Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
The Endicott case was almost wrapped, and Isaac should have felt good about that.
He was at the temporary office—the same pressboard desks, the same fluorescent lights that buzzed like they were filing a grievance against the building.
Ryder was across the room cleaning his weapon at the desk he’d claimed by virtue of taping the cockroach drawer shut and replacing the chair with one he’d bought himself.
Peter’s face filled the laptop screen on Isaac’s desk, two keyboards going at once the way they always were.
“I’m close on identifying the email sender,” Peter said. “The encryption layers are peeling back. Another day, maybe two. The metadata from the last three messages is converging on a geographic cluster, and once I triangulate the ISP routing—”
Isaac rubbed his eyes. “English, Peter.”
“I’m about to find this guy.”
“That’s all I needed.” Isaac leaned back. “Good work. When you’ve got a name, send it straight to me, and I’ll loop in Endicott’s legal team.”
“Will do.” Peter adjusted his glasses. “Anything else on the Endicott side?”
“Ryder, anything from the last venue walk?”
Ryder didn’t look up from the barrel he was running a brush through. “It’s clean. Sight lines are solid, entry points are manageable, and the in-house team at that venue is actually competent for once. No knuckle-dragging psychopaths looking to break fingers.”
Thank God. Less to worry about if Fallon showed up there. “Then we’re good. Peter, we’ll check in tomorrow once you’ve got more on the sender.”
Peter nodded and started typing on a second keyboard.
Isaac should have been focused. The Endicott detail was winding down the way good operations wound down—methodically, each thread tied off, the threat neutralized through patience and precision. This was the part of the job he was best at. The clean finish.
But his mind kept drifting to his plan. The Get Fallon into Another Line of Work plan.
He’d been turning it over for days now, refining the pitch, trying to figure out how to frame it so she’d accept.
She’d already said no last night on the phone when he’d offered to help her find a different life.
He’d backed off because pushing her wouldn’t work.
She’d just retreat further behind whatever wall she’d built between herself and everyone who tried to get close.
But backing off didn’t mean giving up. It meant finding a better angle.
He had money. Real money—the kind that came from a family whose name opened doors at every gala and donor dinner he’d spent his adult life creating distance from.
Walking away from that world hadn’t erased the resources.
The accounts that he’d been given when he was eighteen were still there, never touched because using them felt like agreeing to terms he’d rejected.
All of it was still sitting there, earning interest on a life he’d had no interest in living.
Helping Fallon wouldn’t even make a dent. A year of support, maybe two, enough time for her to find something legitimate that used the skills she already had. She could read a room better than anyone he’d ever worked with. She noticed things that trained operatives missed.
Would it help or hurt to tell her that his family was exactly the type of people she pickpocketed?
That he came from the same world of charity galas and seven-figure trust funds and champagne that cost more than most people’s rent?
He genuinely didn’t know. She might see it as proof that he understood her world.
She might see it as proof that he was part of the problem.
And that would mean the two of them could be together. Actually together, without the burner phones and the disappearing acts and the constant low-grade terror that the next time she walked into a room to work, she’d walk into something she couldn’t get out of.
He just needed to talk her into the Plan.
If she would ever text him back.
He picked up the burner phone. Four texts he’d sent today, starting at eight a.m. A photo of the terrible office coffee maker with the caption This thing just made a noise I’ve never heard a machine make.
Pray for me. Then a follow-up at ten. Then another at noon.
Then one at two that just said Hey. You there?
Nothing back. No read receipts. No typing indicator. Just silence.
He’d called her at lunch. Straight to whatever voicemail a burner phone had, which was no voicemail at all—just dead air and a disconnect.
It reminded him there was so much about her life he didn’t know. Where she lived. What she did when she wasn’t working. Hell, her last name.
Something had to change.
But he would give it time and not push right now. She was busy or working. She’d text back. He set the phone down and pulled up his notes on the Endicott transition plan.
“You’ve checked that phone four times in the last hour,” Ryder said without looking up.
Fuck. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, I’ve been able to count since I was twenty, so… yeah, you’re very interested in that phone that’s not your main one.”
