FIVE
Rome had spent the last hour trying to sweat Stina out of his system.
It hadn’t worked.
Every mile on the treadmill, every pull-up, every rep of the barbell had only sharpened the memory of her standing in his shirt, swallowing half her body and all his common sense.
He needed an ice-cold shower but that meant walking past her door. Instead he settled for scrubbing a towel over his chest and arms before he yanked on a clean T-shirt and headed for the kitchen.
Most of Sierra team operated on coffee and rogue decisions that Blackout command hadn’t caught up with yet. This morning Rome was greeted by the scent of coffee and his teammates scavenging breakfast after PT.
Townie stood at the counter piling fried ham and bacon on an English muffin, layering it so high he’d have to unhinge his jaw to take a bite.
Monk leaned against the island with a mug in hand, while O and Younger sat at opposite ends of the table, scrolling on their tablets while they shoveled food in their mouths.
With only a nod of greeting, Rome poured some coffee and leaned on the counter. Even before he took his first sip, he knew caffeine wouldn’t help him focus. His problem wasn’t exhaustion.
His problem was sleeping across the hall.
His thoughts drifted to the tattoo he’d spotted on Stina’s back. After she ripped off his shirt and launched it at him like a weapon, she’d whirled to stomp inside her room, revealing a dark line along her spine.
She disappeared into her room so fast he didn’t get a good enough look to make out what it was. Could be a flower or a quote. Could be a dragon.
Or another man’s name.
Not knowing what ink marked her tan skin had driven him insane half the night and drove him to meet a new personal record on weights that morning.
He’d seen more of her than he could handle and remain sane. Her ass, her black satin bra with lace trim around the swell of each breast.
Fuck.
He swallowed his coffee wrong and bottled down the coughing fit that came after, ignoring the glances his teammates shot his way.
Feeling Monk’s stare on him, he looked over the rim of his mug. “Problem?” he choked out.
Monk didn’t even try to hide his smirk. “You seem edgy today, Rome. What’s the matter? Didn’t get enough sleep?”
Rome lowered his mug and glanced between Monk and Townie. “Which one of you bastards is responsible for putting Stina in the room across from mine?”
O twisted his face away but not before Rome caught the flash of a grin. With a grin, Younger set down his book to watch the events unfold.
Rome pushed off the counter, straightening to his full height. “I want Townie back in that room.”
Townie chewed his sandwich like he didn’t have a care in the world. “No chance. I needed a change of scenery.”
Rome stared. Townie stared back.
“What scenery did you get exactly? A room with a window? Because none of us have those.” He waved a hand around the underground base.
A little sunlight streamed in from shafts that filtered light in from the outside world, but if they wanted more, they had to go topside. It was like living in a damn submarine.
Townie shrugged and bit off another huge chunk of his sandwich.
From the corner of his eye, he caught O mouthing something across the table to Younger.
Rome jerked his head their way, eyes narrowed. “I thought Cannon said no more bets.”
Younger rolled his eyes. “Seems pretty hypocritical when you were the last to profit from a bet.”
He’d given Stina some of his winnings to buy pizza, which was probably forgotten in the bottom of her purse.
“We’re not discussing that.”
Before anyone could say more, the intercom crackled. “War room. Five minutes.”
Everyone gulped down the rest of their coffee and stuffed what food they could in their mouths, switching into operator mode as they converged on the war room.
The large command center was the pulse of Sierra’s base, and it was already crackling with tension when they filed in.
Rome dropped into his usual seat and fixed his attention on Cannon. The man widened his stance, arms folded.
“We’ve got movement on Echo’s inventory.”
That had everyone’s attention. Blackout Echo had been wiped out in a single strike by the terrorist Cipher. Afterward, the armory at Echo’s own hidden base had been cleaned out—everything stolen.
And that inventory was now being circulated.
The Sierra team, as well as the rest of Blackout, was working to identify who was buying, selling and moving those weapons, and it seemed they’d made some progress.
Rivers planted his elbows on the table. “Arms dealers?”
Cannon nodded. “Some MK48s were seized by the ATF last night. The serial numbers are from Echo’s armory.”
The image of Stina’s tattoo retreated to the back of Rome’s mind as he fixated on a new problem.
The main monitor flickered to life, and a second war room appeared with a similar setup as Sierra’s, the long table surrounded by the men who made up Charlie team.
