“In Boston, I assumed he was old money attending events. He’s not.” She paused. Cassandra was going to absolutely freak out, but there was no way around telling her. “He’s private security. He had an earpiece, a team, everything.”
The silence that followed was worse than the rapid-fire questions. Fallon could hear Cassandra processing, the particular quiet of a mind running scenarios faster than language could keep up.
“Private security,” Cassandra said. “At a charity auction. With a team and comms.”
“Yes.”
“And he saw you lift something.”
“The money clip from the target. He was across the room, and he saw the whole thing.”
Cassandra sucked in a breath. They had planned the money clip theft carefully, particularly selecting that since it was something the target liked to flash around.
“And then what? Dance man detained you? Called it in? Confronted you? Why are you not in handcuffs right now?”
Sigh. “He asked me to dance.”
Another silence. Longer this time.
“Dance man asked you todance.”
“Well, he cut me off before I could get to the exit, and then he asked me to dance. We talked. He told me he saw what I did. He said he works for a firm called Zodiac Tactical and that petty theft isn’t his problem. He said as long as I stay away from his client, what I do in the room isn’t his concern.”
“And you believed him?”
“He let me leave.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s not building a case. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t flagged you. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a file with your face in it sitting on someone’s desk right now. Letting you leave could be strategy. Let the target think she’s clear, watch where she goes, build the pattern before?—”
This wasn’t going to go over well. “I took his watch. Lifted it.”
Dead silence.
“You. Lifted. His. Watch.” The words came out flat, each one dropped like a stone into still water.
“On the way out. He’d just told me I wasn’t very good at my job. So I lifted his watch off his wrist while we were dancing and held it up from across the room.”
“You stole from the security operative.” Fallon could almost picture Cassandra pulling at her own hair. “The security operative who just caught you stealing.”
“Yes.”
“Just to make sure I understand: the professional, trained, private-security operative with a team and comms andeverything. You stole from that person.”
“Seemed like the right move at the time.” Because he’d pissed her off. Worse, he’d underestimated her.Bad at her job.
“Why? Why, Fallon? Why would you do that?”
Fallon stared at the kitchen table. The laminate had a scratch near the edge that she’d been meaning to cover with something. “I don’t know. It was playful.”
“Playful.” Cassandra’s voice went up half an octave. “Playful is how people describe things right before they get arrested. There is nothing playful about stealing from someone who works in private security. Nothing. There is noplayfulcolumn in any spreadsheet I have ever made for you. I do not have aplayfultab.”
Fallon opened her mouth and closed it.
“You had a clean exit. He told you he wasn’t going to pursue it. All you had to do was walk out the door. Instead you showed off? Proved a point? To the man with the earpiece and the tactical team? Why?”
Fallon’s chest tightened. She could feel the corner she’d backed herself into. The wordplayfulmade zero sense in any operational context, and Cassandra knew it. There was no way to explain why she’d stayed on that dance floor, why she’d taken the watch, why none of her normal instincts had kicked in, without telling the truth.
She pressed her thumb against the edge of the table and exhaled through her nose.
