Con’s voice stopped him in his tracks. “Sinclair.”
He paused.
Con looked at Opal. “You’ll perform your tasks. You’ll sell the story. But you don’t leave your partner hanging.”
She met his gaze. “Noted.”
Con nodded once, satisfied. “And Sinclair, you don’t bulldoze.”
Opal watched the exchange, reading between the lines. Con was setting boundaries because he’d already spotted the problem.
Cipher wasn’t their only threat.
Sinner’s was struggling to trust her capabilities. Not only did that piss her off, it could get them both killed.
Straightening her spine, she tipped her jaw up. “I’d like to add one thing.”
Con looked at her. “Go ahead.”
“You only work with the best. Well, guess what? That’s me.”
FOUR
By this time tomorrow, Sinner would be a man with a stiff back and a drug habit he couldn’t shake.
The lie was already built. He just had to drop into the war zone.
For now, he’d distanced himself, settling into a corner of the base where no one visited. It had everything he needed—a wall to lean against and a view of the wooded area behind the mansion.
He braced his back to the wall and stretched out his legs, hands loose on his thighs, listening to the silence. It took him months of living with so many people before he found a spot that didn’t demand any version of him and offered more privacy than the kitchen.
He tipped his head back against the wall and let his eyes slip shut. He wasn’t tired—but he needed the noise in his head to settle into some sort of order.
He was no stranger to solo missions. He and Mason were often given orders to perform tasks that didn’t involve the entire team. Not even his brothers-in-arms questioned when he was off base, believing he just made supply runs.
This op was different. Use him as bait to get to Cipher and he had no problem with it. But Opal? He didn’t like it, and it wasn’t just some outdated belief that women were the weaker sex and required protection.
It was the thought of Opal scoring prescription narcotics in a dark alley or sitting in an office waiting for a terrorist to makecontact. And where would he be during all this? He couldn’t just stand around doing nothing while his partner took all the risks.
He blew out a hot breath through his nose.
Tomorrow they both had to be convincing.
The fake injury was simple. He could alter the way he moved so well that people would never doubt he was in pain.
The addiction was a different kind of mask, one he hated putting on because he understood it too well. Back in Chicago, before he was absorbed into Quantico or
Blackout, he’d watched men rot from the inside out from addiction.
He could sell it to the world with a hunger in his eyes and a tremor in his hands. What he couldn’t predict was what came after the performances ended for the day and he and Opal were alone.
He grunted. He wasn’t hitting it off with her. A fact that bugged him. Most people liked him, including all the women in the house. Alyssa and Kennedy were a close duo that saw him as a worthy friend from the start. May often wandered outside to talk weapons with him, a topic they had in common.
Sophie was one of the smartest women he’d ever known, and they shared discussions on everything from philosophy to the future generations of the country. Not to mention Izzy, who liked trying to outdo him when it came to making pizzas, since she worked in a local shop in high school.
And Elin…
He heard his friend’s footsteps but didn’t open his eyes. When she rounded the corner, she slowed, expecting to find him where he was, his back to the wall while he enjoyed a moment of solitude.
