She read it to them, ending in one line that made his blood chill.
One life for all of theirs.
The world seemed to tilt sideways. Steele felt his knees threaten to buckle as Alyssa’s words crashed over him like a tidal wave.
“Dante,” Con barked into his comm, “I need eyes on the base, now.”
“Copy that, accessing feeds… Fuck! Steele, this is for you.”
Steele snatched the phone out of Con’s hand to stare at what Dante sent.
Izzy’s beautiful face loomed on the screen. She stared directly at the camera when she gave the most haunting message he could ever hear.
“Hudson, I’m sorry. I love you.”
The words hit him like fists. The resignation echoing in Izzy’s voice made his chest constrict with something he’d only ever felt once before, in the middle of Times Square.
Panic.
“We’re shipping out,” Con announced to the team. “Pack it up, double-time.”
The ride back to the base passed in a blur of radio chatter. Steele sat rigid, all too aware of the amethyst nestled against his chest that couldn’t stop his mind from cycling through every worst-case scenario while his teammates coordinated the emergency response around him.
When they burst into the mansion, Dante wasted no time sprinting to the war room. By the time Steele entered mere seconds behind him, he was already hunched over Izzy’s laptop, his fingers flying across multiple keyboards as screens filled with data streams and surveillance footage.
“Found the email,” Dante announced without looking up. “Video attachment showing our helicopter insertion this morning. Timestamp indicates it was sent forty-three minutes after we deployed.”
“How did he get eyes on our insertion point?” Con demanded.
“It wasn’t drone surveillance—we had a pulse on everything in the area. I’m not sure how this was taken.”
They traded a look. New intelligence was never a good thing, not to a SEAL.
Steele moved to look over Dante’s shoulder, and what he saw made his blood freeze. Grainy aerial footage of their team disembarking from the helicopter, but the camera zoomed in on one specific figure—him, with something glinting around his neck in the morning sunlight seconds before he tucked the item into his vest.
His hand moved instinctively to his throat, and he yanked the crystal pendant free, his fingers closing around the small amethyst hanging from its leather cord.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.
Con’s voice was harsh when he saw. “I thought you knew better than to wear personal items during operations.”
He didn’t have any excuse to give…could only wonder what Izzy was going to do without her crystal.
Dante’s screens shifted, showing rideshare tracking data, street camera feeds, traffic monitoring systems. “Got her pickup location…and drop-off. Following her to the next vehicle now.”
More screens. More footage. A woman with chestnut hair climbing into a taxi, then another vehicle, each transition tracked through the city’s electronic eyes.
“Oh god,” Steele said, watching his worst nightmare play out in real time. “She’s trying to save us. One life for all of ours.”
“Cipher’s using her as bait,” Con said grimly. “He knows we’ll track her movements, knows we’ll want to mount a rescue operation.”
Slowly, Steele swung toward his commanding officer. “Why do you sound like you won’t do exactly that?”
Con silenced, his gaze fixed on the screen for so long that Steele’s blood ran cold.
“So we’re not rescuing her?” The words came out in a shout, carrying a note of incredulous rage. “What the fuck, Con? We can’t just leave her!”
“If we go after her, we’re putting the entire platoon and all the women at risk. It’s what he wants—”
