Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Isaac stood at the kitchen sink of the safehouse, both hands braced on the counter. The bedroom door was closed. Fallon was still asleep on the other side of it. They'd talked for hours yesterday, but even that, or maybe especially that, had worn her out.
He'd managed a few hours on the couch, but his mind had dragged him awake before dawn, and he'd been standing for way too long, turning it all over.
The Robin Hooding didn't bother him. Her code, her targets, her mission. He got it. He respected it.
What he couldn't get past was what she was doing to her body. They’d gone round and round about it and had still ended up in a standoff.
How did you talk someone out of what they felt like they were called to do even if that calling was exacting an unsustainable price?
A knock at the front door broke him out of his thoughts. He grabbed the Glock on the table and checked the window. Ryder was on the porch, duffel over one shoulder, two paper bags of groceries balanced in his arms. Isaac opened the door.
“Morning, sunshine. You look like shit.” Ryder was already moving past him into the kitchen.
Isaac sat the gun back on the table. “What are you doing here?”
“I know what safehouse life is like, so thought I would bring you food.” Ryder set the bags on the counter. “Eggs, bread, orange juice, bananas.”
“All the way from Austin? I mean, what are you doing in Chattanooga?”
Ryder started unpacking. “Endicott's wrapped. Peter cracked the email metadata, stalker folded the minute law enforcement showed up. I dispersed the office in Austin yesterday. Clean finish.”
“Good. That's good.” Good was a fucking understatement.
Isaac had left the team shorthanded when he’d come after Fallon.
And although he couldn’t bring himself to regret the decision given that Fallon would probably be dead right now if he’d stayed the course in Austin, it had weighed on him.
Even knowing Ryder was more than capable of handling it and leading the team.
The man had covered for him. Kept Ian out of it. Hadn’t asked questions Isaac couldn’t answer yet.
Ryder lined the bananas up on the counter, then turned to face him. “It is good. And it also means I have some free time.”
“How did you find me?”
He shrugged on shoulder. “Peter. You didn’t classify this as eyes-only, so he volunteered the info when I told him I was going in for support.”
Isaac leaned against the counter. “You didn't have to come all this way.”
“Yeah, I did.” Ryder's voice was quiet. No edge to it. “Because whatever's going on with you—the burner phone, the distraction, the disappearing act—it’s affecting you. It’s going to cost you your job if you’re not careful.”
Isaac scrubbed a hand down his face. “I know.”
“I know you like to handle things yourself and bringing in help isn’t your forte, but it’s time. Some things can’t be handled on your own. So, tell me what’s going on, and let’s figure this shit out.”
Isaac looked toward the closed bedroom door. Then back at Ryder.
He sat down at the kitchen table and told him everything.
He talked long enough that Ryder made coffee for them both. Then a second pot after that.
The other man sat across from him, both hands around his mug.
Isaac watched his friend take it in. Ryder’s expression had stayed controlled through most of it, the focused stillness of a man cataloging detail.
But toward the end, when Isaac got to the damage to Fallon’s body from a couple nights ago, Ryder’s jaw tightened.
“How bad is she right now?” Ryder asked.
“She can walk a little. Should get better as she rests.”
The bedroom door opened.
Fallon stood in the frame, one hand braced on the doorjamb, her weight shifted off her left knee. The oversized shirt Isaac had found for her hung past her wrists. She looked hollowed out, but her eyes were sharp as they went straight to Ryder.
Isaac stood. “Fallon, this is Ryder. We work together at Zodiac Tactical. He’s been covering for me in Austin, but that has wrapped now.”
She looked between the two of them. “You told him.” Not a question.
“Yes.”
“That wasn’t your call to make.”
“Maybe. But if Ryder hadn’t covered for me, I wouldn’t have been in Chattanooga. I wouldn’t have been at that building.” He held her gaze. “We both owe him.”
She looked at Ryder. He met her stare without flinching, without trying to smooth it over.
“I don’t like more people knowing,” she said.
“I wouldn’t, either,” Ryder said. “For what it’s worth, I’m not here to judge. If Isaac trusts you, that’s enough for me. I’m just here to support him and bring a few groceries.”
The hard edge in her expression eased a fraction. Grudging, but real.
