Page 30 of Stealthy Seduction (SEAL Team Blackout Charlie #5)

Daniel paused in his pacing, turning to face her with that unsettling smile that never reached his cold eyes.

“How wonderfully naive. You think the world runs on good intentions and charity galas? My mother spent her entire career trying to build something beautiful, trying to save lives, and where did it get her? A bomb delivered to her in a crate of supplies.”

“So you became exactly like them,” Izzy pressed.

Every inch of her spine blazed with pain. And her hands…she’d stopped feeling them half an hour ago.

“You became someone who delivers death to innocent people. How does that honor her memory? How does killing Drysdale—who was only doing his job—in cold blood on a crowded street or terrorizing families in Times Square bring your mother back or make the world safer?”

“It doesn’t bring her back.” His voice took on a philosophical tone that was somehow more chilling than outright rage.

“But it creates consequences. It ensures that the people who fail in their duties, who make choices that cost innocent lives, understand that actions have prices. The government calls it acceptable losses. I simply apply the same logic on a more… personal scale.”

Izzy’s stomach turned, hot with nausea, but she recognized the twisted logic that allowed him to sleep at night. She didn’t just want to keep up her end of the philosophical argument—her life depended on it.

Each minute that Cipher was arguing with her, he wasn’t lifting that gun and pulling the trigger.

“The difference is accountability.” She tried not to glance down at the weapon in his grip.

Or let her lip tremble with tears she was barely holding at bay.

“The military has rules they have to follow. They try not to kill innocent people when they can help it. You’re just a man with a grudge playing God with other people’s lives. ”

Daniel’s expression darkened, and for a moment she thought she’d pushed too far. But then his phone buzzed against the metal chair where he left it, the electronic chime seeming to echo off the container walls.

He twisted his head and glanced at the screen. Then that frigid smile returned, wider than before—the expression of someone who’d just received the news he’d been waiting for.

“Well”—he picked up the device with obvious satisfaction—”it looks like we’re about to have company after all. Your boyfriend really is as predictable as I hoped he’d be.”

Terror flooded into her body, taking over every corner and making it impossible to breathe. Hudson was here. Oh, god. He could save her.

Or lose his life trying.

That was the opposite of what she wanted.

With a smile that made her think of horror-movie clowns and robots, he placed the phone on her knee, within her reach. The weight of it, knowing who just touched it, made her stomach pitch.

She lifted her stare and fixed it on his face. “What do you expect me to do with that?”

“Call your boyfriend.”

Panic swept over her like a cold tide. “How do you expect me to dial with my hands tied?”

“I gave you enough use of your hands. Call him.”

“I don’t know the number.” Which was the truth. “Who remembers numbers anymore?”

He swung the gun up and aimed between her eyes. “Remember the number,” he bit off.

Her mind reeled. Nausea knotted in the pit of her stomach. If everything came down to her ability to recall a number she’d never even glanced at when she called Hudson, they were all goners.

His finger twitched toward the trigger.

“Stop! I know a number!”

“Better make it a good one.”

She slowly inched a numb fingertip toward the screen and punched in the only number she could remember in her moment of acute fear.

Alyssa’s voice projected through the speaker, sounding so close that Izzy’s eyes flooded with tears. “Izzy! Where are you? Are you okay?”

“Put the team leader on the phone.” She carefully avoided using Con’s name—he was already too close to Cipher’s radar for her comfort.

Not one more life for a life.

Only three heartbeats passed before Con’s voice filled the shipping container through the phone’s speaker.

“So we finally meet, Daniel Sheen.” His voice cut through the metallic space with deadly calm.

“Cipher to you.”

“I have to warn you, Cipher—you’re about to be killed by the best sniper I’ve ever seen in twenty years of special operations.”

Cipher’s laugh was genuinely amused. “No, I’m not. Because if he kills me, there will be mass destruction all over the globe.”

Izzy’s blood turned to ice water in her veins.

“I have associates in twelve major cities.” Cipher sounded like he was having a conversation with a dear friend.

“London, Paris, Tokyo, Sydney, Mexico City and so many more—each one with a device that makes what happened at the former Echo team base look like a child’s fireworks show.

My network has their orders—if I don’t check in every twenty-four hours, they detonate their packages. ”

“For how long?” Izzy whispered, her mind racing through the outcomes.

Cipher’s smile was serene as he looked directly at her. “Until I feel like stopping.”

A contingency plan. Of course he had one. Men like Daniel Sheen didn’t operate without multiple layers of insurance against this situation.

“Warn Steele!” Con’s voice exploded through the speaker.

The gunshot came a split second later—a distant crack of thunder that shook the very walls of the container. Cipher jerked backward, his body spinning as he crumpled to the floor, dark blood already spreading across his shoulder and chest.

