Code Name: Leo (Zodiac Tactical)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Isaac Baxter had been nursing the same glass of bourbon for forty minutes, and it was starting to taste like punishment.

The ballroom was doing what ballrooms did—crystal, candlelight, a string quartet playing something that wanted to be Vivaldi but wasn’t quite getting there.

Three hundred guests in black tie, circulating between the bar and the silent auction tables with polished ease.

Charity for children’s literacy. Or cancer.

He’d read the invitation, but that had been two weeks ago.

He shifted against the pillar he’d claimed and made himself do the sweep.

Exits: four, including the service corridor behind the kitchen.

Security: two uniformed at the main entrance, one plainclothes near the auction tables who thought he was blending in but kept touching his earpiece.

Staff-to-guest ratio suggested a competent event coordinator.

Nothing and nobody needed him. The whole evening hummed along on its own expensive momentum, and he was mere decoration.

Graham Ashford had asked him to be here at eight.

It was eight forty-five, and the man had yet to surface.

His son Trent was supposed to be here too—the whole point of the evening, professionally speaking.

Graham had called Zodiac Tactical, concerned about some online threats Trent had been receiving.

The kid was some sort of influencer with ten million followers, a talent for saying the wrong thing, and apparent zero interest in personal safety.

Graham had enough pull to be able to get ahold of Ian DeRose, Zodiac’s founder and owner, personally. Had probably expected Ian to do the security work himself, regardless of the fact that Ian had mostly retired from the field years ago after marrying Wavy.

Even if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have handled the Ashford family security on his own. Too much time spent at events like tonight had Ian wanting to punch someone in the mouth. He’d handed the intake to Isaac because Isaac could move through a room like this without looking like he was working.

That was because he’d grown up in rooms exactly like this one. Different city, same chandelier. Same conversation about someone’s boat or someone’s vineyard or someone’s kid at Exeter. He’d left that world deliberately, and he didn’t regret it.

But standing here in a tuxedo that fit like it belonged to him—because it did, because he knew exactly how a tuxedo should fit—the familiarity sat just under his skin tonight, an itch he couldn’t scratch. A frequency only he could hear.

He scanned the room again and straightened.

That’s when he spotted Trent.

The kid was at the far end of the bar, leaning in toward a woman who had her back to Isaac. Trent was twenty-three, blond, gym-built in a way that screamed personal trainer five days a week, and was currently using his height to crowd her space. His hand was on the bar beside her, boxing her in.

She shifted. Trent closed the gap.

Isaac set down his glass as a waiter passed by with a tray and moved toward the bar. Not to intervene. To get a better look at Trent in his natural habitat before they were formally introduced. Graham wanted Zodiac to protect this kid. Isaac wanted to know what they’d be dealing with.

He found a position along the near side of the bar, close enough to hear but angled away. Ordered a water he didn’t want so he had a reason to stand there.

Trent’s voice hit him first. “What, you’re too good for a free drink? That’s cute.” He said it loud enough that the couple beside them glanced over and then looked away. Trent didn’t notice. Or didn’t care.

The woman said something too low to catch. Calm. Measured. Whatever it was, it should have been a clear enough signal for anyone paying attention that she wasn’t interested.

Trent wasn’t paying attention. He laughed—big and hollow, aimed at the room more than at her—and leaned closer. “You’re here alone, right? So what’s the problem?”

Isaac watched. The smart play was to stay where he was. Let the interaction run its course, introduce himself to Trent later through Graham, keep the evening clean and professional. Inserting himself now meant Trent would remember his face, and that complicated the intake.

The woman shifted her weight away from Trent. Subtle. A half-step that created six inches of space between them. Trent closed it without hesitation, like the gap was an invitation.

Her shoulders tightened. Not fear. Irritation held on a leash.

She wanted to shut this down—he could see it in the set of her jaw, the way her fingers curled against the edge of the bar—but she was choosing not to.

That was the part that caught him. Not the situation, but her restraint.

Whatever her reason for holding back, it was costing her.

Trent put his hand on her arm.

Isaac was already walking. He pulled on the smile he kept for situations exactly like this: warm, slightly apologetic, designed to defuse things before anyone realized there was anything to defuse.

