Chapter Twelve
Three days, and he still heard the sound.
Isaac adjusted his earpiece and checked the sight line from the east wall of the ballroom to the main entrance. Clean. Ryder was positioned near the south terrace doors, hands at his sides, eyes moving. The rest of the team was deployed—two at entry points, one on close protection with Endicott. Everybody where they should be, doing what they were trained to do.
He was doing what he was trained to do, too. Standing post, reading the room, managing comms. His voice was steady when he spoke into the earpiece. His instructions were clear. His positioning was correct.
None of it touched the thing living in his chest.
The pop. Wet, grinding, deliberate. A sound a human shoulder made when it was forced out of its socket by the person it belonged to. He’d heard bones break before—in the field, in training, once in a bar fight in Pensacola that had gone sideways.
Those sounds were sharp and sudden and finished. This one hadn’t finished. It kept replaying in the quiet spaces between comms checks and status updates, and every time it played he saw the rest of it, too.
Fallon’s face. The way her whole body had seized when the joint separated. The sound she’d made—involuntary and animal, something she’d tried to swallow and couldn’t.
And then she’d kept going. Pushed herself through a gap in an iron gate that should have been impossible, one arm hanging dead at her side, and on the other side she’d grabbed her own wrist and shoved the joint back into place.
She’d done it before. The dislocation was practiced—efficient, the sequence built through repetition. She’d known the angle, the rotation, the exact amount of force. No fumbling, no hesitation.
How many times? How many gates and windows and gaps too small for a human body had she forced herself through? And how many times had she done it with no one even knowing?
Isaac gritted his teeth, trying to force the thought away. “Zone One, status.”
“Quiet. Catering staff rotating on schedule. West service entrance secured.”
“Copy.”
He moved along the east wall. The venue tonight was a hotel ballroom downtown, crystal and cream, black tie for a medical research benefit. Endicott and his wife were at a table near the stage, seated with the evening’s honoree and two board members. Laura Endicott was laughing at something, her hand on her husband’s arm. Endicott looked relaxed. That meant Isaac’s team was doing its job well enough that the client could forget they existed.
“Zone Three, status on the north terrace.”
“Quiet. A couple of smokers near the railing, nobody approaching the restricted corridor.”
“Copy. Hold there.”
Isaac circled the perimeter. A woman near the auction tables turned her head. Dark hair pinned up, a certain angle to her jaw. His stride broke for half a step.
No. Shorter. Rounder in the face. Earrings Fallon would never wear. He looked away and kept walking.
It had been happening all week. At the grocery store, at the gym, twice in traffic. His brain kept assembling her out of fragments—a posture, a profile, a way of moving through a crowd with too much purpose. Each time it dissolved into a stranger, and each time the dissolving left a specific hollow behind his ribs that had nothing to do with the work.
“Zone One, the bar staff just let two guests through the east corridor toward the restrooms. That corridor runs past the service elevator. Nobody goes back there without an escort.”
“Copy, redirecting now.”
He found Ryder near the south terrace doors.
“Anything?”
“Two guys at the bar have been getting louder for the last twenty minutes. Birthday celebration, not a threat. The woman in the blue gown near the stage keeps checking her phone like she’s waiting for an extraction. And the bartender on the left is making the worst old-fashioneds I’ve ever seen from a distance.”
He tried to force some humor into his voice. “That last one might be worth reporting.”
“I’m drafting the incident log in my head as we speak.” Ryder’s gaze didn’t stop its sweep. “Otherwise, quiet. The room’s behaving itself.”
“Good. I’m going to check the mezzanine. The camera angle from up there is still bothering me.”
“I flagged that in the advance report. Twelve-foot blind spot between the second column and the service corridor entrance. Everyone knows to keep an eye out there.”
