Page 15 of Covert Temptation (SEAL Team Blackout Charlie #4)

A heaviness that had nothing to do with the snowstorm blowing in settled over Dante. He stepped inside the house and closed the door but kept his hand on the knob, ready to fling it open again.

She’d given her word she wouldn’t leave. The SEAL part of him didn’t want to believe her, but the man in him, the one who held the trembling woman in his arms last night, already did.

He released the handle and stood there for a long beat, head bowed. He thought that building the fire ring would give Kennedy something to look forward to doing outdoors, to alleviate the feelings of being trapped.

But it backfired.

His time as a SEAL trained him to sense when someone was close to snapping.

He didn’t believe Kennedy was going to snap. She just was very…unhappy.

He drifted to the window and watched her. Still crouched in front of the fire pit, her stare was fixed on the cold twigs, unmoving.

In demanding a promise that she wouldn’t run, he’d broken the tenuous trust between them. He saw that now.

The urge to go back outside and talk to her, to try to fix things gnawed at him, but why? He was her bodyguard. They weren’t friends.

But we are lovers.

The pang hit low in his gut, a reminder of his slip.

He couldn’t let it happen again.

He returned to the computer and went back to digging through her email account. Using his knowledge of tech, he was able to recover every email she ever sent or received.

With the rattle of the old pipes the only sound breaking through the silence, he set to work, redirecting her emails through a program. Everything would be scanned by a government system.

Now and then, he darted a glance at the window. Kennedy was on her feet now, arms folded, hair streaming in the wind. A new place in his body gave a pang, and it was much higher than the last.

He shot off a message to Con, keeping him abreast of the situation. He didn’t get a reply from his commanding officer, but he didn’t expect one either. Con was busy leading the Charlie team. Whatever time he didn’t devote to his country was showered on the love of his life, Sophie.

Dante threw another glance at the window. When he ensured that Kennedy wasn’t coming inside, he continued to search her emails.

She didn’t communicate with her family here either. No check-ins. Just dead air.

He knew that feeling more than he cared to admit.

There wasn’t even a random email from a dating site. Kennedy had no ties to any men.

The woman was stunning. How was she not dating?

In her cloud storage, he dug up a few photos, but they were just landscapes snapped in various countries. One photo stopped him.

Kennedy and Alyssa, standing side by side, smiling for whoever snapped the photo. The backdrop told him they were probably in South America. The lush green landscape and the faded blue sky enhanced the photo, but the women were the real stars.

Sitting back in the chair, he pressed a fist to his lips. Kennedy seemed so alone in the world.

Not unlike any of them on the Blackout team.

Even her social media account was fake. Diana Prince. Not personal at all. She left no digital footprint besides photos of her and Alyssa together and anything professionally related.

Leaning forward, he opened a search on his system and dragged the image of Kennedy and Alyssa into it. It would take some time to populate data on the photo.

While he waited, maybe he could find some pancake mix in the pantry and whip them both up some breakfast.

His stomach gave a rumble of agreement, and he started to turn away from the computer when a ding sounded.

An alert popped up on the photo he just entered moments before.

“Impossible,” he murmured even as he clicked on the search.

He stared at the list of matches to the photo. Of course, Alyssa got a thousand hits. She was, after all, an ambassador, even if she was finishing out her term with plans to change her career path.

But Kennedy…her search only turned up a few things he already knew—assistant to Ambassador Vargas. Graduated from Wellesley College, a university known for politics, art and activism.

And the search revealed one thing he didn’t know. A new social media profile popped up. The name on it? Diana Prince.

He rocked back in his seat, eyeing the name he’d seen her use twice now. Why was it so familiar?

The name rolled around in the systems of his mind for several minutes, but he couldn’t place how he knew it.

A look at the window showed that Kennedy was still outside, pacing in a slow circle around the fire pit now.

The wind had died down, and snowflakes seemed to hover in the air like the contents of a snow globe.

He racked his brain harder, desperate to shake something loose.

A sudden image of his younger brother Kane flashed through his mind—ten years old, black hair falling into his eyes, always in need of a trim.

