“Understood,” Ryder said.
He stepped into the room and positioned himself at Fallon’s left side. Someone behind him in the hallway rolled a wheelchair forward. Ryder glanced at it, then at her.
“No.” She wasn’t getting in a wheelchair.
“Didn’t think so.” He offered his arm. She gripped it above the elbow, her splinted hands awkward against his sleeve. Ryder waited while she steadied. He didn’t rush her, didn’t adjust her grip, didn’t do anything except stand there and let her find her balance on her own terms.
They started down the corridor. Her knee tracked but it tracked ugly, each step a negotiation between the joint and the muscles. Ryder matched her pace without comment.
“How did you find us?” she asked.
“Cass got your voicemail,” he said.
Fallon’s chest tightened. The voicemail. The goodbye she’d left on Cass’s phone while driving ninety miles an hour toward a building she didn’t expect to walk out of.
“She called me about forty seconds after she listened to it. I’ve never heard anyone sound the way she sounded on that call.”
Terrified. Fallon would’ve been the same if the roles had been reversed. As soon as she got her phone back she needed to call Cass immediately.
“How did she have your number?”
“I’d given it to her. Told her if she ever needed anything to call me.” He kept his eyes forward. “She needed something.”
Fallon’s throat closed. She swallowed against it and kept walking.
“I mobilized the team. Cass had the address from your voicemail, so we knew exactly where you were headed. We were minutes behind you.”
She’d been inside that warehouse less than half an hour. It had felt like an eternity.
“Kessler?”
“In custody. Alive. He’s not going anywhere.”
She nodded. The hallway stretched ahead of them, doors on both sides, the quiet hum of medical equipment behind the walls.
“How did Kessler get Isaac? He was in a vehicle heading back to the compound with another operative.”
Ryder didn’t answer immediately. His jaw worked once before he spoke.
“Kessler rammed the vehicle. Hit the driver’s side at full speed.” A beat. “The driver, Ryan Cafferty, didn’t survive the impact. Kessler pulled Isaac from the wreck.”
Fallon stopped walking. Her grip tightened on Ryder’s arm. A man she’d never met had died driving a route back from an operation built to protect her.
“I—”
“Don’t.” Ryder’s voice was quiet but it left no room for argument. “I can see where you’re headed, and I’m shutting it down. Cafferty was doing his job. He knew the risks of this work every single day he showed up. His death is on Kessler, not on you.”
She held his gaze. The guilt didn’t dissolve but it settled into a place where she could carry it without drowning in it.
“Rogue’s building the case against your former targets who hired Kessler,” he continued. “Conspiracy to commit murder, financing a contract killing. The evidence Cassie already had, plus what Peter and the Rogue analysts have pulled in the last twenty-four hours is more than enough. Those three are done.”
Cassie. If she didn’t want to see Isaac so damned much she would stop Ryder right now and ask him his plan for dating her friend. She had no doubt he had one.
They reached the end of the corridor. A door on the right, slightly ajar. Ryder stopped.
“Listen.” Ryder paused. “I’ve already seen him. He’s in and out of consciousness. Four broken ribs, two cracked. Broken nose, orbital fracture, dislocated shoulder they reduced under sedation. But he’s going to heal. All of it.”
Fallon pushed the door open.
