Fallon looked at Isaac. Isaac’s whole body had locked—the kind of stillness that came from genuine surprise. He hadn’t known Ryder would be here. Hadn’t known Ryder had any connection to Rogue at all.
“Ryder.” Isaac’s voice was carefully neutral.
“Hey, brother.” Ryder pulled his hands from his pockets. His expression was open, direct.
“What are you doing here?”
“Ian asked me to come today.” Ryder glanced at Ian, then back at Isaac. “I used to be part of this division. Left a while back. Decided that life wasn’t for me anymore.”
Isaac didn’t move. Fallon could see the questions stacking up behind his eyes: how long, what operations, why he’d never said a word. Questions Isaac wasn’t asking.
“I couldn’t tell you,” Ryder said. “That wasn’t my call to make. But I wanted you to hear it from me, now that you’re here.”
The corridor held its silence. Whatever history Ryder carried from this place, whatever had driven him to leave, he didn’t open that door. The weight of it hung between them, but Ryder kept it sealed.
“Okay,” Isaac said.
One word. Fallon watched the trust hold. Isaac had questions—every single one of them was visible—but he trusted Ryder, and that trust was load-bearing. It didn’t buckle over this one event.
Ryder nodded. Something eased in his shoulders.
“Let’s sit down,” Ian said, and gestured toward the conference room.
The room was simple. A long table, chairs, a screen on one wall. Ian pulled out a chair and Fallon lowered herself into the one beside Isaac. Ryder sat across from them. Ian took the head of the table.
“So,” Ian said. He leaned back, hands flat on the surface. “Now you’ve seen the Rogue infrastructure. The scope, the people, how we operate. I want to be clear that nothing about today obligates either of you. This isn’t a recruitment pitch witha deadline. But you understand now why the secrecy matters. What you’ve seen today doesn’t leave this room.”
“Understood,” Isaac said.
Ian nodded. “Good. So let’s talk about what the next steps could look like, if you’re?—”
Fallon’s phone rang.
Cassandra.
“Excuse me. I have to take this.” They’d already talked once today. If Cassandra was calling again, it was important. Fallon pushed back from the table and stepped into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind her.
“Cass. What’s going on?”
“Fallon.” Cassandra’s voice was wrong. Tight, clipped, stripped of everything except the information she needed to deliver. “There’s a hit out on you.”
The hallway went cold. “A hit?” Maybe she’d misunderstood.
“A contract. Professional. I intercepted the communication twenty minutes ago, and I’ve been verifying since. It’s real.”
Fallon needed to get this info to Isaac right away. She turned to walk back into the conference room as the door was already opening from the other side. Isaac met her in the doorway, his face tight with something that matched the cold spreading through her chest.
“There’s a?—”
“I know.” His hands found her arms. His grip was hard enough that she felt the urgency in it. “Peter just called Ian. There’s a hit out on you.”
Ian was on his feet behind Isaac, phone still in his hand. Ryder’s hands were flat on the table, his body coiled forward in his chair.
Two independent sources. Same conclusion. Peter from one direction, Cassandra from another, and neither of them working together.
There was a hit out on Fallon. And it was bad.
The ground fell out from under everything.
