Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Sinner kept his gaze locked on the tracker app.
That little dot that represented Opal had been moving steadily for the past twenty minutes.
Now it sat motionless.
Could be nothing. She could be stuck in road construction.
But his gut—honed by years of combat zones and hot extractions and surviving when the odds said he shouldn’t—twisted hard enough to make his ribs ache.
He stared at the tracker until his vision blurred. As soon as he blinked to clear it, a text popped onto his screen.
Pork chops for dinner.
She was in danger.
The air in the car was too thick, pressing against his lungs.
His shoulders tensed, muscles coiling like they’d been waiting for this exact moment.
He didn’t want to overreact. Didn’t want to be the guy who lost his shit when he was known as the easygoing SEAL on the team, the one who smiled too easily and carried tension like it didn’t exist. Whose only job was making the pizza.
Deep in his bones, in the dark place where instinct lived, he fucking knew Cipher had her.
His phone buzzed with an incoming call from base. He answered before the first ring finished. “Talk to me.”
Elin’s face filled the screen, her expression tight and her hair messy like she’d been fighting her own kind of war. “Opal took a call fifteen minutes ago. Unknown number. I traced it.”
His pulse kicked up. “And?”
“The trace pinged off a cell tower. It’s the closest location I could get without more time. I just sent you the coordinates.”
His blood ran cold. The coordinates matched exactly where Opal’s tracker showed she had stopped.
“She sent me a message, a code we made up to tell me if she was in danger. And she just sent it.” She could have gone in there alone and left him hanging. But she just proved everyone wrong—sending that text was the equivalent of showing them she was a team player.
“Shit!”
“I know where she is.” The words felt like flaming gravel as he forced them out. “I need to go get her.”
“Sinner, wait—”
He’d already slammed the vehicle he’d “borrowed” from the hotel parking lot into gear. The tires screeched when he punched the accelerator, the engine roaring like it understood his urgency. He gripped the wheel hard enough to feel it bite into his palms.
He had to get to her. If Cipher himself didn’t have her, he’d sent one of his dogs to do his dirty work.
How did he get her alone and exposed? He had to be holding some leverage over her. Otherwise, she would’ve fought him.
Why the hell had Sinner let her walk out that door? He should have defied orders rather than letting the woman he loved walk straight into the jaws of a predator.
His phone buzzed with a text from Con.
Wait for us.
Sinner ground his molars and typed back one-handed while he crossed into oncoming traffic, blowing past a car on a double line without slowing.
How long?
Seven minutes out.
Seven minutes was too damn long. A fucking eternity when the women he loved was in the hands of a terrorist who was out for blood after she drew it first.
When he didn’t respond to his CO, his phone rang immediately. With a huff of irritation, he answered with a sharp swipe.
Con’s voice was deathly calm. Dangerously calm. A certain sign that he was not pleased with Sinner’s actions. “Sinner. You do not go in without backup.”
His voice came out flat. “Seven minutes is too long. If Cipher has her—” He couldn’t finish the sentence, wouldn’t let himself think about what could happen in seven minutes…or might have already.
“Sinner. Final order.”
“I can’t wait, Commanding Officer.” He cut the wheel hard, taking a turn that made the car fishtail before he corrected.
Silence stretched between them for a beat. Con’s voice was even when he said what Sinner didn’t expect. “Keep the line open.”
Sinner didn’t respond. He focused on the road, boot locked to the gas pedal.
He killed the engine half a block away and approached on foot in a crouch, his steps silent. The house at the end of the street looked abandoned. He scanned the cracked windows. Opal wasn’t visible in any of them.
But her car was parked crooked in the driveway, like she’d been in a hurry…to get to what?
His heart slammed his ribs like it hit a brick wall at full speed.
He navigated the perimeter with stealth that was as natural as breathing. Every window he passed, he peeked inside, but all he saw were rooms littered with trash and broken furniture.
Then—movement.
He pressed his back against the siding and angled for a better view through the grimy window and a single crack between slats of a broken blind.
The figure was male with the lean build and brown hair Opal had described.
Cipher.
He was talking. Sinner couldn’t make out the words but the cadence was off—the voice of a man who held all the power and knew it.
Sinner shifted position, pressing so tight to the wall that he felt splinters bite through his clothes.
