Chapter 15 #2
“Fallon.”
“Yeah?”
“Whatever your reasons are—I hope they’re worth it.”
The line went quiet as they disconnected the call. She sat with the phone against her chest and listened to the silence fill the space where his voice had been. The house ticked and hummed around her. The closet walls held her in place.
She forced herself to give it another forty-five minutes. Let the conversation drain out of her body until all that remained was the job.
She eased the closet door open and stepped into the guest room. There was no sound from upstairs. No television, no movement.
Her shoes were soft-soled, chosen for exactly this. She moved through the doorway and into the hallway, staying close to the wall where the floorboards were tightest against the joists.
The safe was in Asshole’s study on the far end of the first floor.
Fallon knew exactly where. Cassandra had traced the delivery records—a Langford residential safe, twelve hundred pounds, installed fourteen months ago by a bonded company whose technician had been careless enough to file the work order on an unsecured network.
The study door was open. She slipped inside and eased it shut behind her.
Bookshelves lined two walls. A mahogany desk dominated the center. The safe was behind a hinged section of shelving on the east wall—a false panel that looked like part of the built-in cabinetry.
Fallon pressed two fingers against the upper right corner of the panel. The latch released with a soft click and the section swung outward on concealed hinges.
The safe was matte black, digital keypad, biometric backup.
She didn’t need the biometric. The code was an eight-digit string that Cassandra had extracted from a password file on his personal laptop—the same laptop where he tracked exactly how much money he’d diverted from families whose children were dying.
She keyed in the code. The lock disengaged with a low, mechanical thunk.
She opened the door.
The gemstones caught what little ambient light there was and threw it back in fragments.
Rubies, emeralds, sapphires—loose stones arranged in velvet-lined trays, sorted by color and size.
Dozens of them. Some rough-cut, most polished, all of them beautiful in the cold, precise way that expensive things were beautiful when they’d been bought with suffering.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of jewels.
He’d bought them using money that was supposed to pay for chemotherapy and experimental trials and hospital bills that no parent should have to face alone.
He’d skimmed from every fundraiser, every donor dinner, every black-tie event with fire dancers and twelve-hundred-dollar tickets.
He’d stood in rooms full of people who thought they were helping sick children, and he’d pocketed their generosity and bought gemstones.
Fallon pulled the leather roll from the inner pocket of her jacket and laid it flat on the carpet.
One tray at a time, she transferred the stones.
Her hands were steady. Her breathing was controlled.
Each stone placed into its slot with the careful precision of someone who’d done this before and couldn’t afford a single mistake.
The phone buzzed in her pocket.
She was mid-transfer, crouched in front of the safe with the second tray in her hands. Every protocol, every instinct, every lesson three years of this work had taught her said to finish the job and check later.
She set the tray down and looked.
Isaac. A photo of a vending machine with a handwritten sign taped to it read OUT OF ORDER. Below the photo:
This machine and I have a lot in common tonight.
She was crouched on the floor of a criminal’s study at midnight, transferring a fortune in stolen gemstones into a leather roll, and Isaac was sending her a picture of a broken vending machine because it was the kind of small, stupid, ordinary thing two people shared when they’d gotten comfortable enough to send each other the pointless moments of their day.
She typed back:
Did you try asking it nicely?
Sent it. Put the phone away. Her hands were still steady when she reached for the third tray. Her chest was not.
She finished the transfer. Every stone accounted for. She rolled the leather case tight and secured it with the strap, then slipped it back inside her jacket. The weight settled against her ribs.
Now the signature. Always her favorite part, even if it was, arguably, the riskiest.
These people had to know. Had to understand it wasn’t random thefts. It was their own actions that had brought this on.
She reached into her other pocket and pulled out a small plastic bag.
Inside was a child’s hospital identification band—the kind they put on a patient’s wrist during admission.
Tiny. Faded. The name and date had been redacted, but the hospital logo was still visible, and the band itself was real.
Cassandra had sourced it through a nurse at a children’s oncology ward who’d kept it after a young patient passed away. The family had given permission.
Fallon set the band inside the safe, centered on the empty velvet where the largest tray had been. Beside it, she placed a folded note card. She’d written it herself, by hand, in neat block letters.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR GENEROUS DONATION TO THE CHILDREN’S CANCER RESEARCH. THE FAMILIES SEND THEIR GRADITUDE.
She closed the safe. Spun the keypad to reset it. Pressed the panel back into place and heard the magnetic latch catch.
The phone buzzed one more time.
I kicked it. It gave me a Sprite. I wanted a Coke. Life is full of compromise.
She smiled, but pocketed the phone without responding. There was nothing she could say tonight that wouldn’t be a lie or a goodbye, and she wasn’t ready for either.
She retraced her steps through the study and back through the guest room to the window she’d left unlocked six hours ago. She eased it open, climbed through, and dropped silently to the lawn.
The night air hit her face. Cool. Clean. Free of the stale, climate-controlled air of a house that belonged to a man who’d never face a courtroom for what he’d done.
But he’d still paid. And would lose even more when details went public.
She walked two blocks to where she’d parked, got in the car, and drove home in silence.
Cassandra picked up before the second ring.
“It’s done,” Fallon said. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, the leather roll open on the mattress beside her. The gemstones caught the lamplight and scattered it across the sheets.
