Page 29 of Covert Temptation (SEAL Team Blackout Charlie #4)

J ust as the safe house came into sight, so did a black SUV. It rounded the bend and vanished from sight.

Dante stomped on the gas, revving the engine and speeding the last few hundred yards to the house.

He barely threw it in park before his boots hit the ground. Fuck walking—he ran to the door, boots chewing up the muddy gravel.

And found the door unlocked.

His heart flipped. He shoved it inward, already calling out her name. “Kennedy?”

When she didn’t answer, his tone grew urgent. “Kennedy!”

He thought back. The SUV on the road, too pristine and clean for these back country roads.

Not normal.

Something inside him began howling with pain and fury. He stepped into their little haven.

“Kennedy!”

No answer.

But he already knew she wasn’t here. She hadn’t locked the door. Hadn’t wedged the wood underneath it. But he hadn’t told her to either. He assumed she would do it without being reminded.

He was so fucking caught up in his own emotions, so wound up from what he’d learned about her…that he’d left her unguarded.

Alone.

And now…

Now the silence inside felt like a scream.

Weapon drawn, he swept in. His tactical training surged to the surface, but his hands trembled like they never had before.

In a blink, he cleared the kitchen. Twenty-three steps to the living room.

She wasn’t there. The bedrooms and bathrooms were both empty. When he rushed to the door leading to the back yard, he already knew what he was going to find.

The yard was empty. The little fire ring only filled with the cold ash of the fire they warmed themselves by the night he pulled Kennedy into his lap and warmed her with his kisses.

He turned back to face the empty living room.

All of it was empty.

No trace of her perfume hung in the air, no faint giggle sounded from across the room, no bare feet padded across wood floors, counting footsteps to the exit in case she needed to make a quick escape.

Nothing but a hollow, echoing ache in his chest.

His knees hit the floor in the middle of the living room, hand fisting around his weapon.

“ No.” The sound slipped out, a gravelly moan.

This had been their place, their beginning, a space where he let himself believe there was more for him than just being the shadow at the edge of every mission. The ghost between war zones.

He had found his person.

Or he thought he did.

His chest burned, and his throat swelled with bottled salt. Blearily, he looked at nothing.

Then his vision focused, and the purse caught his eye.

He launched to his feet and rushed across the room. Kennedy’s prized handbag was tossed on the couch in a haphazard fashion.

She never would have left it that way. The woman wrapped her designer bags in tissue, for Christ’s sake.

He lifted his head as another thing hit his consciousness.

The house was dark.

She never kept it dark. Kennedy was a creature of warmth and light and chaos, and she would have flipped on every single light in the safe house to chase away the shadows.

She hadn’t run. He wanted to believe she hadn’t, but this proved it. The purse, the dark house, the untouched computer with a blank screen instead of cherry blossoms.

She’d been taken.

“Jesus.” His voice broke as he stumbled to the kitchen to look for her boots.

They were gone—the ones she’d dropped the tracking device in with a smile like she was proving something to him.

He grabbed his phone with numb fingers and stabbed the screen, yanking up the tracking app. Thank Christ he’d had the smarts to add the AirTag to his phone.

“Oh god.” His lips felt cold and lifeless as he saw the dot pulsing on the map.

In seconds, he zoomed in to see a barn in a spot even more remote than the safe house.

His panic flared white-hot.

No other structures were nearby, but it wasn’t far away.

He hit dial. Con answered on the second ring, his voice clipped, a heavy wind in the background. “King. We’re in the field. What’s going on?”

“I left her alone.” Dante’s voice came out jagged. “Now she’s gone. Kidnapped. She was taken while I was gone.”

“Shit. When?”

“Just now. I saw the vehicle. Her tracker’s pinging—an isolated barn. I’m sending you the coordinates.”

“Send them. But Dante…we’re knee-deep in an op. There’s no backup coming for you right now.”

Dante’s heart dropped. “You’re saying I have to go in alone ?”

“I’m saying she doesn’t have time to wait. You’re the point man on this op. You’re all she’s got.”

Static crackled. A long pause.

“We’ll talk later,” Con said. “Bring her home.”

The line went dead.

Dante was already in motion, grabbing his gear, locking in his weapon, switching over to a black field jacket. His face in the mirror was stone. Pale. Jaw locked with grief and rage.

She trusted you. Even when she should have hated you, she gave you trust.