The air stopped in his lungs as he got eyes on her.
Opal slumped against the wall, hands bound behind her. Her head lolled to the side.
Rage detonated in his chest, white-hot and all-consuming. He was out of time and the team wasn’t here yet. Con’s orders echoed in his mind—wait for backup—but waiting meant leaving her in there with a terrorist who’d already proven he had no problem hurting a woman.
Fuck orders. Fuck protocol.
Fuck everything that wasn’t getting to her right fucking now.
Sinner moved to the back door. When he tested the knob, he found it locked. He pulled a pry bar from his pack and wedged it into the frame. One sharp twist and the lock gave with a muted crack.
He slipped in, silent as death.
The house reeked of mold and rot. He moved through the hallway, weapon raised, every sense dialed to maximum. Cipher’s voice grew louder as he approached in quick, stealthy steps.
The steel of Sinner’s weapon was warm in his grip, grounding him in what he needed to do. His finger hovered over the trigger, and he forced his breathing to steady as his focus narrowed to a single point.
Get to Opal. Nothing else mattered. Not his career, not his orders.
Not his life. Only hers.
Because losing her wasn’t a possibility he could survive. And he’d set the whole goddamn world on fire before he let Cipher take her from him.
* * * * *
Pain dragged Opal back to consciousness—a vicious, throbbing pulse that radiated from the base of her skull and made her stomach lurch.
She blinked against the darkness, forcing her eyes to focus even though the room spun like she’d been on a three-day bender. Her body felt heavy and disconnected, like her limbs belonged to someone else.
She was sitting upright. No—strapped to a metal chair. A glance down revealed heavy-duty zip ties binding her forearms to the back of the chair. She rattled her wrists.
Metal handcuffs tight enough to make her fingers tingle.
Her training kicked in automatically, pushing past the nausea and disorientation from that blow to her head.
She scanned the room with a trained eye, noting every detail the way Smith drilled into her until it became second nature.
Junk littered the floor, from deteriorating cardboard boxes to empty beer bottles.
Bare walls stained with water damage showed years of neglect.
One window on the far wall had blinds, and the slats were closed all but for a couple bent ones near the bottom that let in a dim beam of light.
One door, currently closed, was her closest exit.
And her knife was gone.
The realization sent ice spiking through her veins. That blade was her lifeline, her only advantage in a situation that was already stacked against her. Now it was in enemy hands, and she was defenseless.
Through the fog of what was probably a mild concussion, she remembered the thing that lured her here in the first place.
“Mom?”
The word came out as a broken whisper, hoarse and cracked.
A male voice answered from the shadows, so calm that it made her skin crawl. “She’s not here.”
Opal’s blood turned to slush in her veins. Everything rushed back.
Cipher. The voice on the phone, and in the office just before the lights went out.
Of course her mother wasn’t here. It was all a trap—the oldest, dirtiest play in the book.
And she’d walked into it with her eyes wide open because what else could she have done?
How could she have lived with herself if there was even a slim chance—the most miniscule possibility—that she could have saved her mom?
Hell, she might be dead for all Opal knew, and Cipher had used a daughter’s love to gain her fucking compliance.
The probability of his manipulation carved through her chest like a dull blade, slow and agonizing, leaving nothing but raw hurt behind.
Focus.
She forced herself to think past the pain and fear clawing at her throat like a living beast. Panic was a luxury she couldn’t afford, and self-pity would get her killed.
First, she needed a weapon. Anything she could use to fight back and shift the odds even a fraction in her favor.
There was nothing. No loose nail jutting from the walls or broken furniture she could snap and make into a makeshift shiv. Just her against the man the world was hunting.
Her hands flexed against the cuffs. Too bad they weren’t zip ties. Those she could escape. Slowly, she tested the plastic strapped around her forearms. Cipher had dotted all the I’s and crossed the T’s by making damn sure she wasn’t getting free.
A small noise echoed from some other part of the house—a creak, faint but distinct, like weight shifting on the old floorboards.
Cipher’s head snapped toward the door, body taught with sudden alertness. He flicked off the light, plunging her into near-total darkness that pressed against her like a physical weight.
She strained to hear the sound of him leaving the room, and sure enough, she picked up the rustle of his movements as he slipped out. Then came a sharp metallic click of him locking her in.