Isaac didn’t respond. Ryder glanced at him once, then went back to the barrel. He didn't push. He never pushed. But he never forgot, either.
He forced himself to focus on the screen. Transition plan. Handoff notes. The clean, professional work of closing a case that had occupied his team for weeks. He typed three sentences before checking the phone again.
Nothing.
“Holy shit.” Ryder’s laugh pulled him back. He’d set down the weapon and was looking at his laptop, head tilted. “News alert. Some Austin big shot just got torched in the press. Check your feed.”
Isaac pulled up the news. The headline loaded first, then the photo.
PROMINENT AUSTIN PHILANTHROPIST EXPOSED: CRAIG MANSOOR ACCUSED OF DEFRAUDING CHILDREN’S CANCER CHARITY.
Ryder was leaning back in his chair. "Craig Mansoor. I recognize that name. I think he's been at some of the events where we were working."
Isaac was reading the article. Financial records leaked to six media outlets simultaneously. Donor funds diverted into personal accounts. Gemstones purchased with money earmarked for children’s chemotherapy. A forensic breakdown so thorough it read like a prosecution brief.
“He definitely got what was coming to him,” Ryder said. “Damn. I would’ve accidentally tripped and punched the guy in the jaw if I’d known he was stealing from kids with cancer. Multiple times. Just tripping all over myself, the way I sometimes do.”
Isaac scrolled through the photos accompanying the article. Mansoor at a podium. Mansoor shaking hands with a state senator. Mansoor at a black-tie event, silver hair swept back, that navy blazer, the smile of a man who’d never been told no.
Something about the face. He knew it from somewhere.
Peter’s voice cut in from the laptop screen.
“This isn’t the first time something like this has happened.
A wealthy target in Seattle got taken down the same way about six months ago.
Public exposure, financial crimes documented, press tipped simultaneously.
And there was one in Miami before that. Last year.
Whoever is doing this, I’m a big fan. It has to be some organization. ”
“Taking-Down-Rich-Assholes-R-Us.” Ryder chuckled. “Where can I send my membership dues?”
“It’s been the same playbook each time,” Peter continued.
“Financial records surface out of nowhere. Multiple outlets get the story at the same time, so nobody can kill it. The target’s reputation gets shredded overnight.
And in at least two of the previous cases, personal property was stolen. Valuable stuff—art, jewelry. Gone.”
“Sounds like somebody’s helping karma along,” Ryder said.
The air left Isaac’s lungs.
Helping karma along.
Fallon’s voice at the masquerade, when he asked how she chose the people she pickpocketed.
There’s always a reason. Maybe I like to help karma along.
He went back to the article. Scrolled to the photo gallery. Mansoor at the masquerade. The banner behind him read Mansoor Family Foundation Annual Gala. His foundation.
That had been his event. His property.
Isaac’s stomach dropped.
“Yo, Isaac.” His voice had shifted. “You just went white.”
“I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Give me a second.”
He pulled up the guest list from the Heritage Center event—the breaking fingers guys, the night he’d pulled Fallon into a utility closet. He scrolled through names until he found it.
Craig Mansoor. Table twelve. VIP donor.
Then he looked at Mansoor’s photo again. Stared at it. The silver hair, the slim build, the navy blazer.
Holy shit. Craig Mansoor was the money clip guy from that first night where he’d first saw Fallon here in town. He hadn’t paid much attention to her mark because he’d been so caught up in seeing her again and the realization of what she did for a living.
Three events. Three events where Fallon was there, and three events where Mansoor was there. The money clip. The masquerade. The Heritage Center.
That wasn’t coincidence. That was a goddamn campaign.
He could feel the burner phone in his pocket like a stone. Was it possible that Fallon was—
“Peter. Run a search. Boston, four months ago. Same pattern. Look for a public takedown of a wealthy figure. Private equity, financial crimes.”
Peter's eyebrows went up. “What are you thinking?”
“Just look.”
Peter dug. Isaac sat rigid in his chair while Ryder watched him from across the room. The silence in the office was total except for the distant rattle of the air conditioning and the sound of Peter's keyboard.
