Page 14 of Code Name: Scorpio

She nodded. Settled.

But it wasn’t. “I need to ask you about Cassandra.”

Something behind Fallon’s eyes shifted. “What about her?”

“She’s a civilian.”

“I know. But I wasn’t lying in the briefing. She’s the best at what she does. Once you get that computer access, she’ll be able to recognize patterns even software would miss.”

“I don’t doubt that. But she’s building my cover and training me on a system that’ll keep me alive inside a criminal operation.” He kept his voice even. “She didn’t seem locked in during the briefing.”

“What do you mean?”

“The glasses. The silence. You introduced her to a room full of people working a case about trafficked kids, and she couldn’t look at any of them. Said a grand total of one word.”

He stopped himself there. The rest of it—the disappointment, the texts, the voice on the phone he’d been replaying in his mind for months—had nothing to do with this conversation and no business being in it.

Fallon let out a slow breath. “Okay. Those are fair points.” She leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Cass doesn’t do well around people. She never has. She works alone, lives alone, she’s more comfortable behind a screen than in a room. That’s just who she is.”

“The glasses?”

“She gets migraines. Bad ones. The glasses help.” Fallon paused, and her expression shifted. Not defensiveness. Something closer to worry. “But I hear what you’re saying. She was off today. More than I expected.”

“More than you expected, how?”

“I’ve known Cass for three years. She’s private, she’s awkward around strangers, fine. I expected that.” Fallon rubbed the back of her neck. “But the glasses, the way she couldn’t even look up when I introduced her. That didn’t feel normal, even for Cass.”

So even Fallon had seen it. Her best friend had watched the same thing and couldn’t explain it either.

“She told me the glasses were precautionary,” Fallon said. “Maybe the migraine was already hitting before she got here.” She was reaching. Ryder could hear it. Trying to make the pieces fit a shape she recognized, and not quite getting there. “I don’t know. Maybe I made a mistake asking her to come.”

That landed harder than he expected. Fallon wasn’t defending Cassandra anymore. She was second-guessing the call, and Fallon didn’t strike him as someone who second-guessed much.

“No, she’ll deliver. I asked too much from her today.” Fallon pulled herself back. Firm now, pushing past it. “She’s saved my life more times than I can count. When she’s behind a screen, Cass is a different person. Trust me on that.”

“Okay.” He damned well hoped it was true because it was his life that depended on it.

“I mean it, Ryder. Give her a chance. I know what it looked like in there. But she came. She didn’t have to, but she came. She wants to help. She wants justice.”

He nodded. Because the alternative was saying what he actually thought, which was that showing up and checking out weren’t the same thing, and whatever Cassandra had done in that room, it sure as hell wasn’t showing up.

But Fallon’s face had something raw in it. She was worried about her friend. That was real, and Ryder wasn’t going to take a shot at it.

“I’ll give her a chance,” he said.

Fallon stood. “I’m going to go check on her. Make sure she’s settling in okay.” She stopped at the door. “We’ll get you set up with her tomorrow. First working session.”

“Looking forward to it.”

Fallon almost laughed. “Liar.” She left.

The door closed. The conference room was empty. The screen still showed the last slide: the Diehls’ faces side by side, and underneath them, the operational summary in clean bullet points.

Ryder looked at those faces and let the weight settle.

He’d shared meals with these men. Talked shop in the easy shorthand of people who operated in the same ugly world. They’d liked him. Or Arlo had. Heath had respected his work without fully trusting him, which meant Heath was the smarter brother.

Now they were moving children. And Ryder was going back into that world. The world he wasn’t sure his mind had ever fully left.