“All of it?”
“Every stone. Safe was right where you said it would be. Code worked on the first try.”
“And the signature?”
“Hospital band and the note. Centered on the empty tray. I wish we could be there to see it when he opens that safe.”
Cassandra exhaled. A long, slow breath that carried the particular relief of someone who’d been holding tension for hours.
“The press release goes out today. I queued it last night. Six outlets, all confirmed. The financial documents, the foundation audit discrepancies, the bank transfers—all of it. By tomorrow morning his name is going to be everywhere, and not in the way he likes.”
“Where are we with fencing what we’ve got?”
“Already in motion. Confirmed they can move the stones within two weeks. Combined with everything else you’ve taken from him over the course of the operation, the families should start receiving disbursements within a month.”
Fallon nodded. “It won’t be enough. It’s never enough. But it’s something.”
“I really wish this one would go to prison.” Cassandra sighed.
“Sadly, hacked and stolen data is inadmissible in court. But the exposure will do its own damage. Every charity board he sits on will quietly remove him. The donors who shook his hand at those fundraisers will pretend they never knew him.”
“Again, not enough. But it’s something.”
Professional satisfaction. They’d done it. Another target taken down. The system didn’t work, so they did.
“We did it, Cass.”
“We did it.” Cassandra let that land for a moment. Then she exhaled. “Which brings us to the other conversation.”
Fallon’s hand stilled on the leather roll. She’d known it was coming. She’d known since before she climbed through that window tonight.
“It’s time to leave Austin.”
“I know.”
“That’s the deal. It’s always the deal. Finish the job, move on before anyone connects the dots.”
“I said I know.”
Cassandra was quiet for a beat. “The burner phone, Fallon.”
“What about it?”
“Don’t do that. You know what about it. I’ve been worried since the night you told me about him, and now the job is done and there’s no reason to stay. Except that phone.”
“I’m not—”
“You’re emotionally attached to a security operative who works the same events you do.
A man who has seen you steal. A man who works for a firm with the kind of resources that keep me up at night.
” Her voice cracked, just barely, before she steadied it.
“Every day you keep that phone in your pocket is a day closer to something going wrong.”
“He doesn’t know what I actually do. He thinks I’m a pickpocket.”
“And that’s the only reason we’re having this conversation instead of a much worse one.
But you know how this works. We finish a job, we leave.
Every day after the press release hits is a day where someone could start looking, and you need to be gone before that happens.
That’s always been the plan. The only thing that’s changed is that now you don’t want to follow it. ”
Fallon had no answer for that. Cassandra had been right since the night Fallon had first told her about Isaac, but being right hadn’t made any of it easier to hear.
“I’m not arguing with you,” Fallon said. “I’m not fighting you on this.”
“I know.” Cassandra’s voice dropped. “That’s how I know it’s bad.”
The apartment was quiet around her. The same apartment she’d moved into weeks ago with two suitcases and a laptop and the understanding that she’d leave it the same way. She’d hung curtains. Bought a second monitor. Found a coffee shop with fast internet and terrible lattes.
None of that mattered. What mattered was a burner phone on the nightstand with a photo of a broken vending machine on its screen.
“Where will I be going?” Fallon asked.
“Chattanooga, I think. I’ve got someone who fits the bill I’ve been researching for a few weeks. I’ll have everything to send to you in a few hours.”
“Okay.”
“Fallon.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.”
Cassandra didn’t apologize often. When she did, she meant it with every piece of herself.
“Don’t be. You’re doing your job. You’re keeping us safe.”
“Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean I enjoy watching you lose something.”
Fallon’s vision blurred. She bent forward, elbows on her knees, and pressed the heels of both hands against her eyes until the pressure pushed everything back down. Her breath came in short, shallow pulls that she couldn’t seem to deepen.
“I’ll be ready by the end of the week,” she managed.
“I know you will. Get some rest.”
The call ended.
Fallon sat on the edge of the bed and didn’t move. The gemstones glittered beside her. Isaac’s last text glowed on the nightstand. The apartment held its silence around her like a fist.
She’d done a good job. A job she was proud of. A job that mattered. A job that would put money back in the hands of two hundred families who’d been robbed by a man who smiled at charity dinners while their children died.
And that good job was the thing that was taking Isaac from her.
Or taking her from him. She was the one who had to go. She was always the one who had to go. The work demanded it. The work was always bigger than what she wanted.
She picked up the phone. His messages stared back at her. The vending machine. The Sprite. The small, ordinary complaints of a man who had no idea that the woman he was texting had just robbed a safe and was planning to vanish from his life.
Her thumb hovered over the keyboard. She wanted to type something. Anything. Even just goodnight. Even just his name.
She set the phone down. Rolled the leather case closed, secured the strap, and put it in the lockbox under her bed.
Then she turned off the lamp.
She didn’t sleep. She lay on her back with her hands flat against the mattress, the way she’d once watched Isaac sleep in a hotel room in Boston, one arm stretched across the space where she’d been.
She’d left that night, too. She was always leaving.
But this time she felt it in a place her body couldn’t absorb—not her joints, not her muscles, not any of the hundred points of pain she’d learned to catalog and manage and push through.
This was in her chest, behind her sternum, a crack running through something structural that wasn’t going to heal the way bones and tendons healed.
She’d never heal from this.