“There sure as shit was.” Peter leaned toward his camera.
“Malcolm Prescott. Sixty-one. Private equity, ran a firm called Ridgeline Advisors. Four months ago, six Boston media outlets simultaneously published detailed financial records showing that Prescott had systematically gutted pension funds through a series of shell companies. Seven companies, hundreds of employees, millions in stolen retirement savings. The exposure followed the same pattern—documents leaked, press tipped, personal property stolen.”
“We’ve really got to find out who this organization is so I can buy them all a beer,” Ryder said.
Peter kept going. “Mansoor is already claiming none of the accusations can be proven in court because the records were obtained illegally.
But it doesn't matter. The damage is social, not legal.
Whoever is doing this isn't playing by legal rules.
They're not trying to put anyone in prison.
They're letting the public destroy them.”
Isaac heard all of this like he was in a different room. Hell, a different planet.
It wasn’t an organization taking these people down. It was Fallon.
The money clip at the Lockwood estate hadn't been a random lift. It was one move in a campaign to dismantle Craig Mansoor. She’d stolen something at the masquerade, too.
That was why she'd been near the building when he caught up with her.
That was why she'd run through the hedge maze.
That was why she'd dislocated her own shoulder to get through that gate rather than let Isaac stop her.
She'd been carrying something she couldn't afford to lose.
The camera avoidance at every event. The different look every time—hair, makeup, her face altered so no one would connect her from one night to the next. The way she tracked Zodiac's schedule and built her calendar around their absence.
I have my reasons. Good ones.
The people I choose have earned it. Every single one of them.
Carefully.
Jesus. She wasn't a pickpocket. She'd never been just a pickpocket. He built an entire understanding of her around the smallest, most insignificant fraction of what she actually did.
He'd offered to save her from a life of petty crime, and she'd been running operations more sophisticated than half the things Zodiac had handled.
He had completely, catastrophically underestimated her.
Isaac picked up the burner phone. His texts stared back at him. The coffee maker photo. The follow-ups. The silence.
He called her. The line rang four times and disconnected.
He called again. Same result.
The silence he'd been brushing off all day rearranged itself. Eight hours without a word. Mansoor's downfall was public. The job was finished.
Austin was done for her.
“Isaac.” Ryder's voice was quiet now. Careful. “What is going on, bro?”
Isaac set the phone down on the desk. His hand stayed next to it. “I—I can’t. Not yet.”
Ryder held his gaze for a long beat. Then he nodded once, sat back down, and picked up his weapon. He didn't ask again.
Peter was still on the screen, pulling data, building timelines.
Isaac could hear him talking but the words had lost their shape.
Seattle. Miami. Boston. Austin. Cities she'd moved through and left behind, and people who deserved what she'd done to them, and no one had ever come close to catching her.
He couldn’t tell Ryder and Peter about Fallon. Not yet.
He wasn't ready to stand in front of them and say the words out loud: that the woman he'd offered to rescue from petty crime had looked him in the eye and said I have my reasons, and he'd nodded and changed the subject like she was being evasive instead of telling him the exact truth.
And she was gone. He already knew it. The same way she'd vanished from the ballroom the first night. The way she'd left the hotel in Boston before dawn.
The way she'd told him herself, in her own voice, on a phone call that already felt like it had happened in another lifetime: things that matter are things you can lose.
He looked at the phone one more time. The screen was dark. No new messages.
There wouldn’t be any. He put the phone in his pocket.
Peter signed off. Ryder went back to his weapon, giving Isaac the space he obviously needed. The office settled into its usual state, the hum of the lights, the rattle of the air conditioning, the particular emptiness of a temporary space that belonged to no one.
Isaac sat at his desk. The Endicott transition plan was still on his screen, cursor blinking. He didn't type.
Somewhere out there, Fallon was already gone. Or going. He didn’t know where. All he knew was that it was away from him.
He stared at the blinking cursor and felt the shape of her absence settle into the room like something physical. The Plan he'd spent days building—the money, the pitch, the future he'd been so sure he could talk her into—sat in his chest like a fist with nothing to hold.