“Fine.” She walked slowly to the couch and lowered herself carefully. “But if this goes sideways because one more person is in the loop, I’m blaming both of you.”
“It’s not going to go sideways,” Isaac said. “That’s what we’re all here for. To stop any sideways-going. Want some fruit?”
“Yes, thank you. But I meant what I said yesterday. I’m not going to quit just because of a little pain.”
“Little pain?” Isaac grit his teeth as he walked towards the kitchen. “Little pain is when you stub your toe and say a word you wouldn’t say in front of your mother. What happens to you is a lot damned more than little pain.”
“Still, I—” She broke off as her phone buzzed. “It’s Cassandra. I have to take it or she’ll worry.”
“Of course.” He turned and put some of the fruit in a bowl.
“Hey, Cass.”
“How are you feeling?” Cassandra asked immediately.
“Better. Mobile. Mostly.” Fallon angled the screen toward the room. “Isaac’s here. And one of his Zodiac teammates showed up.”
Isaac came back into the room to see Cassandra’s eyes tracked to the unfamiliar face. She was guarded. Uncomfortable with the expanding audience, same as Fallon.
“Who is that?” Sharp. Directed at Fallon, but pointing at Ryder.
“Ryder,” Fallon said, propping the phone up on the back of the couch so Cassandra could see everyone. Fallon took the fruit Isaac handed her. “Showed up this morning. Isaac told him.”
Cassandra’s expression went flat. “Told him what, exactly?”
“Everything.”
The silence on the screen lasted three seconds. Isaac watched Cassandra’s jaw work. She looked at Fallon, then at Isaac, then back at Fallon.
“Okay. That’s it.” Cassandra’s voice had gone careful and deliberate. “I’m coming to get you. We’ll figure this out the way we always do. Just you and me.”
“Cass—”
“I’m serious. I can be there by tonight. We’ll regroup somewhere safe and decide what the next move is.”
Fallon looked at the screen for a long moment. Something softened in her face. “You’d actually come here?”
“Of course I’d come. What kind of question is that?”
“As much as I’d love to meet you in person, I know you don’t like to leave your house.”
The words landed quietly. Cassandra’s composure cracked for a different reason now. Her chin dipped, and when she looked back up, her eyes were bright behind her glasses. “Yeah well, I would. For you.”
“Wait.” Ryder leaned forward. “You two have never actually met?”
Cassandra glanced at him. The defensiveness was still there, but the emotional beat with Fallon had loosened something. “No. We haven’t.”
“We met in an online support group,” Fallon said. “For people with chronic conditions. Both of us dealing with bodies that fight us on everything.” She glanced at the screen. “Cassandra has her own health issues. Different from mine, but we understood each other.”
“Online friendships are still friendships,” Cassandra said. She was looking at Fallon now, not Ryder. “I don’t need to be in the room with her to know I’d do anything for her.”
The room was quiet. Isaac sat with the weight of that. “How’d you go from chronic illness to taking down assholes who prey on vulnerable people?”
Cassandra shrugged one should. “Girls gotta have hobbies.”
A smile pulled on Fallon’s face as she watched her friend. It was obvious to Isaac just how much these two cared about and relied on each other. The fact they’d never met face to face was hard to believe.
Two women who’d never touched, never shared a room, never had a conversation that wasn’t filtered through a phone or a laptop. And they’d built something that had taken down twelve people who deserved it.
Ryder was quiet, too. Isaac glanced at him and found his friend sitting very still, his usual restless energy gone. He was also staring at Cassandra.
“I’m okay, Cass,” Fallon said. “I trust Isaac, and he trusts Ryder. That’s enough for me. So you don’t have to leave the place you feel safe.”
Cassandra straightened in her chair and pulled the professional composure back around herself. “What does he know about how we work?” A nod toward Ryder.
“Just what Isaac told him,” Fallon said.
Ryder shifted forward, looking at Fallon. “One thing I don’t understand. Isaac said that after you finish a job, after you’ve already gotten away clean, you go back. You show up at a public event where the target is present and plant something on them. A calling card.”
“We changed that after the second target,” she said. “It was Cass’s idea.”
