work boots.”
Her lips curved in a faint smile but the small crease between her brows told him her mind was still churning. “Everyone wants to see you before you go.”
The motto around here was work hard, play hard. And whether it was the entire team deploying or a solo mission, they never wasted an opportunity to play hard.
“Fine.” No point in swimming against the tide. “What’s going on tonight? Another movie no one watches?”
She shook her head, amusement tugging her lips into a full smile. “We’re all going downstairs. Casino night.”
The basement of the mansion housed a shooting range in one wing as well as a lot of wide-open space.
But it was the women who realized the house was larger than the basement—at least at first glance.
Then they discovered a secret room where the former multimillionaire who built it had a hidden gaming room and bar.
Elin took a step toward him. “Everyone’s already down there.”
He pushed to his feet and rolled his shoulders to shake off the weight of his thoughts. “Let’s go.”
They walked together, not talking, until they reached the door leading to the basement. The closer they got, the louder the hum of voices became.
The door to the secret room was open, and the soft glow from the twinkle lights the ladies hung up cast a golden light across the concrete floor. The space didn’t have the glitter of the Vegas strip, but it boasted a bar, gaming tables and a couple slot machines on one wall.
Sinner stepped in, and Con gave him a chin lift of greeting from his seat at the bar. He wasn’t drinking on the job but cradled one of Sophie’s famous energy smoothies.
Sinner dipped his head in recognition before swinging toward the card table. A game of poker was heating up, and the guys were ribbing Ash about the number of poker chips stacked in his corner of the table.
He caught the grin Ash wore and was happy to see he was beginning to relax and integrate into the team after the years he spent off the battlefield and behind a desk, recruiting men to Blackout.
The ladies were hanging out with their significant others, all enjoying the fun.
Sinner also registered who wasn’t there.
Opal.
It just solidified what he already knew—she didn’t do bonding.
Abandoning her blender, Sophie rounded the bar and cut a path toward him like a missile with a purpose.
“There you are.” She jabbed a finger at him like she was about to issue him a citation. “You promised.”
His lips twitched. “I promise a lot of things. Narrow it down.”
“The tattoo.” Her eyes sparkled.
Ah. That.
The skill was just a stupid piece of his past he’d mentioned once, and of course Sophie’s mind was a steel vault.
He’d spent a short stint as a tattoo artist when he was a teenager in Chicago. Back before Quantico absorbed him. Back before he became Blackout and ceased to exist.
He’d gotten good—good enough to have an appointment book that stayed full and a shop owner who was happy to have more cash in his pocket.
He eyed Sophie, a former professor who now operated as the team’s cryptologist, cracking all of Cipher’s codes.
“You’re really doing this tonight?”
“Yes. Because you’re going out in the field and I want it finished.”
He huffed a laugh. “I’m not going to die.”
She looked at him hard. “That’s not the reason.”
“Then what is?”
She stepped closer, pitching her voice lower. “It’s partly Con’s idea to do this tonight.”
“I’m listening.”
“Con trusts you to tattoo me. It shows that you’re in control and have precision in everything you do. You’re well-rounded.”
“Thanks, but I’m not trying to get into college here.”
She sent a glance at the open door. “You’re going on an op with a woman who trusts no one.”
“Okay, but wouldn’t it work better if she was here to see it?”
Sophie’s eyes flashed. “I told her where to be.”
Con glanced over from the bar, eyebrow raised. Con’s strategic mind didn’t stop at mission planning. The man orchestrated people just as carefully.
He traded a long look with Con. “Fine,” he conceded.
Sophie bounced a little in excitement, then rushed behind the bar to produce his tattoo kit. A bunch of people drifted over to watch as he set up with the same careful ritual he used in Chicago—clean surfaces, gloved hands, ink caps aligned, new needle in place.
Con hovered near the woman he loved. “You don’t need a template?”
He shook his head. “I freehand.”
Con gave him a stare that meant if he had to look at Sinner’s mistake every time he touched Sophie, Sinner might be a few teeth lighter.
Sophie stretched out on a padded massage table stolen from one of the upstairs rooms, wearing a workout top with her ribs bared.
He looked down at her. “You sure you won’t change your mind about the ribs? It’s going to hurt like a bitch.”
She set her jaw as if daring the needle to hurt her. “I’m tough.”
He chuckled. “I believe you. And you’re sure about the design?”
“Totally.”
Halfway through the first line, he felt the air change. His instincts were honed enough to know that someone new entered the space.
Sinner lifted his gaze.
Opal stood just inside the entrance, her body going utterly still, like she’d walked into something she hadn’t expected. Her reaction lasted less than a second before she locked it down, shoulders easing, expression smoothing into the neutrality she wore like armor.
Too smooth.
Sinner returned his attention to the ink, his hand steady, his breathing even, but the moment was sharp in his mind.
Whatever she’d just seen had caught her off balance.
And sooner or later, he was going to figure out why.
* * * * *
Opal heard the sound before she registered what it was.
The buzz dug into her skin—the high-pitched whine of a needle penetrating flesh.
A tattoo machine.
Every muscle in her body locked down so fast it tore the breath out of her lungs. Her spine went rigid and her shoulders straightened as if giant hands clamped down on them. For half a heartbeat, she was no longer standing in the hallway outside the basement of a military base.
She was eight years old again, bare feet planted on stained concrete. The air was thick with smoke and sweat and something metallic she’d never been able to name.
The memory cleared, and she focused on the man holding the machine responsible for the sound—Sinner.
He leaned over Sophie, muscles and tendons roping his forearms. One boot braced against the leg of the table, the rest of his body stayed rock-solid as he pulled a line of ink through her skin.
Control radiated off him the way heat came off steel. He looked as comfortable holding the tattoo gun as she imagined he would a high-powered rifle.
His brown hair had tumbled loose from whatever discipline he used to keep it tamed, the strands slipping across his forehead. It gave him a rougher edge than she’d seen before—less SEAL, more rogue. The kind of man who didn’t ask permission because he didn’t need it.