If she had to do this, his real fight wouldn’t be against Cipher.
It would be staying in character while she put herself in the crosshairs.
* * * * *
Opal’s composure held—because it always held, and she refused to crack like Sinner just did—but it took a hell of a lot of effort.
Not with Sinner looking like he wanted to put his fist through the table. Not with Con watching them both the way men traced a bullet to the target—respecting danger and still needing to know if they hit the mark.
Dante put their covers on the big screens. She scanned the documents that would back their narrative. Hotel booking,medical claim numbers, emails, receipts. All the kind of proof that Cipher would love.
Elin took a sip of her coffee as if she needed it to fortify herself for what came next. “Cipher doesn’t recruit people at random. He uses a methodology to corrupt people. We know how each person was turned. What they wanted, what they feared, what they couldn’t afford to lose. He looks for weaknesses. Yours”—her gaze flicked to Opal—“is your love for your husband.”
The word felt like someone shoved her in the chest, but she didn’t rock from the blow. Wouldn’t flinch.
Sinner didn’t move, but she had been watching people’s expressions since she was very young. She saw the minute shift in his jaw he tried to hide.
It was the same reaction he’d had after he learned she would be making drug deals while he hobbled around with a sore back.
“I don’t want to be anyone’s weakness,” he ground out.
A prickling sensation swept up her nape and spread along the base of her skull like warm fingers against cool flesh.
Elin fixed her attention on him. “It’s a cover, Sinner. Nobody expects you to act weak.”
He issued a noise in his throat that sent that prickle up Opal’s neck again.
Dante directed their attention to the screen and a photo of the extended-stay hotel where they’d be staying.
She expected a seedy motel where the carpet was permanently damp and the locks didn’t quite catch. But compared to her reality growing up, the place was a palace.
More pictures slid by, showing shots of the neighborhood that could never be as degenerate as the one where Smith taught her to fight.
Still, her mind shot backthere…to the single room where she and her parents were forced to stay after her father ratted out all his friends to the feds.
Her father had run with a motorcycle club—hard men with their hands in a lot of criminal activities. Opal remembered all those tough, tattooed guys as her uncles. And the women who rode on the back of their bikes as sweet aunties who fed her candy and pushed her on the swings behind the club.
She barely remembered that night when her mother shoved her in the car and drove far away from the only family she’d ever known. After that, she only remembered hard times with little food, then the terrible day when the handler who put her and her mom in witness protection threw her father into the motel with them.
At that point, she realized her father hadn’t ratted on his friends because it was the right thing to do. He turned them in to get himself out of trouble.
These thoughts turned to more, of hiding under the bed while they fought, screaming and hurling beer bottles at each other. Shortly after Smith had intervened during one of their biggest fights, her father took off and they never saw him again.
Her mom, a trained nurse, got a job at a nursing home. That meant long nights when Opal was left alone in the seedy motel in a dangerous part of town, counting the hours until her mother got back, learning too early that adults didn’t save you.
They failed you. Or disappeared.
She swallowed hard and watched the photo of the car she would drive flash by. A hysterical laugh threatened at the back of her throat as she imagined what they’d all say if she told them she couldn’t legally get a driver’s license and only had FBI credentials as proof she even existed.
Dante clicked to another photo in the PowerPoint. “This is the office building where you worked.”
“I was missing too much work,” she recited evenly. “I lost my job. We needed better insurance, so I landed a government job.”
Sinner was doing that staring thing again. She refused to give him the satisfaction of looking at him.
Elin nodded. “That’s the piece that will sell it. Not just the allure of being a government worker—the desperation.”
Sinner was supposed to be her weakness. The problem was, she didn’t do weak. She’d been close to two people her whole life—her mother and Smith. She lost both of them. That was enough to learn her lesson.Don’t let anyone in.
