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“It was rough. She shut down in the kitchen. Couldn’t talk, couldn’t make eye contact. The submissive cover gave her a way to cope with it.”
“Cope how?”
“If they think she’s not allowed to look at them or speak to them, nobody questions why she doesn’t.”
Another beat of silence. “Get her out, Ryder. Right goddamn now. You and Isaac get her off that property.”
Cassandra sat forward and held out her hand. “Let me talk to her.”
His jaw tightened, but he handed over the phone.
“Fallon. I’m staying.”
“Cass?” Fallon’s voice cracked on the syllable. “Are you hurt?”
“No. I’m okay. And I already had this fight with Ryder. I’m still the only option if we want to get into that system.”
“You are not okay. You are inside a criminal operation pretending to be—” Fallon stopped herself. Took a breath.
For years Fallon had been the one out in danger while Cassandra waited at home to assist, feeling mostly helpless. It felt good to be on the other side of it for once.
“One more session at that terminal, Fal. One. I can do this. I want to do this.”
Fallon went quiet. Cassandra could hear her breathing. She could picture her pacing, running the calculations she always ran. And the gap between what Cassandra was saying and what she was feeling was wide enough to fall into it.
But the kids. Every time the doubt got loud, the kids got louder.
“Put Ryder back on,” Fallon finally said.
Cassandra handed him the phone. He took it and moved to the far corner of the room, his voice dropping low. She couldn’t hear everything, but she caught pieces. “I’ll keep her safe.” And: “I know.” And: “I know that too.” And then, quieter: “She’s tougher than either of us thought.”
He ended the call and powered the phone down. Tucked it back into his boot.
“What did she say?”
“She said if anything happens to you she’s going to kill me, and I believe her.”
That sounded like Fallon. “Isaac and Nolan?”
“She’s pulling them back tonight. They’ll be on standby for when we’re ready.”
Cassandra scooted back to lean against the headboard. The migraine was still creeping around, but it was manageable.
“So how is this going to work?”
He scrubbed a hand down his face. “We’ll probably need to wait a couple of nights before we try again. The Diehl brothers, especially Heath, are assholes, but they’re not stupid. They’ll be keeping an eye out for potential trouble.”
He sat back down on the floor, leaning against the nightstand. “Honestly? I’m not entirely sure. I told them what I told them and they seemed to buy it, but I don’t have a playbook for this. We’ll both be figuring it out as we go.”
“Where one wrong move could get us both killed? That’s deeply reassuring.”
His huff of breath might have been a laugh under other circumstances. “The basics are straightforward. Follow my lead. If I tell you to do something in front of them, do it, even if you don’t understand why. I’ll explain later when we’re alone, but in the moment, hesitation is the thing that gets us caught or worse. These men believe the arrangement because of what they saw tonight. We have to keep showing them the same thing.”
“Not looking at anyone. Not speaking.”
“Hopefully, that part actually works for you, right? If they think you’re not allowed to look at them, nobody questions why you don’t. Bonus is that you don’t spiral.”
He was right. The framework that should feel like a cage would be her freedom. His voice telling her where to look had given her brain an anchor tonight when everything else was noise.