Kane, hunched over a borrowed comic book from the library, lips moving silently as he devoured every panel.

Diana Prince.

That was it. The superheroine Wonder Woman’s real name.

Dante sat up straighter and typed the name into a popular social media site. Dozens of profiles popped up. None of them were Kennedy. He tried again on another platform—more hits, but still no match. No profile pictures were even remotely close.

But it was something. The system rarely made mistakes. At some point, she’d used that name as an alias.

If he had to guess, she’d wiped it all, scrubbed the evidence. What was left was barely a digital echo—just a faint footprint that suggested she’d once existed more openly, more freely.

The front door creaked open, and a gust of winter air swept into the living room.

Dante didn’t look up right away, just kept his hands on the keyboard, letting her presence settle behind him. Then he turned, calm and steady.

“Hello, Diana.”

She froze in the doorway.

Her chest lifted with a slow, deliberate inhale. For a second, he expected her to pivot and run back out into the cold.

But she didn’t.

She stayed.

Because she’d made a promise. And whatever else Kennedy Bloom might be hiding, she was a woman who kept her word.

* * * * *

The sofa springs creaked under Kennedy when she plopped down hard. A dozen questions blasted through her mind, jamming all the circuits.

Dante had dug even deeper than she ever believed someone could. If he knew the fake name she used for just a short time on the internet, he knew too much.

She thought all that had been well hidden years and years ago.

Kennedy didn’t want anyone digging up those parts of her past—things that would have compromised her ability to get her dream job.

She might have fibbed a little on her job application, which the government frowned upon.

She also lied—by omission—in all her interviews, leaving out part of her job history.

I’m in so much trouble.

Where did they send people who made false statements to the government? Prison? Surely it wouldn’t be maximum security?

Dante watched her from across the room. The heavy weight of his stare made her feel trapped, pinned to a board like a bug.

Hopelessness washed over her. After all that happened with Alyssa and the security leaks, she was quite familiar with the feeling. She had no way of proving her innocence then or now.

And in all the weeks spent in the apartment, hopelessness had worn her down until she felt like a dry husk of her former self. She was so tired of trying to prove she didn’t have a hand in hurting anybody, and it felt like she was climbing a mountain without a rope.

A small noise like a guttural whimper sounded in the room, and she realized with a start that it came from her.

Dante stood up and crossed the room, stopping a few feet in front of her.

Whatever he asked her, she would tell him the truth. Not the truth she’d been living for years, but the real truth.

“Diana Prince is a name you use on the internet.”

She nodded, agreeing to his statement. She’d adopted the alter ego to spy on her family from a distance without getting ensnared in their drama. The minute they found her, or knew she was watching, they would try to drag her back into their messy lives, something she worked hard to outrun.

She also used the name to follow travel vloggers and even to create mood boards of luxury trips and beautiful things she hoped to someday have for herself.

That was another thing the SEALs kept drilling her about—how she paid for her nice things.

She told them over and over that she made smart investments, saved up for her pricey possessions.

After all, with most of her living expenses covered by her job, she had more disposable income than most people.

Dante’s dark gaze drilled into her, making perspiration break out on her brow. “When did you start using that name?”

“Years ago,” she said honestly. “Before I took the position with Alyssa.”

“You accessed my laptop.”

She bit down on her bottom lip and gave him a slight nod.

“You checked social media.”

“Yes, but I didn’t post at all. I haven’t been in touch with anybody but Alyssa, and that was only one email I sent weeks ago with a photo I snapped of her at a ball we attended before everything.

I…I hoped she might have seen it and replied.

” She scrubbed a hand over her face, chasing back the tears that threatened on the edge of her voice.

“I hate that she thinks badly of me. I hate that this has torn apart our friendship. She was my only family—my best friend. I lost everything when all this happened.”

He pushed a long breath through his nose and moved to the sofa beside her. He didn’t touch her, which was good because if he did, she might shatter.

She twisted her fingers in her lap. “I’m sorry I accessed your laptop without asking you first. How much did you see?”

“All of it.”

She wanted to sink into the furniture at the thought of Dante seeing her parents’ social media. But she only had herself to blame.