Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
Sinner grabbed his phone and dialed the secure line, all of his focus on Opal.
She was shaken but not shaking. For a woman who buried all her feelings so deep that her body quit responding, he didn’t trust that she wasn’t silently losing her shit.
She paced two steps and stopped. He could see the quiver of effort it took her to remain still.
She took off again. “I’m going to get fired. I’ll end up in a homeless shelter for the rest of my now much shorter and more miserable life,” she muttered as she swept past Sinner. “No food. No healthcare. I’ll die of tuberculosis.”
He propped the phone on the counter and touched her arm. “Sweetheart. This isn’t 1900—you won’t get tuberculosis. And none of that is going to happen—I won’t let it.”
Her eyes didn’t focus on him and darted around the room as if she expected her handler to burst in and fire her. Just as he suspected, she was checked out. Still doom-narrating her future, she paced to the far end of the room and back.
Stepping into her path, Sinner blocked her in with his body. “Opal, look at me.” She flicked her eyes up to his but still wasn’t registering anything but the things going on in her mind.
He cupped her face. “Look at me.” His firmer tone made her eyes clear, the black depths glittering. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You can come live at the mansion.”
Before she could respond, the call connected and Con’s face filled the screen, his expression already grim.
“Report,” he commanded.
Opal snapped back into boss mode, spine straight and her voice steady. She told Con she had no luck connecting with a drug dealer at lunch, so after work, she took off into part of town that was less safe.
Even though Sinner knew it already—he’d watched her tracker until that little dot was burned into his retinas—he still felt his jaw pop with the force of clenching it.
“I got a new task alert,” Opal continued. “Not dog walking this time, a real accounting job preparing taxes for a small business. At that point, I wasn’t far away so I went on foot.”
Sinner knew this too. But he still wanted to toss Opal over his shoulder and carry her away to someplace safe.
Con was locked in. “Walk me through it. Start from the arrival.”
She didn’t shift her focus from Con’s face on the screen as she barreled on, words coming faster.
Opal stood rigid with her arms at her sides, her posture straight and formal.
“It was a warehouse off a side street. No active businesses nearby. The exterior sign was faded so I couldn’t read what the business used to be. It looked abandoned but was maintained. There was newer wood siding.”
The scene played out in Sinner’s mind. Fuck—he didn’t like what was coming.
“Any vehicles around?” Con asked.
“No. The street was clear. No delivery vans or personal vehicles. No license plates to memorize.”
She’d walked in there alone, knowing she had no backup. She’d been a robot for government agencies for so long, she had no sense of self-preservation.
Sinner gripped the edge of the counter hard enough his knuckles whitened.
“Entrance?” Con prompted.
“Side door. Industrial gray. Manual lock. No keypad. No visible cameras in the vicinity. I was about to knock when a guy walked out of the shadows.”
He was fucking watching her. Anger made the edges of Sinner’s vision blink red and black, red and black.
“White male. Mid-thirties to early forties. Approximately six feet. Lean build. Narrow shoulders. No limp.”
Sinner turned slightly away, one hand braced on the counter for support.
“Hair?”
“Medium brown. Short. Neat but not military. No hat.”
“Facial hair?”
“Clean-shaven.”
“Eyes?”
“Hazel brown. Didn’t blink much.”
Sinner’s lungs burned as he dragged air through them. No. It couldn’t be—
“Clothing?”
“Gray zip-front hoodie. Plain. Canvas work jacket over it—dark green or brown. Worn but clean. Jeans. Brown leather work boots. Scuffed toes.”
“Hands?”
“Nails trimmed. No rings. No watch.”
“No ink?” Con asked.
“None visible.”
“Accent?”
“Neutral. No regional markers.”
Sinner dragged a hand down his face. For a long beat, Con didn’t speak. But Sinner knew what his CO was thinking, because he was thinking it too.
Opal had managed to escape Cipher.
“Office was about twelve feet by fifteen. Concrete floor. No debris. Four overhead fluorescent panels. Light switch on the right.”
What she said next had the blood flash-freezing in his veins.
“As soon as I stepped into the office, we exchanged a few words about the project. Then he reached for the door lock.”
Sinner felt a deadly calm spread through his chest. He knew what that sensation meant—he was about to blow.
“I told him we could talk without the door locked. I had two seconds to scan the room again before he cut the lights and grabbed me.”
Sinner’s head snapped up. She seemed to look through him.
“There was only one exit.”
His hand lifted on its own accord, but he didn’t touch her.
“So how did you escape?” Con pressed on.
“I carry a knife strapped to my thigh. I pulled it.” She spread her blood-stained fingers, twisting her hand to study them.
Opal was trained to recall every single detail, to execute orders to the letter. But she didn’t know how to feel.
As if proving his point, her next words were calm and toneless. “I stabbed him in the leg, broke his hold on me and ran.”
Con wore that expression that Sinner had seen a hundred times—he was fitting together all the pieces of the puzzle and calculating their next move. “You did the right thing.”
Opal’s throat worked in a hard swallow, the delicate cords tightening as if she battled the need to justify her actions. “I didn’t have any recourse. He was locking the door.”
“I heard you.” Con’s tone turned firm. “You defended yourself. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re in danger.”
Sinner gripped the counter again, needing the resistance under his palm or he was going to tear the place apart and hunt down the bastard who’d put her in that position.
