“Yeah,” she whispered. “I…I wanna learn.”
Smith nodded once, like he already knew her answer. “Good. First lesson’s easy.”
She held her breath.
“Stand up straight.” His stare fixed on her like his gaze could will her upright. “You give the world your shoulders, it’ll take ’em. You square ’em, it’ll think twice.”
Opal lifted her chin. Though the movement felt foreign, she drew her shoulders back.
Her bruise twinged as her eyes widened with the realization that for the first time in her life, fear didn’t feel heavier than pain.
It felt like something she could finally outrun.
ONE
Caius “Sinner” Sinclair believed in two truths: pizza dough waited for no man, and neither did trouble.
He was wrist-deep in one when the base alarm shattered the still morning because of the other.
The blast barely rang out before boots thundered across the floor.
“Dammit.” He hated being interrupted when making dough.
Chase tore past the doorway in gym shorts, still dripping sweat from his workout. Steele followed, tugging on a T-shirt and barking for Mason, who yelled back that he was already moving.
Sinner didn’t join the stampede. Chaos would still be waiting in twenty seconds.
While the alarm kept wailing, boots kept pounding and his teammates kept cursing, he scooped the dough off the floured board. He gently set it in a big bowl, draped a cloth over it and rinsed his hands.
The voice of their commanding officer, Constantine—better known as Con—carried through the mansion that served as their SEAL team’s base. The words he barked got Sinner moving faster.
“Son of a bitch! They tried to breach base using an old code!”
Sinner abandoned his pizza dough and rushed to the war room. Most of the Blackout Charlie team was already gathered around the big table. Surveillance footage of the base from all angles projected on monitors across the back wall.
A sleek black car idled at the front gate.
Mason skidded into the room on Sinner’s heels. “What the hell’s the FBI doing here?”
Con strode into the room, jaw set for battle. “Better question is what the hell they think they’re doing using an old code. No one gets through those gates unless we let them.”
“Con, you have to let them in.” A feminine voice parted the tension, calmer than any other. Sophie might be the only person who could get through to their leader, since their relationship allowed her to appeal to his more reasonable side.
He stiffened. “The hell I do.”
She leveled a look at him. Con sucked in a breath and let it out in a hard whoosh. He snatched up his phone and stabbed a finger into the screen. Immediately, the monitor showed the gate swinging open. The car rolled through it.
Con slanted a look at Mason. “Meet our guests at the front door.”
Mason snorted before he strode out to obey the order.
Sinner drifted to a seat in the middle of the table between Ash and Chickie. Unease rippled through the group, but Sinner remained calm as he leaned back and watched the monitors. On the screen, two men in black suits and dark sunglasses climbed out of the car.
“Well, there goes the neighborhood.” Chickie’s comment had a couple of the guys grunting in agreement. Sinner only smirked. The Blackout Charlie team didn’t take orders from any government agency, and sure as hell not from men in stiff suits.
Sinner didn’t need to look around the table to know every man here wore worn jeans, cargo pants, or camo—and that any one of them could snap those agents in half with a flick of the wrist.
In the next shot, one of the black suits reached into the back of the car to extract a person wearing a black hood.
