Chapter 3 #2
Good. Fallon wanted him to feel it.
Every single person she’d hit in the last three years she’d wanted them to fucking feel it. They’d deserved to feel it after what they done to people.
Seven assholes taken down in three years. It wasn’t enough, and it wouldn’t change what had happened.
But it was a start.
“Okay. So the Boldini is the finale. Now tell me about his public schedule. Where does he show up?”
“Oh, he loves showing up everywhere. Charity boards, donor dinners, anywhere there’s a photographer and a tax deduction.
The big one is a Harbor Light Foundation gala about three weeks out.
Black tie, host committee, the whole production.
He’ll be there all night. That’s probably the main event for us. ”
“Three weeks is a long time to sit around. What’s between now and then?”
“The Boston Arts Alliance has a fundraiser this Saturday. Smaller, more casual. Prescott’s listed as a sponsor. He may or may not show, but even if he doesn’t, it’s a chance to see how the Arts Alliance runs their events, who’s in his circle, what the security looks like at these things.”
“Good. That’s the recon. Can you get me in?”
Cassandra made an offended sound. “Of course.”
“Do it.” Fallon paused. “What about the recon gala I did last week? Anything useful from the layout notes I sent?”
“I don’t think so. That venue’s too open for us. No private access worth the risk.”
Cassandra kept talking, something about the catering company the Harbor Light Foundation used and whether they’d be a useful cover for a later phase. Fallon heard the words, but her mind had already slipped back to the recon gala and a dance floor she should have left sooner than she did.
Isaac. The man who stepped between her and a pushy asshole at the bar with a smile so easy it looked like he’d been born wearing it. He’d offered her an out she didn’t need but had taken anyway.
There you are. I’ve been looking everywhere.
It should have been a line. But his eyes hadn’t matched the performance. His eyes had been sharp, serious, reading the situation and reading her, and making a decision in real time.
Three songs. His hand warm and steady on her waist. His voice low enough that she’d had to lean in, and every time she did she caught the warmth of him.
He’d asked her to meet him at the bar afterward. She’d said maybe and meant no and left through a side exit while he was across the room. The right call.
She didn’t get to stay and dance and chat with handsome charming men. That was the deal. That was always the deal. She’d never had a problem accepting it.
Not that she’d ever danced with anyone before while on the job.
“Fallon?”
“I’m here. Sorry. Say that last part again?”
“I said the caterer uses a rotating temp staff, so if we need a second set of eyes inside later, I can probably get a name on their list. But that’s phase two.”
“Right. Phase two. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” She straightened her back and pressed both palms flat against the tile. “What about the signature?”
The theft was the score. The exposure was the consequence.
But the signature was the part Fallon cared about most—a specific item she planted somewhere the target would find it in public.
A name they’d buried. A face they’d forgotten.
Something small and precise that told them someone knew exactly what they’d done and had been close enough to hand them a personal reminder.
“Still researching,” Cassandra said. “This guy has hurt a lot of people. But I have a lead. One of the employees from that Ohio plant wrote letters to the SEC, to his congressman, to three different news outlets. Detailed letters, everything documented. None of them went anywhere. He died two years after the plant closed. Heart attack at fifty-eight.”
“Did he have family?”
“A wife and a teenage daughter. The daughter was sixteen when the plant went under. She would have gone to college on the pension money. Instead, her mom took a second job and the girl deferred for two years. She’s a nurse now, in Columbus.”
Fallon was quiet for a long moment. That man had done everything right. He’d written the letters. He’d followed the channels. He’d trusted the system to work. The system hadn’t worked. And Malcolm Prescott had bought a three-hundred-thousand-dollar sketch.
Fallon’s father had trusted the system, too. Different man, different crime, same ending.
“Find me something connected to the guy who died,” Fallon said. “A photo. A copy of one of his letters. Something that would make Prescott’s stomach drop if it showed up in his coat pocket at a charity dinner.”
“I’ll dig.”
The planning part of the call was done. Fallon could feel it in the silence that followed—the shift from working to just being on the phone together.
Honestly Fallon didn’t know Cassandra all that well, despite trusting her completely.
But she knew the other woman didn’t have many other friends.
Neither of them did. That’s why they fit together so well.
She picked herself up off the tile, phone in hand, and walked to the window. Her knee objected on the way up, a sharp little reminder that the floor hadn’t been doing her any favors. Outside, a woman across the street was dragging a stroller up her front steps one thud at a time.
“Cass.”
“Yeah?”
“How are you doing? Real answer.”
A soft exhale on the other end. “Today’s okay. Yesterday was bad. I couldn’t get out of bed until noon, and even then I mostly just migrated to the couch and stayed there until dark.”
“Did you eat?”
“I had soup. And some crackers. Don’t mother me.”
“I’m not mothering. I’m asking.”
“You’re asking in your mothering voice.” Cassandra paused. “You absolutely have one, before you try to deny it. It’s the same voice you use when you’re about to tell me I need to drink more water.”
“Do you need to drink more water?”
“See? There it is.” Cassandra let out a short laugh. “You know I’m just going to turn it around on you. Have you eaten anything today besides that sad deli soup?”
Fallon opened her mouth and closed it.
“That’s what I thought,” Cassandra said. “We’re both disasters. At least I admit it.” Her voice softened. “I’m okay, Fallon. Really. I’ll have a run of good days soon. I always do. I just have to wait the bad ones out.”
Fallon leaned her shoulder against the window frame. The glass was cool against her arm. “Call me if you need anything. Even if it’s two in the morning and you just want someone to complain to.”
“You hate being woken up.”
Fallon chuckled. “I hate a lot of things. Doesn’t mean I won’t do them. Especially for you.”
“Go unpack your apartment. Set up your second monitor. Stop sitting on the floor. I know you’re sitting on the floor.”
“I’m not on the floor anymore.”
“Because you just stood up.”
Fallon almost smiled. “Go drink some water.”
“Go ice your knee.”
The call ended. The apartment went quiet.
Fallon stood at the window for another minute, watching the light flatten against the brownstones across the street. The woman with the stroller had made it inside. The street was empty.
She turned, pulled her hair back with both hands, and twisted it into a knot at the base of her neck. She rolled her left shoulder, a controlled rotation that eased the tightness that had been building all afternoon.
Isaac’s face came back one more time. The easy way he’d held her on the dance floor, like he had nowhere else to be. The way the evening had felt different with him in it.
She let it go. Deliberately, completely, the way she let go of everything that didn’t serve the work.
Malcolm Prescott. Three weeks until the Harbor Light dinner. Research, reconnaissance, access points, timing. A Boldini sketch bought with stolen pensions. A man in Ohio who wrote letters no one answered and died at fifty-eight with nothing to show for thirty years of work.
Fallon opened her laptop and started working.