Nothing was going to stop her.
She stepped out of the car, her borrowed boots crunching on gravel. The air was too quiet. Not even the birds wanted to witness what was about to go down.
Her hand slipped beneath the hem of her blouse, fingers closing around the hilt of the knife. She walked up the uneven path to the front door.
It was unlocked. Of course.
She pushed it open, and the hinges groaned like they were dying.
Inside, the house was dark and musty, the floor littered with broken furniture and trash from squatters.
“Mom?” Her voice echoed.
No answer.
She took a step inside.
The door slammed shut behind her. Before she could turn, something hard and heavy cracked across the back of her skull.
Pain exploded through her head, bright and blinding.
Her knees buckled.
The last thing she saw before the darkness swallowed her whole was the knife slipping from her fingers and clattering to the floor.
Then…nothing.
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.
