The quiet held for a moment. Then Ryder turned to Fallon. Different tone. The warmth he’d been showing Cassandra was gone, replaced by something more direct. Not unfriendly, but direct.
“So my boy Isaac seems to think that what you’re doing is causing devastating pain and irreparable harm to your body, and that means maybe it’s a sign you should stop.”
Fallon didn’t look at Isaac. She looked at her own hands in her lap. The wrapped wrist. The fingers that wouldn’t fully close.
“I can’t stop,” she said. “Not while I can still do something. Not while there are people out there doing to other families what was done to mine. I still have more left to give.”
That was all she said. No speech, no defense. Just her position, stated clean.
Isaac had heard those words yesterday. That there may come a day when she couldn’t do this, but it wasn’t yet.
But Ryder hadn’t heard it. His face changed. The last trace of skepticism dissolved, and what replaced it was respect. Quiet, earned, the kind Ryder didn’t give easily.
Fallon grabbed the phone off the couch and looked at the two of them. “I’m going to talk to Cass for a few minutes alone.”
She stood slowly and carried the call to the bedroom. The door closed behind her.
Ryder sat in the silence she’d left. He stared at the ceiling for a long moment.
“Those two women are a force of nature.”
“Yeah, they are. And I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do about it.”
Ryder was quiet for a moment. Isaac watched him turn something over, his jaw working the way it did when he was choosing between saying something and keeping it to himself. He kept it to himself.
Then he exhaled, and when he spoke again his voice had shifted back to operational. “You need to go talk to Ian.”
“What good is that going to do?”
“If there’s anyone who can help you think outside the box on this, it’s Ian. You’re stuck. Fallon can’t stop, you can’t watch her destroy herself, and right now you don’t have a third option. Ian’s built his whole career…hell, built all of Zodiac Tactical…on finding third options.”
Isaac looked toward the closed bedroom door. Fallon’s voice was still low behind it, Cassandra’s still answering. Two women who’d found each other through screens and chronic pain and built something extraordinary out of both.
Ryder was right about one thing. Isaac was damn well out of moves.
“He’ll want to know everything,” Isaac said. “Hell, after what I pulled in Austin, he might want to fire me.”
“That’s a chance you’re going to have to take, brother. The only way through, is through.”
