Chapter Twenty-Seven
Isaac had run dozens of operations in his career. Perimeter containment, interior staging, coordinated takedowns on his signal. He’d protected diplomats, executives, people whose lives depended on his ability to control a room and a plan.
None of them had been Fallon.
He stood in the Rogue compound’s main briefing room with the rental house floor plan projected on the wall behind him and a weight in his chest that no amount of preparation could touch. Cassandra had built the breadcrumb trail over the past five days—a rental house in suburban Texas, the lease signed under one of Fallon’s known aliases, utilities switched on, a forwarded mail request that had hit the postal system two days after the lease.
Small digital footprints staggered across the past few days, each one individually unremarkable. It all had the effect of making Fallon look like a woman trying to hide but not quite managing it.
Ryder sat at the table with a tablet open, marking positions. Two Rogue Division operatives flanked him, running through comms frequencies.
The plan was clean. Tight. Every angle covered, every contingency mapped. And if it failed, the woman sleeping besidehim every night was going to die at the hands of a man who enjoyed the process.
Isaac wasn’t going to let that happen.
The door opened. Fallon walked in. She’d been moving better the last few days. The knee tracked without the grinding hesitation that had plagued her since Chattanooga. Her wrist was out of the compression wrap for most of the day now, the fingers closing on command. She looked rested. Steady.
She also looked like she’d made a decision he wasn’t going to like. “I want to be there.”
He set down his pen. “Be where?”
“At the house. When Kessler comes.” She stood at the end of the table, her hands flat on the surface, her gray eyes moving between him and the floor plan on the wall. “I should be the one inside. The bait is me. Let me actually be the bait.”
The room went quiet. Ryder’s stylus stopped moving on the tablet. The two operatives glanced at each other and then at Isaac.
He looked at her. The set of her shoulders, the way she was leaning forward onto her hands. This wasn’t impulsive. She’d thought about it, probably for days, and waited until the last possible moment to bring it up because she knew exactly what he’d say.
Fuck, no.
He didn’t want her on the same continent as that house, much less inside the house itself.
“Talk me through your thinking,” he forced himself to say. He respected her enough to hear her out. At the end of the day, this was her life they were talking about.
Something in her posture eased when she realized he wasn’t dismissing her outright. She straightened and pointed at the floor plan behind him.
“If Kessler’s watching the house before he sends his people in, and I’m physically there, it confirms the trail. A digital footprint is one thing. A human being moving behind a window is something else. It makes the whole thing airtight.”
“It does,” he said. “I’m not going to pretend there’s no tactical value in what you’re describing. There is.”
Her chin lifted. She hadn’t expected the concession.
“But the trail Cassandra and Peter built is already strong enough to draw him in without that. And if you’re inside that house and something goes sideways, you stop being the person we’re trying to protect and become leverage. That’s what Kessler does. He uses the people around the target to force the target into the open.” Isaac paused. “You’d be handing him exactly the thing he’s looking for.”
“I’m not asking to run the operation. I’m asking to sit in a chair and let someone see me through a window.”
“I know. And I know how hard it is for you to be on this side of it. Sitting back while somebody else does the work you’ve been doing on your own for three years.” He held her gaze. “But I need you to hear me. If something breaks wrong and you need to move fast, fight, get out of that house under pressure, your body isn’t there yet. You know that better than anyone in this room.”
She didn’t argue. He watched the truth of it settle over her, not as a surprise but as the confirmation of something she’d already known and hoped he wouldn’t say.
“I hate this,” she said. Her voice was quieter now.
He moved to her end of the table. He took her hand, careful of the wrist that was still healing, and laced his fingers through hers.
“I know you do.”
“Just sitting here waiting for a phone call to let me know it’s all been handled? That’s not who I am, Isaac.”
“I know it’s not. But it’s what this operation needs from you right now.” He ran his thumb across her knuckles. “Let me handle Kessler so we can get past this and you can get back to the work. Therealwork. All those people Rogue Division can help you reach that you couldn’t get to on your own.”
