Page 12 of Code Name: Scorpio

Ian must’ve seen the panic because he’d assured Ryder that it wouldn’t be the same. He wouldn’t be going undercover as…before.

As if before was ever really far away.

Being back at this compound was its own particular brand of hell. Four years since he’d walked away from the man he’d been here. The hallways hadn’t changed. The fluorescent hum hadn’t changed. The way the air tasted when you were underground in the briefing wing hadn’t changed.

Only Ryder had changed.

Supposedly.

So, none of this briefing was new. While the rest of the room was absorbing the information for the first time, he couldn’t stop looking at those goddamn glasses.

Ian put the photos of the Diehl brothers back up. Heath’s face stared out from the screen with the same flat expression Ryder remembered, the kind of face that was calculating something even when it wasn’t. Arlo looked like a guy you’d grab a beer with, which had always been the more dangerous thing about him.

Ryder had spent time with both of them. Enough time to know how they worked, how they thought, what they’d do when the money got big enough to make the risk worth it. He’d pretended to like them. He’d been good at pretending.

He was always good at pretending.

When Ian mentioned they were sending someone undercover, Ryder didn’t react. Half the room probably figured it out, given he and Cassandra were the only two people who didn’t work at Rogue full time, but nobody looked at him, and he didn’t volunteer anything.

His eyes drifted back to Cassandra. She was facing the screen—or seemed to be. Hard to tell when he couldn’t see her eyes. Her hands were flat on the table, fingers still. She hadn’t moved much since she sat down. He didn’t know what to do with that. Was she listening? Processing? Asleep behind those things?

Ian handed the meeting over to Fallon, and she explained how pitifully little they knew, then introduced Cassandra with a hand on her shoulder, singing her pattern analyst praise.

This was when Cassie would stop this strange behavior, right? When she acknowledged her friend and the others around her. When that passion for justice he’d been so intrigued by three months ago when they’d talked via video chat would surface.

Ryder watched.

Cassandra sat behind those black lenses with her eyes aimed at the table and her mouth shut. A dozen people waited for her to say something. Do something. Look up. Anything.

The silence went on long enough to get uncomfortable.

“Thanks,” she muttered.

One word. One fucking word. And even that was directed at the wood grain.

Fallon sat down, and Ian picked the briefing back up like nothing had happened.

But something had happened.

A roomful of people who’d dropped everything to work a child trafficking case had just been blown off by a woman who couldn’t be bothered to look at them. Although, not a single person at that table was going to say it because Fallon had vouched for her.

Ryder wanted to slam his fist against the table. Although he didn’t know who he was angrier at, Cassandra or himself.

He’d thought about this woman more than he had any right to. Her voice. Her conviction. The texts that trailed off because neither of them had a reason to keep going that wouldn’t have been obvious. He’d replayed more of it than he should have, turned it over late at night when the walls of whatever apartment or hotel room he was in felt too close.

He’d built something out of it that had no business existing. Had considered a future he’d sworn would never be a possibility for him.

And this was what showed up. Dark glasses and a muttered “Thanks” while kids were disappearing.

He’d been tempted. For the first time in four years, he’d actually considered letting someone close. He hadn’t touched a woman since he’d walked away from this place, hadn’t let himself want one, and the discipline had held without cracking.

Cassandra Leuenberger had almost cracked it.

Thank God he hadn’t acted on it. Whatever he’d built in his head from a few conversations and some texts was nothing short of fiction, where the woman sitting six feet away in those ridiculous glasses was the reality.

He’d wanted to see something in her, so he’d seen it. That was the kind of mistake he should’ve been too good to make.

Ian wrapped the briefing with logistics. Who was handling what, timelines, next steps. Ryder heard it all without needing to listen. The meeting wound down and Ian dismissed them all with a call to urgency. He specifically looked at Ryder when he said for everyone to keep safe.