He lifted his gaze to the screen. He and Con traded a look—brief but loaded.
Opal caught it. Her head snapped toward Sinner, eyes sharp. “What?”
Sinner didn’t answer.
Con did.
“Opal,” he said slowly, carefully, like he was handling a live grenade. “The man you just described matches Cipher’s physical profile.”
The air seemed to be sucked out of the room.
She curled her fingers slowly into her palm, still stained with dried blood. “I stabbed the man you’ve been hunting?”
“Opal, didn’t your handler show you a photo of Daniel Sheen—Cipher—when you were given this assignment?” Sinner’s hands shook with the effort not to pull her against him.
She shook her head but didn’t speak, as if words were beyond her now.
Con’s voice filled the beat of silence. “It wouldn’t have mattered if she did see a photo. She still had to get away. Sinner, Opal, don’t do anything until I give orders.”
The line went dead.
Sinner finally moved—yanking her into his arms, locking his body around hers like a shield.
Cipher had made his move. Opal had survived it.
Now she was a loose end he’d have to take care of.
Unless Sinner got to him first.
* * * * *
Opal drifted to the bed and sank onto the edge. For a moment she didn’t move or even breathe.
All at once, the adrenaline in her system ran out, making her bones go limp. Slowly, she lowered herself to the mattress and curled up on her side.
Sinner rumbled low in his throat. “Shit, sweetheart.” The mattress dipped beneath his weight. He stretched out behind her, fitting his body to her spine and anchoring her against him with a muscled arm.
He didn’t speak, and she was glad of it. She couldn’t bear to hear him say what she’d already seen in his eyes—that he wanted to hunt Cipher’s blood trail right to the source and finish him off. As if Blackout and the FBI weren’t already on it.
“I survived a brush with Cipher,” she whispered. “How many people can say that?”
He was silent for a beat. Then he said, “Seven.”
She went still.
“And three of them are on the Charlie base.”
She flipped over to look at him. “You’re serious.”
“Yeah. Chase, Alyssa and Kennedy.”
She sucked in a breath. “Guess I’m not that special.” She issued a humorless rasp. “I’m just part of a small club.”
His stare roamed over her face and he directed a lock of hair off her brow. “I have an idea that might distract you.”
She gave him a flat look. “This is no time for sex.”
“You’re absolutely right—it’s tattoo time.”
She blinked at him. “You brought your machine with you?”
He nodded like that was the most normal thing in the world.
After a lifetime of analyzing every single move she made, thinking of pros and cons and good and bad outcomes, it wasn’t possible not to do the same with this situation. Her mind processed all the reasons why she shouldn’t mark herself—and a lot more reasons why she should.
She’d already shattered whatever oaths she’d made to any government agencies. It was time to live for herself.
“My time at the FBI is probably coming to an end, so there’s no reason not to do what I want.”
Emotions flickered across his face—concern, restraint, maybe disagreement—but he let it go. That alone made her chest ache with affection for Sinner.
He set up with practiced ease, movements unhurried and confident. She watched him the way she always did, absorbing details without meaning to—noting the steadiness of his hands and the care he took cleaning the skin on her upper thigh, the spot she chose for the ink.
“Do you trust me?” he asked quietly.
The question struck her harder than it should have.
Trust was a liability. It got people killed.
“Yes,” she said almost immediately—and startled herself with how true it was.
He didn’t smile. He just nodded and switched on the machine.
The hum filled the room. When the needle touched her skin, she barely registered the pain. It was sharp, yes, but familiar in a way that made her shoulders loosen instead of tense.
“That’s…weird,” she muttered.
“What is?”
“That I trust you.” Her eyes stayed fixed on the far wall as he laid in a line. “You could put anything on me. A penis. That ‘no regerts’ thing people think is funny. I’d be stuck with it until I’m ninety. If I live to ninety.”
He huffed softly. “You’re not flinching.”
She shrugged. “Smith always said if you’re in pain, push through it. Pain is temporary. Getting out safely matters more. No one’s coming to save you.”
His jaw tightened as if he disagreed, but he kept working, gentle even as the machine buzzed against her skin.
“He taught me how to dislocate my thumb to get out of handcuffs,” she went on, the words spilling out now that she’d started. “How to break zip ties. He said pain is just information. You can use it or let it stop you.”
Her voice stayed even, but she felt a pang low in her chest when she said it out loud. She’d never thought much about what it meant until now.
She felt Sinner’s sadness like a pressure in the air. Not pity. Never that. Just the quiet grief of a man realizing how much she’d had to endure alone.
She drifted in a fog of all that had happened, lulled by the hum of the needles.
Before she knew it, Sinner spoke. “You’re done.”
She looked down.
On her upper thigh, riding just above the sheath where she carried her knife, was a small ice cream cone.
She blinked at the simple lines, the swirl on top unmistakably orange and pink together. “Orange sherbet…and pink lemonade.”
Their gazes connected, and her breath caught.
“Dammit,” she muttered. “My eyes are doing that weird leaky thing again. How do I make it stop?”
He leaned in and brushed a kiss to her shoulder. “I love you, Opal.”
“Nope,” she said thickly, shaking her head. “That made it worse. So much worse.” She sniffed hard, then laughed weakly. “I love you too.”
He stayed with her, forehead pressed to her temple, while the emotion passed through her instead of her burying it. For once, she didn’t fight it.
Because she knew what she had with Sinner was forever.