She gave you her goddamn heart.

You kissed her. Held her. Promised without words to protect her.

Fell in love with her.

Now she was out there alone.

There was no doubt in Dante’s mind who was behind this.

Cipher.

The bastard didn’t need to leave a calling card. The method alone screamed his name—clean entry, no trace of the intruder, and that photo of her dancing was psychological warfare at its finest.

He hadn’t come for information. He hadn’t come to kill. He’d come to take , to pull Kennedy out of the safe haven Dante had built around her, and dangle her like bait. This wasn’t just about control.

It was personal. Dante had gotten too close to finding out his identity, and Cipher knew it. So he reached in and stole the one person Dante couldn’t bear to lose.

Dante’s knuckles whitened around the steering wheel as he tore down the snow-slicked back roads, his pulse a war drum in his ears.

Rage and panic warred inside him. Each breath he took was another blaze of torment. God, he could still smell her skin and feel her arms around his shoulders.

He could feel the press of her lips when she said she was falling for him.

She’d let him in—and he hadn’t been there to stop them from taking her.

He’d been too wrapped up in his own demons to see the play happening right in front of him.

Now the woman who had started to bring light into his fucked-up world was gone.

But not for long. He wouldn’t let her be another of Cipher’s casualties. He didn’t care if the barn was booby-trapped, crawling with mercs or rigged to blow. He was going in.

And he wasn’t coming out without Kennedy.

If Cipher wanted to test his limits, fine. Let him. Dante had been built for war, goddammit. He’d been raised in chaos and trained to end things before they could ruin the world. Before they could destroy things, the way his childhood had been destroyed.

He just never imagined the most important mission of his career would involve saving the woman he loved.

He clenched his jaw with the determination of the SEAL he was trained to be.

Dante would get her back…or he’d die trying.

* * * * *

She’d stopped crying hours ago. At least it felt like hours had passed since her kidnapper forced her into the SUV and brought her here.

The barn’s only windows were coated in oil and grime, letting in bluish beams of light that did little to illuminate the space. Not that she wanted to see his face.

A single bulb swinging from the ceiling buzzed intermittently, like it could short out at any second. Somewhere above came the light tap of icy rain on the metal roof in sharp patters. The air smelled like old hay, rusted farm equipment and gasoline.

Kennedy sat on the knotty wood floor that was grayed with age and dry enough to go up in flames at the drop of a match.

Just as she thought that, the man watching her without pause shook a cigarette out of a crumpled pack.

He stuck it in the corner of his mouth and flicked a lighter. Not once did his stare leave her.

She didn’t meet his eyes directly but saw him bring the orange flame to the mashed tip of the cigarette. Smoke curled around his head and filled her nostrils.

Disgust rolling through her, she darted a look around, wondering where the odor of gasoline was coming from and hoping they didn’t go up in a blaze.

Kennedy pulled her knees to her chest. The soles of her boots did nothing to stop the cold of the floor from seeping into her feet. Her hands were already frozen from the cold barn and the lack of blood flow from being zip-tied in front of her.

It could be worse. That was what she kept telling herself.

But “worse” felt like it was coming.

The man’s eyes were flat and unreadable. He sat on an overturned bucket across the barn, lazily pulling nails out of an old coffee can and flicking them one by one at the opposite wall. Ping. Ping. Ping.

Every sound made her flinch.

She’d come willingly because she couldn’t imagine what he would do to her if she didn’t. If Dante came back to the safe house and found her…

Her gut clenched. She couldn’t let that happen. The alternative was to come with this man and die some place no one would ever find her. She had no doubt that after he got around to doing the deed, he would throw her body down a well or bury her in the wilderness.

She closed her eyes and immediately saw Dante. His dark eyes, the scar near his temple. The strength in his hands when he’d held her after she said the words she’d never meant to say aloud: I’m falling in love with you.

God, he was going to think she ran.

He won’t come. The voice in her head had grown louder over the past hour. He won’t check the AirTag. Why would he? You’re disposable. You always have been.

A scream rose up her throat, but she refused to let it out. It would only amuse the man across from her. So she swallowed the lump in her throat and shifted her gaze to him.

“You got a name?” Her voice was hoarse, as if she hadn’t used it in a long time.

He looked up, mildly amused. “Wouldn’t matter if I did.”

“You work for him?”

The guy smirked. “I work for money. But yeah. He sent me.”