Chapter 10
TEN
Sinner’s back was legitimately sore by the time he made it back to the hotel room. Not the fake hitch he adopted for the job, but a deep ache earned by hauling materials day after day and proving to a crew of skeptical men that he could, in fact, pull his weight despite his injury.
When he opened the door, he stopped in the opening as the sweet scent of Opal’s perfume hit him.
His body stirred. But after patching up her knee, he hadn’t been able to shake a different kind of warmth, the type that filled up his entire chest.
After they ate together at the little table, throwing each other loaded looks, Sinner declared he was taking a quick shower. What he didn’t tell Opal was the shower would be cold. Ice cold. Still, it didn’t stave off his want for her.
Days had passed since he touched her, but he needed her to make the first move. Judging from the looks she gave him, she wanted it too. So what was holding her back?
When he stepped out of the bathroom, he saw Opal on the bed, fast asleep.
Watching her sleep only made things worse, because a new warmth settled inside him, undeniable, as he stood staring at her beautiful face.
As soon as he came home from work the following evening, he sank onto the cheap couch and propped his phone on the chipped coffee table. When he hit the secure call for check-in, he expected Con’s face to come into frame. Instead, it was Ash.
“Well, well.” Ash leaned back in his chair. “How’s domestic bliss?”
Sinner huffed. “Where’s Con?”
“Out. Unavoidable call.” Ash lifted a brow. “I’m in charge…”
“Movin’ up, man.”
“…of the phone,” he finished.
He gave his buddy a hint of a smile. “God help us.”
“I haven’t even begun to show you guys the kind of hard-ass I can be.”
From the first time Angelo Ash entered the Charlie base, Sinner saw secrets in the man…and a darkness he kept locked down under his rigid, disciplined exterior.
“I believe you. And you should feel honored—Con doesn’t let many have that job.”
Ash rocked a little in his seat as if that pleased him, but Sinner knew he’d never voice it. “He said you’d be checking in early this evening. How’s it going?”
“Cover’s holding. I sold the injury on the job. People are talking.” He paused. “Opal’s doing her part.”
Strained brackets formed around Ash’s mouth. “Con filled us in about what happened. She recover?”
“Yeah, she’s tough.” He couldn’t stop the flood of feelings that came at the mention of Opal’s meltdown…and what that had morphed into.
Ash nodded. “She’s good.”
“Yeah,” he said more quietly. “She is.”
They talked logistics for a few minutes, and Sinner fired off the names of every guy on his crew from memory. Ash took them all down to run through the system later. When it came to ops, every person was screened, even if it was unlikely they played a role in the crime.
He shot a look at the window. Daylight was fading to a haze of orange streaming through the slats in the blinds. Opal was late again, and he didn’t like it.
“Anything else for me?” Ash asked once he entered the final name.
He leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees. “Actually…I need to ask you for a favor, off the record.”
Ash’s expression sharpened, his lips thinning. “Go ahead.”
“It’s about Opal.” He stopped short, second-guessing himself, which wasn’t Sinner’s modus operandi.
“I’m listening.”
He pushed on. “She’s got something eating at her. An old wound.” He chose his words carefully. “Is there any way to find out what happened to her mom?”
“Let me have a quick look in the system.” Ash didn’t answer right away. His fingers moved across a keyboard, eyes scanning the screen. After a couple minutes, he leaned back again, slower this time.
“What is it?” Sinner’s voice held a gritty edge.
His brother-in-arms wore an expression he hadn’t seen before—half confusion, half concern. “Her background is sealed.”
“Sealed,” he echoed.
He nodded. “Under something called Project Lazarus.”
The words landed like two rounds to Sinner’s chest.
He froze. The air in the room seemed to vanish.
“Are you sure?” he managed to rasp.
“Dead sure. Whatever she was involved in, whatever her family was tied to—it’s locked down tight as hell. That’s as far as I can go.”
He nodded once, but his mind was already catapulting past the shock.
Ash couldn’t dig any deeper. But he knew someone who could.
Then he felt it—the instinct he trusted when all else failed. He looked up.
Opal stood in the doorway, her hand still on the knob, her face drained of color. Her gaze was fixed on his phone like it had just spoken her name.
Ash was still talking. “Sinclair?”
Silence throbbed in the room, thick and crushing.
Opal didn’t move. Neither did he. They stared at each other across the small room, the truth waiting between them like a serpent.