Grins appeared around the table, and for a moment, the war room felt less like a command center and more like going home for a long weekend.
Cannon nodded at Charlie’s commanding officer. Constantine, aka Con, nodded in return.
Also in view were several members of Charlie’s tech support team. Their operator, Dante, sat between two women who assisted him, all three absorbed in whatever they were working on.
Con sent Dante a sideways glance. “Tell them.”
Dante looked like he hadn’t slept in days, poor bastard. Rome and everyone in this room had been in his worn boots before, never resting until the mission reached some level of completion.
Dante stared at the camera. “I found some files in the FBI database.”
No one spoke.
“Ones that were never shared,” he continued.
Silence stretched as the implication settled over the room.
Cannon’s voice hardened. “They buried the intel?”
The women on Charlie team exchanged a glance that suggested they’d already processed what Dante had found and were waiting for the rest of them to catch up.
Dante nodded once. “Looks like it. We also dug into the agent assigned to Stina Velez. From what we can tell, he didn’t even know why he was guarding her.”
Rome’s jaw tightened. The agent hadn’t known, but someone higher up had. Someone had intentionally withheld information.
His hands curled into fists. “You’re saying he believed he was assigned to watch her—not protect her?”
“Looks that way,” Dante confirmed.
Con issued a grating noise like crushing rock. “That’s not all. The FBI didn’t disclose to their own agents that they are hunting a new terrorist with possible ties to Cipher’s network.”
Elin and Sophie’s faces said a lot—both of them had close brushes with Cipher. If anyone wanted the cell brought down, it was them.
Sierra team remained silent, processing what all of this meant.
It meant that Blackout wasn’t receiving intel necessary to make good decisions about their ops. The government agency that was supposed to back them up was concealing things from them, leaving them operating in the dark.
Cannon braced a hand on the table, as if he came to a decision that cost him. “I fucking knew it.”
Con’s gaze burned through the screen. “You knew they were withholding intel?”
“My gut kept telling me the picture was bigger than the one they handed us. They fed us just enough to do the job, but not enough to understand why we were doing it.”
Con dragged his hand across his jaw. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“No. But it can be the last.”
Everyone on Sierra recognized that tone. Cannon respected the chain of command and the boundaries put in place. But if the rules put his people at risk, he found the edges and pushed until they bent.
Cannon swung his head toward O. “You up for this?”
O knew exactly what he was asking. “Put me in, coach.”
“What do you have in mind?” Con asked.
Cannon met his gaze through the camera. “We make a Blackout network. A secure channel between Blackout teams.”
Con nodded. “Copy. My specialists will work with yours to create it.”
Nobody questioned the fact that they were stepping outside Blackout protocol. If the agencies couldn’t be trusted to share information, then Blackout needed their own secure channel. Their own intelligence network. Their own way of keeping operators alive.
Cannon gave a hard nod. “Done.”
“There’s more.” Dante reached toward his keyboard. “Listen to this.”
Audio crackled through the speakers, then a distorted, mechanical voice filled the room.
The entire room jolted at the sound.
Several people on Charlie team shifted in their seats as if it made their skin crawl, and Rome felt a prickle at the base of his own spine.
“It’s similar to the modulator Cipher used in Times Square when he hijacked every screen there.”
Everyone remembered the ghost voice from an incident with a member of Charlie the previous year. It echoed through thousands of speakers, yet its message had been intended for only one woman.
“You believe it’s a copycat?” Rome asked before anyone else could.
Dante’s expression tightened. “Possible.”
Cannon folded his arms. “Where did the recording come from? Why hasn’t Blackout command shared it with us?”
“Because they didn’t know about it.” Dante’s expression hardened. “I found it while digging through the FBI files on the dead agent.”
Cannon pressed his fist to his lips for a brief heartbeat, but it was long enough to make up his mind. “We’re not putting our lives in the hands of bureaucrats who pick and choose what they share.”
Several people nodded in agreement, including Rome. Blackout gave up their entire existence to fight for a better world. If protecting it meant carving their own path, then so be it.
“Play it again,” Rome said.
The voice recording looped once more. The distorted, robotic voice warbled beneath a layer of static.
Beneath the demonic tone, other sounds surfaced. The clink of glasses. Plates. Voices.
For a second Rome thought he heard a name. Stina.
It couldn’t be. He was thinking so much about the sexy curve of her spine and the tattoo across it that he was hearing things.