Page 18 of Stealthy Seduction (SEAL Team Blackout Charlie #5)
“This is Callie Northwood reporting live from Times Square, where healthcare advocates have gathered to demand increased funding for community medical programs.” Her voice carried the practiced authority that came from years of reporting breaking news, even as she had to speak louder than usual to compete with the noise.
She turned toward a middle-aged woman holding a handmade sign about prescription drug costs, giving the cameraman time to adjust his angle. “Excuse me, ma’am, can I ask you a quick question?”
The woman’s face lit up with the eager expression of someone who’d been hoping to be interviewed. “Of course!”
Izzy positioned herself so the woman was fully in frame, Times Square providing a dynamic background. “Why are you here today joining the protest?”
“Well, my husband is diabetic, and the cost of his insulin has tripled in the past five years,” the woman began, her voice gaining strength as she spoke. “We shouldn’t have to choose between his medication and our mortgage—”
The woman’s words were suddenly drowned out by a sound unlike anything Izzy had ever heard.
Every electronic billboard, every digital display, every screen visible in the famous intersection began emitting the same piercing tone—a frequency that seemed designed to burrow into human skulls and stay there.
Izzy looked up, her blood turning to ice water in her veins.
Every screen showed the same image: a masked figure from what looked like a futuristic nightmare.
The mask pulsed in LED-embedded hypnotic patterns, creating an otherworldly effect that was both mesmerizing and terrifying.
When the figure moved, the lights shifted and danced, obscuring the wearer’s features and making the mask look alive—like something from a cyberpunk horror film brought to terrifying reality.
“Izzy.”
Her name echoed from every screen, every speaker, every electronic device in Times Square. The voice was electronically distorted, but there was something almost conversational about the tone, like the masked figures were greeting an old friend.
She stood frozen as hundreds of people around her began looking up at the screens, their confusion evident as they tried to process what they were seeing.
“A life for a life,” the voice continued, still at normal volume, almost nonchalant in its delivery.
The woman she’d been interviewing grabbed her arm. “What’s going on? Do you know what this is about?”
Izzy couldn’t answer. Couldn’t move. Could barely breathe as the screens displayed that ghastly LED mask, the lights pulsing in patterns that seemed to burn themselves into her retinas.
“Izzy! A LIFE FOR A LIFE,” the voice repeated, louder now, the electronic distortion making it sound like it was coming from inside her own head.
“A LIFE FOR A LIFE!” Even louder, the sound system straining to accommodate the volume as tourists began covering their ears and backing away from the screens.
“A LIFE FOR A LIFE!” The words screeched through the square with the force of a sonic weapon, causing people to stumble, children to cry, vendors to abandon their carts as panic rippled through the crowd.
Through her earpiece, she could hear Hudson’s voice cutting through the anarchy. “Shut it down! Shut it down, goddammit!”
He grabbed the camera from the bewildered operator and shoved both the equipment and the man toward their news van. “Move! Now!”
“What was that about?” the cameraman demanded, stumbling as Hudson pushed him along. “Who the hell is Izzy?”
Oh god. She’d forgotten—nobody knew her as Izzy. To the world, she was Callie Northwood.
To everyone except the man in the terrifying mask.
But Hudson wasn’t answering her frightened cameraman. His arm was around Izzy’s waist, half carrying, half dragging her through the panicking crowd as the masked figure’s voice continued to boom from every screen: “A LIFE FOR A LIFE! A LIFE FOR A LIFE!”
She was vaguely aware of being hustled toward a van, of Hudson barking orders to his team, of the crowd running away from Times Square.
But it all felt distant, muffled, like she was watching it through thick glass.
The screens.
The mask.
That voice saying her name like it knew her, like it had been waiting for her.
Because it was.
“Drive!” Hudson’s bellow cut through her shock as he shoved her into the van and slammed the door behind them. “Get us out of here, now!”
The van accelerated through the streets, taking a route that seemed deliberately circuitous—turning down side streets, speeding through neighborhoods, doubling back on itself in a pattern that would confuse anyone trying to follow.
“Dante, I need a route with no traffic cameras,” Hudson said into his comms unit. “And check for eyes in the sky while you’re at it.”
His voice projected in a strange echo through a radio the driver had on him. When he turned his head, Izzy saw Sinner was at the wheel. He wasn’t the pizza guy. Not today.
“Copy that,” came Dante’s response. A few moments later, his voice sliced into the tension. “Jesus, Steele, you called it. There’s a drone tracking your vehicle. Small, probably commercial grade, but it’s definitely following you.”
“Can you take it out?”
“Working on it… Almost there… Got it! Sending the signal now.”
Izzy twisted just in time to see a small explosion bloom in the sky—a brief flash of fire and debris that disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.
The reality of what had just happened began to sink in, and with it came a terror so complete it made her Syria captivity look like a minor inconvenience.
“Drones following us? What’s going on?” She barely recognized her voice as her own. “Here I thought Syria was the worst thing that could ever happen to me.”
“It’s tied to Syria,” Hudson said grimly, reaching for her hand with a steadiness that she desperately needed.
“Tied to Syria h-how!” The words came out higher than she’d intended, panic making her vocal cords crack. “What has this got to do with anything? What have I ever done to deserve this?”
She was collapsing into herself now, knees pulled up to her chest as the magnitude of the situation crashed over her. Someone had taken over every electronic billboard in Times Square.
Someone had called her by name, threatened her life…sent drones to follow her through the city.
Someone wanted her dead, and she had no idea why.
“Hudson, when I was a hostage…” She struggled to get the words out. “That person—my captor—he wore a mask sometimes. Not like that LED thing, but still… Why would someone be targeting me? I went underground, used my real name, tried to rebuild my life. Who wants me dead? How did he know my name?”
Hudson’s grip was solid and warm around her trembling fingers. She tried to hold on to the feeling, to connect herself to it or risk being washed out to sea.
“We’re going to work this all out, Izzy. I promise you that.”
“But why did he say ‘a life for a life?’” The question came out as a whimper. “What life? Whose life?”
“I don’t know yet. But I need the team in order to figure this out.” His thumb traced across her knuckles, a gesture meant to ground her, to remind her that she wasn’t alone. “We’re going to get answers.”
Sinner continued to drive in a serpentine route through the city. Hudson checked the mirrors constantly, his SEAL training on full display.
But even his competence, his obvious skill at keeping her safe, couldn’t quiet the voice in her head that kept repeating the masked figure’s words.
A life for a life.
What life had she taken? What debt was she supposed to owe? And why did the electronic mask remind her so viscerally of her time in Syria, of the darkness and fear…and the helpless certainty that she was going to die?
She pressed closer to Hudson’s side, drawing what comfort she could from his solid presence, but the terror remained. Whoever was behind that mask, whatever they wanted from her, she had the horrible feeling that her nightmare was just beginning.
And this time, she wasn’t convinced even Hudson and his team would be enough to save her.