Every minute she spent looking for help was a minute Kessler had a knife and slicing Isaac up. There was no time to get help. Kessler had designed it that way.
She was already moving.
She grabbed the keys for Isaac’s SUV from the desk. She was through the door and across the compound parking area in under a minute, her knee protesting every stride, the pain a distant signal she processed and dismissed.
The engine turned over. She pulled out of the lot and onto the access road and through the gate. The guard waved her through. She was on the county road heading south before she remembered to breathe.
Her phone was in her lap. She picked it up and called Cass.
It rang. And rang. And rang. Damn it.
Voicemail.
Fallon’s throat closed. She swallowed against it and waited for the tone.
“Cass.” Her voice came out rough. She steadied it. “Kessler has Isaac. He sent me a video. Isaac is hurt, and Kessler is going to kill him if I don’t show up in the next twenty-five minutes. I’m driving there now.”
She recited the address. The highway was dark ahead of her. She pressed the accelerator harder.
“I don’t think I’m coming back from this, Cass. Kessler wants me alive for the handoff, but after that, I don’t know. I don’t care. Isaac is going to die if I don’t go, and I can’t let that happen. I won’t.”
Her eyes burned. She blinked hard and kept them on the road.
“I need you to know something. You are the best thing that ever happened to me. You found me when I was drowning ingrief and rage, and you gave me a purpose and a partner and a friendship I didn’t earn and definitely didn’t deserve. You are my sister, Cass. In every way that matters. You know everything about me, every ugly, broken, dangerous piece, and you stayed.”
The address was twelve minutes away. She was driving too fast and not fast enough.
“I love you, Cass. I’m sorry I never said it enough.”
She hung up.
The GPS guided her through streets that narrowed from commercial to industrial. Warehouses. Chain-link fences topped with razor wire. The kind of area that emptied after business hours and stayed empty. Kessler had chosen well.
She found the address. A single-story concrete building set back from the road, loading dock on one side, a rusted metal door on the other. Two vehicles parked outside. Lights visible through a narrow window.
Fallon parked. Killed the engine. Threw open the vehicle door and ran.
She was probably running to her own death but she didn’t care.
A man stood at the front door. Big, armed, the flat expression of someone doing a job. He looked at her, looked at his phone, and stepped aside without a word. Kessler had told them she was coming.
She pushed through the door and into the building. The interior was a single large room. Concrete floor, exposed ductwork overhead, industrial shelving along two walls. A metal table against the far wall held tools and supplies. A workbench near the door had a vise bolted to its surface and loose hardware scattered across its top.
She cataloged all of it in the two seconds it took her eyes to adjust. Every surface, every object, every weight and distance and angle. She couldn’t stop herself. It was who she was.
Then she saw Isaac, and everything else fell away.
The video had been bad. In person was worse.
No more gag, but both eyes were swollen now, the left completely shut, the right narrowed to a slit. His nose had been broken since the video. Blood had dried in dark streaks across his mouth and chin. His shirt was gone, and the bruising across his ribs and stomach told the story of sustained, deliberate damage.
Kessler, that fucking bastard, had taken his time.
The pattern wasn’t random. It was thorough, covering areas that would cause maximum pain without killing the asset. He’d enjoyed this. Peter had warned them in the briefing, and the evidence of it was written across Isaac’s body.
His head came up when she walked in. The one eye that could still open found her, and what she saw in it wasn’t relief. It was anguish. He hadn’t wanted her to come.
“Fallon.” His voice was shredded. “Don’t.”
