Chapter 24 #2
Isaac paused. “It’s not exactly a fucking superpower, although she treats it like it is.
But every time she pushes her body past those limits, she’s doing damage.
Her joints are getting looser, less stable.
Every job takes a toll she can’t sustain.
I pulled her off the side of a building in Chattanooga after her wrist and knee failed simultaneously.
Twenty feet up, Ian. Twenty fucking feet. ”
Ian was quiet. His jaw tightened—a small, controlled movement, but Isaac caught it.
“And the current situation is even worse,” Isaac continued. “Some of Fallon and Cassandra’s former targets have organized. They’ve pooled resources, and the money is flowing into channels that suggest they’ve hired someone to find her. The walls are closing in on both of them.”
It hit him then. His job at Zodiac didn’t matter. “So while I truly appreciate your willingness to not accept my resignation, it doesn’t matter. Fallon won’t stop what she’s doing. She feels like it’s her calling, and she won’t walk away from it.”
“That’s admirable.”
“Yeah.” Isaac scrubbed a hand down his face. “It’s also going to get her caught or dead. And that’s if the people after her don’t find her first. I can’t leave her and go back to the job.”
Ian leaned further back in his chair. “I might be able to help with a solution.”
“Yeah? What’s that? Because she is determined to make rich predators pay for their sins, even if she has to die for it.”
“Bring Fallon back in,” Ian said. “What I’m about to say involves her.”
Isaac went to the study door and knocked. “He wants to talk to both of us.”
Fallon came out. Her jaw was set, her posture deliberate and contained. She lowered herself into the chair beside Isaac and sat straight. Met Ian’s eyes. Waited.
Ian looked at them both.
“What I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this room.
” His voice had changed. The warmth, the dry humor—all of it gone.
What replaced it was something Isaac had heard only a handful of times in all his years at Zodiac: Ian without any of his masks.
“In all your years working for me, you’ve never heard of this.
Neither has most of the roster. I keep it that way for a reason, and I need you both to understand the weight of what I’m trusting you with. ”
Isaac’s spine straightened. Whatever he’d expected Ian to say, the preamble alone told him it wasn’t that.
“Zodiac has a division that doesn’t appear on any organizational chart.
Internally, the few people who know about it call it the Rogue Division.
” Ian held Isaac’s gaze. “It’s been operational for years.
Quiet. Targeted. Effective. It handles people who deserve what’s coming when the legal system has failed to deliver it. ”
Ian turned to Fallon. “Not unlike what you do. Just with more operatives.”
Isaac didn’t move. Rogue Division? How had he not known about this?
“The line between legal and illegal gets blurry in that division, because it has to. The people it goes after are protected by money, by lawyers, by a system designed to look the other way.” Ian paused. Let the weight of it land. “So we built something that doesn’t look away.”
The room went silent. The low hum of the refrigerator. The faint lap of water against the dock through the windows.
Isaac sat with it. Years at Zodiac. Hundreds of operations. And the whole time, underneath the legitimate contracts and the clean client details, Ian had been running something in the shadows that looked a hell of a lot like what Fallon did on her own.
The irony of it landed hard. He’d spent weeks wrestling with what it might look like to be with a woman who operated outside the law, had resigned over the compromise it represented, and the entire time, the line he thought he was crossing had never existed. Ian had erased it years ago.
And Ian was trusting him with that information now. Here, in this kitchen, with a woman he’d met thirty minutes ago. There was a reason for that.
“What Fallon and Cassandra have been doing on their own,” Ian said, turning to her, “Zodiac has infrastructure for. Resources. Teams. Cover. Institutional support.”
Beside Isaac, Fallon had gone completely still. Her breathing had slowed. Her hands rested in her lap, motionless, her whole body locked in to what Ian was saying.
“You would be an excellent fit for Rogue Division,” Ian said to her.
“Your operational instincts, your target selection, your understanding of how these people work. Cassandra, too. Her research capability, her technical skills. What the two of you have built on your own—imagine it with an organization behind it.”
“Fallon can’t keep doing the physical work.” The words left Isaac before he could measure them. “The hEDS. Her body is breaking down. Every time she climbs or squeezes through a space, she’s spending what she can’t get back.”
“She won’t have to.” Ian said it plainly. No hesitation. He turned to her again. “You could help run the division. It’s what we’re missing right now—a leader. Strategy. Target selection. Planning. Other people handle the physical side.”
What Ian was offering was a way to keep doing the work that defined her without it killing her. A way to be the consequence without paying with her own body every time.
Ian was handing him a world where that didn’t have to happen.
Fallon looked up from her wrist. She looked at Ian. Then at Isaac. Her expression was careful, guarded—a woman who’d spent her entire adult life building escape routes trying to decide whether the thing being offered was real.
She didn’t say yes. She didn’t say no.
But she didn’t close the door.
Ian stood. “I don’t need an answer today. But I want you both to come see what I’m talking about. Meet the people. Understand what it is before you decide anything.”
Isaac looked at Fallon. She looked at him.
Her eyes held everything she wasn’t saying—the fear, the hope, the weight of three years spent doing this alone. The question she’d never allowed herself to ask—whether there was another way.
“Okay,” Fallon said. Quiet. Steady. Directed at Ian, but her eyes still on Isaac. “We’ll come.”
“We’ll be there,” Isaac agreed.
Ian nodded once. He didn’t push for more. He moved toward the door and Isaac walked him out.
On the porch, Ian stopped. He looked out at the lake for a moment, then back at Isaac.
“Don’t let her talk herself out of it. I’ll send you the location information. Ironically, department HQ is in Austin. You two were almost tripping over it without even knowing.”
Then he was walking toward his car. Isaac stood on the porch and watched him go.
Behind him the cabin held the woman who’d changed everything and the possibility—fragile, enormous, real—that the future he’d been bracing for where Fallon gave herself to her mission until it took everything didn’t have to be the only one.
He went back inside.
Fallon was still at the table. She looked up when he came in. The caution was there. The wariness. But underneath it, quiet and tentative, something had loosened in her face. Something that hadn’t been there an hour ago.
He sat down across from her. Took her hand.
For the first time, there was a way forward.