“That’s my building,” she said.
His hand settled on her lower back. He turned them both, smooth and unhurried, two people who’d changed their minds about where they were walking. They moved back the way they’d come and ducked around the corner of a cross street.
“That doesn’t make sense.” Fallon pressed her back against the brick wall. Her mind was already working. “Even if the building I climbed filed a report, there’s no way they connected it to me and found my address. Not this fast. There’s no way. That’s not how investigations work.”
“It’s not,” Isaac agreed. His voice had gone flat. Operational.
Fallon pulled out her phone and called Cassandra.
Cass picked up on the first ring. “What’s wrong?”
“There are cops at my apartment. At least three uniforms and one patrol car I could see. We haven’t approached. I don’t know how they found me, Cass, but they’re pulling stuff out of my apartment.”
“Shit.” The sound of Cassandra’s keyboard was immediate. Fast, aggressive. “Give me a minute.”
Fallon waited. Isaac stood at the corner, his body angled so he could see back toward her building without exposing more than a sliver of his profile. Calm. Controlled. In his element.
The keyboard sounds stopped.
“It’s bad.” Cassandra’s voice was clinical and precise. It was the tone she used when the data was ugly and sugarcoating would waste time. “They entered your apartment under a destruction of evidence clause. Someone gave law enforcement a specific reason to believe evidence was being destroyed inside the residence, which let them bypass the warrant process entirely.”
“That’s not something cops generate on their own.”
“No. It’s not. Someone fed them that.”
Isaac had moved closer. He could hear Cassandra through the phone speaker, and his jaw was tight.
“It gets worse from there,” Cassandra said. “You’re flagged in the system, no name but a picture and vague description. And you’re listed as extremely dangerous.”
“Extremely dangerous?” Fallon’s free hand pressed flat against the brick. “I’ve never hurt anyone. Even if they knew everything I’ve done, I’d be a nonviolent property crime suspect.”
“Agreed but that’s your classification. Extremely dangerous, approach with caution. That flag changes everything about how law enforcement interacts with you. They won’t ask questions first.”
“What else?”
“The photo they have of you is partial. Not a full face. Enough to potentially match against, not enough for a positive ID.”
“From where?”
“I don’t know yet. It’s not from Chattanooga—the timestamp predates your arrival here. It’s from an earlier job. Someone’s been building a file, Fallon. And it’s not the Chattanooga PD.”
Fallon’s grip on the phone had tightened until her knuckles ached. Three years of being invisible. No name, no face, no trail. And someone had a photo. Someone had her address.
“Shit.” Cassandra paused.
“What? Just say it.”
“They’re also looking for a computer expert who may or may not be traveling with the suspect.”
Fallon’s back came off the wall. She stood straight, her body rigid, the phone pressed hard against her ear.
“They know about you, Cass.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “They don’t have your name or your face, but they know you exist.”
“Seems that way.” She was steady on the surface. But the keyboard had gone silent, and Cassandra’s breathing had changed—shorter, shallower. Fear. Real fear, from a woman who didn’t scare easily.
“This isn’t cops being cops, Fallon. Police don’t work this fast. They don’t get this kind of intel from a break-in report, and they don’t flag nonviolent theft suspects as extremely dangerous. Someone with money and serious technical resources fed all of this to law enforcement. The address, the photo, the destruction of evidence pretext, the knowledge of a tech partner. Someone handed them a package and pointed them to your door.”
Isaac spoke for the first time. “They weaponized the cops.”