Izzy didn’t wait to see if he was dead. Her chair toppled as she threw her weight sideways, rolling away from Cipher’s motionless form and struggling to her feet with her hands still bound. She ran for the container’s exit, stumbling in her determination to reach daylight.

When she burst out of the shadows, she jerked her head left and right, searching for the fastest escape.

Hudson was close enough to take that shot. She had to find him.

She ran between a long alley formed by shipping containers. When she came face-to-face with a concrete wall, panic clawed at her throat. She spun, off-balance, her tied hands making every move she made clumsy.

She ran back toward where she came from and kept on running, gasping in the heavy air of the waterfront, frantically looking in all directions for any sign of Hudson.

In a dead panic now, she twisted her wrists and yanked in an attempt to free her hands. But the cord knotted around them was too tight.

Just then, she heard the light thud of boots on pavement, and he was there, emerging from between two shipping containers like a ghost made solid. His face was tight with concern as he ran toward her, rifle slung across his back and sidearm drawn.

“Are you hurt?” His hands moved over her, checking for wounds even as his gaze darted around them, on high alert.

“Oh my god! Hudson!” Every inch of her was shaking as she drank in the face of the man she loved. “I’m okay, but we have to see if he’s dead. We have to go back! He’s got bombs in twelve cities—if he doesn’t check in, they all detonate.”

Hudson’s expression darkened as he moved close to examine the cord binding her wrists. His tactical knife made short work of the restraints, but she could feel his strain in the careful way he worked.

“This knot,” he muttered, studying the intricate pattern of loops and securing points. “This isn’t standard restraint technique. This is art.”

One more layer to Cipher’s twisted personality—even his methods of imprisonment were elaborate, designed to impress and intimidate.

Once she was free, she reached for him, but stopped herself, seeing that this wasn’t her Hudson right now—this was Steele. A SEAL. Part of the Blackout Charlie team.

A dead man walking.

Hudson led the way with his weapon ready. But when they reached the shipping container, it was empty except for a spreading pool of blood and the overturned chairs.

“Son of a bitch.” Hudson dropped to one knee beside the blood trail that led toward the exit. “I got him in the clavicle, did some damage, but not enough.”

“Thank god.” She couldn’t believe she was happy that Cipher was still living—or had been when he dragged himself out.

Hudson’s jaw was tight as he stood. “I need to follow him, but I can’t leave you unprotected.”

She gulped. Then a crazy idea struck. “Lock me in the container while you search for him.”

His grim expression and the darkening of his eyes told her that he would reject the plan before he ever shook his head.

She reached for him, grabbing his shoulders. The solid, warm muscle reminded her of how far they’d come together and how far they could go.

“Do it, Hudson. I’ll be fine.”

When he didn’t react, she squeezed his shoulders, her hands tingling with the rush of blood flow. “Please.”

Moments later, she was enclosed in the blackness of the container, the door firmly shut. It was impossible not to think about Syria, how she’d been locked in a dark space with the rest of the hostages.

She thought she would break then, but she hadn’t. Now she was even stronger.

She could survive this too.

What felt like an hour but could have only been minutes later, the door screeched open. She backed against the wall, blinking at the sudden brightness and the tall form of Hudson.

“He’s gone. Tracked the blood. Looks like he took off in a vehicle.”

She felt weak with relief, though what she was relieved over was confusing as hell.

She stumbled forward, and Hudson met her. When he wrapped his arms around her, she gripped him with all the strength she had left.

“Where’s the team? Mason and Sinner and Chase? The others?”

He cradled her head against his chest. “I came alone.”

“W-what?” She lifted her head to look up at him.

“I disobeyed a direct order. Went rogue. And didn’t even bring in the terrorist.” He looked at her with something like regret. “Dante was in my ear telling me to take the shot clean, but then Con ordered me to stop.”

“Because Cipher told him about the other bombs he’d detonate if he’s killed. A chain that would go all around the world. Hudson…I’m so sorry I put you in this situation. That I put myself in danger and you had to go against orders to save me.”

Hudson met her gaze, and in his eyes she saw every choice that had led them to this moment. “I would do anything for you.”

The simple words carried more weight than any declaration of love, more meaning than any promise he could have made.

But they also carried the bitter taste of consequences that hadn’t yet come due.

Slowly, he withdrew the crystal necklace she’d given him and slipped it over her neck.

One hand came up to clasp it, then she dropped it and cupped his jaw instead. “Thank you…but I’m not sure I need it so much anymore.”

He lifted her in his arms, his lips trailing lightly over her hair for a heartbeat before he carried her out through the maze of shipping containers to a waiting car.

After he slipped her into the passenger seat, he searched her eyes with so much love glowing in his eyes that her heart skittered.

“When we get back, I need you to go to our room. Wait for me while I handle things with Con and the team.”

Izzy nodded, but she could see it in his eyes—the knowledge that whatever came next, their brief moment of happiness was about to be tested in ways neither of them was prepared for.