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.