“It’s not a calling card,” Cassandra said. “It’s a signature.”
“Whatever it is. The job’s done. You’re clean. And you go back into the room with the person you’ve robbed.” Ryder shook his head. “From a tactical standpoint, that’s the single riskiest thing you could possibly do. Why?”
Cassandra’s chin lifted. This was territory she cared about, and it showed.
“Because taking their money isn’t enough.
They need to know it wasn’t random. Every signature is specific to their crime.
A hospital band for a man who stole from cancer families.
A pension statement for someone who gutted retirement funds.
When the info about what they did goes public, they know it wasn’t random. ”
“So it’s psychological.”
“It’s justice. The legal system gave them a pass. We don’t.”
Ryder said nothing.
Isaac looked at him. Ryder’s mouth was slightly open, the next question visibly stalled somewhere between his brain and his tongue. He closed his mouth. Opened it again. Closed it.
Isaac had never seen that before. Ryder always had something to say. Always. And Cassandra, who by everything Fallon had told him about her was quiet and shy, had just shut him down without trying, without even looking at him, just by being passionate at what she believed in.
“That’s...” Ryder started. Stopped. “Yeah. That takes guts.”
Cassandra blinked. She’d been mid-conviction, still running hot, and Ryder’s tone pulled her back. She looked at him on the screen for a beat longer than necessary, her brow creasing slightly.
“It’s necessary,” she said. Quieter now.
“Maybe. But it’s sure as shit brave.”
Cassandra looked away from the camera. When she looked back, a faint flush had crept along her jaw.
Ryder didn’t push. He leaned back and was quiet, and Isaac found himself watching two people who had no idea what was happening to them. Ryder, who talked nonstop, was choosing his words. Cassandra, who hid from strangers, kept looking at one.
Isaac glanced at Fallon. She was staring at the phone with her lips parted and something unguarded moving across her face. Surprise. Whatever was happening between Ryder and Cassandra on that screen, Fallon hadn’t expected it.
The quiet held for a moment. Then Ryder turned to Fallon. Different tone. The warmth he’d been showing Cassandra was gone, replaced by something more direct. Not unfriendly, but direct.
“So my boy Isaac seems to think that what you’re doing is causing devastating pain and irreparable harm to your body, and that means maybe it’s a sign you should stop.”
Fallon didn’t look at Isaac. She looked at her own hands in her lap. The wrapped wrist. The fingers that wouldn’t fully close.
“I can’t stop,” she said. “Not while I can still do something. Not while there are people out there doing to other families what was done to mine. I still have more left to give.”
That was all she said. No speech, no defense. Just her position, stated clean.
Isaac had heard those words yesterday. That there may come a day when she couldn’t do this, but it wasn’t yet.
But Ryder hadn’t heard it. His face changed. The last trace of skepticism dissolved, and what replaced it was respect. Quiet, earned, the kind Ryder didn’t give easily.
Fallon grabbed the phone off the couch and looked at the two of them. “I’m going to talk to Cass for a few minutes alone.”
She stood slowly and carried the call to the bedroom. The door closed behind her.
Ryder sat in the silence she’d left. He stared at the ceiling for a long moment.
“Those two women are a force of nature.”
“Yeah, they are. And I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do about it.”
Ryder was quiet for a moment. Isaac watched him turn something over, his jaw working the way it did when he was choosing between saying something and keeping it to himself. He kept it to himself.
Then he exhaled, and when he spoke again his voice had shifted back to operational. “You need to go talk to Ian.”
“What good is that going to do?”
“If there’s anyone who can help you think outside the box on this, it’s Ian. You’re stuck. Fallon can’t stop, you can’t watch her destroy herself, and right now you don’t have a third option. Ian’s built his whole career…hell, built all of Zodiac Tactical…on finding third options.”
Isaac looked toward the closed bedroom door. Fallon’s voice was still low behind it, Cassandra’s still answering. Two women who’d found each other through screens and chronic pain and built something extraordinary out of both.
Ryder was right about one thing. Isaac was damn well out of moves.
“He’ll want to know everything,” Isaac said. “Hell, after what I pulled in Austin, he might want to fire me.”
“That’s a chance you’re going to have to take, brother. The only way through, is through.”