“I know you would. But I’m not.”
“Maybe you should, Fallon. Isaac and his teammate with all the opinions aren’t wrong about the price your body is paying and how this all eventually ends.”
Histeammate with all the opinions? They’d been on one video call. Cass had such a crush on Ryder, but Fallon wasn’t about to mention it. She doubted Cassandra had any idea.
“I can’t quit. I couldn’t live with myself if I did. There’s still too much to do.”
Cass was quiet for a long moment. “Okay. But if you change your mind, just know you won’t have to apologize to me. I understand.”
No, it wasn’t Cass she’d have to apologize to. It was all the innocent victims who would never see justice without her.
The silence sat between them.
“I have updates on the people looking for you,” Cassandra finally said. “I’ve been pulling threads since what happened at your apartment, and I found the source. They’re former targets, Fallon. People we’ve taken down.”
Fallon set the mug on the table.
“Targets,plural. It’s at least two, possibly three. They’ve found each other.”
“Found each other, how?”
“I’m not sure. Best guess, they started looking into what happened to them and realized they weren’t the only ones. Same playbook, same pattern of exposure. It wouldn’t takemuch digging for someone with resources to find the others.” Cassandra paused. “However it happened, they’re coordinated now.”
“Which targets?”
“I don’t know yet. The communications are encrypted, and the accounts are layered. I can see the pattern, but I can’t see the names behind it. Not yet.”
Fallon stared at the coffee going cold in her mug. Twelve targets in three years. She’d always assumed the risk was individual. One angry mark, one vengeful billionaire, one person with enough money to cause problems.
She’d never considered the possibility that they’d find each other. That her targets would compare notes and realize the same ghost had visited all of them.
“There’s more,” Cassandra said. “The search for the computer expert. It’s intensifying.”
Fallon went cold.
“They know you have a partner. They don’t have my name. They don’t have my face. But they’re narrowing the parameters, Fallon. Every data point they collect gets them closer.”
Fallon pressed her palm flat against the table. “How close?”
“Not close enough to find me today. Maybe not this week. But the trajectory is wrong.” Cassandra’s voice thinned. She steadied it. “Six months ago, nobody knew I existed. Now I’m a line item in someone’s investigation. That’s a big jump in a short window. I’m not like you, Fal. I don’t know how to run or fight or protect myself.”
In three years, Fallon had never heard fear in Cassandra’s voice. Frustration, yes. Exhaustion during bad flares. The sharp edge of worry when Fallon pushed too hard on a job. But not this.
Cassandra worked from home, living behind screens. The entire architecture of their partnership was built on the premisethat Cass was untouchable—the invisible hand behind the curtain, safe in her own space, protected by layers of encryption and anonymity and the sheer improbability that anyone would ever think to look for her.
That premise was eroding.
Eight hours ago, Fallon had fallen asleep in Isaac’s arms feeling safer than she’d felt in years. Now the person she would burn the world down to protect was telling her that the walls were closing in.
“I’m going to figure this out, Cass,” Fallon said. Her voice came out harder than she intended. The softness of last night was gone, replaced by something older and sharper—forged in the years after her father died. The version of her that knew how to hold a line when everything behind it was on fire. “Whatever it takes. You hear me? You’re going to be safe.”
“Yeah, I hear you.”
“Nobody is getting to you, Cass. I won’t let that happen.”
A long breath on the other end. “I know.”
But her voice cracked on it. Just barely. A fracture in the composure of the woman who’d been Fallon’s anchor for three years, the person who stayed calm when Fallon couldn’t, who ran the numbers and built the plans and made the impossible feel manageable.