“There you are.” He directed it at the woman, stepping in close enough that Trent had to shift back or get shoulder-checked. “I’ve been looking everywhere. Are we still doing dinner after this, or did you change your mind on me?”

She turned.

Gray eyes. Pale, sharp, almost silver under the ballroom lighting. They landed on him with a cool directness that most people couldn’t pull off with a stranger.

She held his gaze for exactly one second. He watched her take in the whole play—the positioning, the easy tone, the out he was handing her—and decide he was the lesser of two evils.

“You’re late,” she said. “I almost gave up on you.”

“Traffic was a nightmare. Forgive me?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” She turned back to Trent with a polite smile that had all the warmth of a closed door. “Thanks for keeping me company.”

Trent looked at Isaac, looked at her, and did the math he was capable of doing, which wasn’t much. “Yeah. Sure. No problem. Have a good night.”

He wandered off toward a cluster of guys near the auction tables. Isaac watched him go, then turned back to the woman. She was already watching him, those gray eyes steady and unimpressed.

“Smooth,” she said.

“I have my moments.”

“Does that work on everyone, or just guys like him?”

“Guys like him are easy. They don’t want a confrontation any more than you did.”

Something shifted in her expression. A flicker of reassessment, quick and gone. “I wasn’t avoiding a confrontation.”

“No?”

“I was avoiding a scene. There’s a difference.”

Isaac almost asked why the distinction mattered. He didn’t. Instead, he held out his hand. “Dance with me.”

She looked at his hand, then at the dance floor where a few couples were swaying to something slow, and back at him. “You don’t even know my name.”

“You don’t know mine, either.”

“That’s true.” She took his hand. “Fallon.”

“Isaac.”

He led her into a simple frame amongst the other couples—his right hand settling against her waist, her left hand landing on his shoulder.

She was lighter than he’d expected. Small-boned, fine-featured up close—black hair pulled up, a few loose pieces against her neck, high cheekbones above a jaw that came to a point. Nothing soft about her face.

Her dress was simple. Dark. No jewelry except a thin chain that caught the light when she moved. She looked like she’d walked in from a different party—one that didn’t require trying as hard as most of the people in here were doing.

She found the rhythm immediately and matched him without effort.

“So,” he said. “Are you actually here alone, or is someone about to come hunt me down and pull the same move?”

A half smile pulled at her mouth. “I’m here alone. Working, technically.”

“Yeah? What sort of work?”

“Scoping out for an event. I’m supposed to be taking notes on the layout and the lighting.”

“And instead, you’re dancing with a stranger.”

“The lighting is terrible and the layout is predictable. My client will hate it.” Fallon glanced around. “How about you?”

“Working, too.”

“In a tuxedo.”

“The tuxedo is part of the job.”

That almost earned a real reaction. Her mouth moved—not quite a smile, but close. “Must be a good job. What do you do?”

“Tonight? Mostly stand by a pillar and wait for someone to show up late.”

She held his gaze for a beat. He watched her register the deflection, weigh whether to push, and decide not to. “Fair enough.”

She was quiet for a few bars. The lights dimmed a degree—someone at the control board with a sense of romance and bad timing.

But she didn’t pull away. “Thank you. For the rescue.”

“You looked like you had it under control.”

“I did. But not the way I wanted to handle it.”

“How did you want to handle it?”

She tilted her head, thinking about it. “He had a full martini on the bar behind him. Three olives. Expensive suit, no breast pocket, so the drink would have gone straight through to his shirt. And those shoes were suede—light gray suede at a black-tie event, which tells you everything you need to know about him. Martini would have ruined them.”

Isaac laughed. Actual laughter, the kind that came up from his chest and surprised him. “You had the whole thing mapped out.”

“I had time. He was talking a lot.”

The first song ended. The second one started. Neither of them moved to separate.

They didn’t trade last names. Didn’t ask where the other lived or who they worked for. Isaac noticed it by its absence. She wasn’t offering credentials, and neither was he. No alma mater, no neighborhood, no name-drop. She existed inside this conversation and nowhere else.

He found himself doing the same thing. Not performing. Just here.

A woman in a red gown swept past them on the arm of a man who was clearly not listening to a word she was saying. He was nodding on autopilot, eyes scanning for someone more important to talk to.

“He’s going to regret that later,” Fallon said.

“The nodding?”