He broke eye contact first. “Gotta go,” he told Ash and ended the call with a swipe of his finger.
He could almost see Opal’s muscles locked down tight, poised to run.
“Honey, you’re home.”
His joke fell flat.
He snatched up the phone and turned it so she could see the map on the screen, the little route of pins from her tracker like a connect-the-dots puzzle. “You made a dinosaur on your dog walk route,” he tried again.
Her mouth opened and closed. Her dark eyes were shielded as she closed the door as silently as she’d opened it. She turned to him. “What do you know about Project Lazarus?” Her whisper was hot and strained. Twisted and tortured.
He didn’t answer her at first. Her eyes narrowed to slits and she snatched up her bag she never moved from the spot by the door. She zipped it and was backing out of the room in what could only be two heartbeats.
“Opal, stop!” He rushed into her path, and she rocked on her heels before smashing into his chest.
She flattened her hand on his chest and shoved hard enough to rock him. He didn’t move. He wasn’t backing down now—or ever, he realized with a hard shift in his core.
She glared up at him, two splotches of deep red anger burning on each cheek. “I’ll ask you one more time, Sinclair,” she bit off through her clenched jaw. “What…do you know…about Project Lazarus?”
“I know we have it in common.” The words tasted like scorched metal on his tongue. Never in his life did he expect to speak them aloud.
The strap of her bag slipped off her shoulder. The duffel hit the floor with a dull thud.
She slowly pivoted, shuffled two steps and dropped down hard on the couch, eyes fixed on the boring artwork on the opposite wall.
Silence gathered between them, thick and unmoving.
Filling his lungs with air, he moved to sit beside her, careful not to crowd her.
“Opal, we need to talk.”
* * * * *
Opal didn’t look at him at first.
She couldn’t.
She stared at the bland artwork across the room, the kind chosen because it offended no one and meant nothing, and tried to slow her breathing. Her heart was beating too hard, too fast, like her body had decided something important was happening whether her mind was ready or not.
Sinner was checking into her background. She knew for a damn fact that Project Lazarus wasn’t in her file, let alone the very thin version the FBI provided to Blackout.
Lazarus always sounded like some code word she would never understand. Along with her training, Smith always drilled into her that if anything happened to him, she needed to go to the FBI and tell them “Lazarus.”
Only after that did she begin to see it was a group of people who were already ghosts in the world, and the government had a use for them.
When she found that tracking device glued to her boot this morning—and in her pocket and her handbag—she told herself he was only watching out for her in case of more trouble. Partners had to keep tabs.
But this…
Wasn’t that.
Con didn’t trust her not to work as a team, and Sinner was monitoring her to keep her in line.
It was finally happening—people saw she wasn’t good enough. No matter how hard she fought to earn her place and prove she deserved to be in her position, they knew she was a failure. Once the FBI knew she wasn’t good enough, she wouldn’t have anything.
Then there was the sex. She couldn’t believe she let herself be used that way.
“You went digging.” Her fingers bit into the couch cushion.
“Yes.”
She turned her head and fixed him with the stare she whipped out when she wanted to make people flinch.
Sinner didn’t.
Her knuckles began to ache from her tight grip on the cushion. “Why?”
In true Caius “Sinner” Sinclair style, he didn’t look away.
“I was trying to help you find your mom. I know how much you miss her.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
She issued a scoffing sound, soft and low but burning with fury. “Project Lazarus isn’t a thing you just stumble across. It’s buried on purpose.”
“I know.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You said we have it in common. How?”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he shifted, angling his body toward her. He was positioning himself in the same way men trained in interrogation tactics would when they wanted to get answers without spooking their source.
Her jaw began to ache from clenching her teeth so hard.
“Tell me your story, Opal. How did it start?”
Her laugh came out sharp and humorless. “Nice try.”
His chest inflated to an impossible size. He held it for two counts before expelling the air out through his nose. “It’s not a trick.”
“Yes, it is,” she shot back. “It’s a tactic. You pretend you have common ground so people feel safe filling in the gaps.” She threw out an example. “You start with something shared—same city, same program, same bad childhood—so people fill in the rest for you. It’s Rapport 101.”
He grunted. “You’re not wrong.”
She pushed to her feet and paced to the other side of the room, arms folded. “Then you already know I’m not telling you anything.”
He studied her for a long beat, brown eyes steady on her for too long. At last, he nodded once. “Okay.”