Page 93 of Code Name: Scorpio

“Hey.” Fallon glanced her way but barely slowed. “Can it wait? I’ve got positioning updates from Isaac, and the comm frequencies still aren’t⁠—”

“Where’s Ryder?”

Fallon stopped. Looked at her. Really looked at her.

“Why?”

“Because I need to talk to him.”

Something shifted in Fallon’s expression. She didn’t say it—didn’t say I told you so or bring up the conversation about Isaac or any of the things Cassandra could see her choosing not to say.

So Cassandra said it for her. “You were right, okay? I’ve been an idiot. I want him. I want to talk to him. Do you know where he is?”

Fallon’s mouth twitched. “Isaac says he’s been spending every free minute in the gym, working out and training like a crazy person. Practically living there.” She paused. “I don’t know what that’s about.”

Cassandra did. He was hiding in his own way, the same as she had been hiding in hers.

“The gym is down the⁠—”

“I know where it is.” She was already moving.

“Cass.” Fallon’s voice caught her. She turned back. “Good for you. Good for you both.”

Cassandra turned the corner and headed for the gym.

She heard him before she saw him. The steady, rhythmic impact of fists on a heavy bag, a sound that had been going on long enough to become mechanical.

She stopped in the doorway.

He was alone. Shirtless, squared up against the bag, driving combinations into it with the kind of form that said he’d been doing this sort of training for years. Sweat ran down his back, and his shoulders were locked tight with tension that hadn’t released in hours.

He didn’t know she was there.

She stepped inside the room and watched him. Every hit landed in the same place: center mass, controlled and precise. His breathing was forced into rhythm, even though everything else about him said he’d passed the point of discipline a long time ago.

It went on, hit after hit, the pace accelerating, his breathing becoming more labored. Finally, he stopped, caught the bag with both hands, and held it still, his head dropping forward, his chest heaving.

He stood like that for a long moment, just breathing. Then he looked down at his gloves. Flexed his fingers inside them. She watched something cross his face—not anger, not frustration, something closer to contempt—and he ripped the Velcro open with his teeth and stripped them off, one then the other, and dropped them on the floor.

He looked at his bare hands. Opened and closed them once. Then he squared up to the bag and hit it.

Again. And again.

The sound was different without the gloves. Sharper. She watched him drive his fists into the leather without mercy. He didn’t stop even when his knuckles split. He hit it again and blood smeared across the surface, and he kept going, jaw set, eyes fixed on something that wasn’t the bag.

He wasn’t training. He was punishing himself, and he’d taken off the gloves to make sure he felt it.

She instantly understood what Ian had been trying to tell her. Ryder wasn’t the interrogator he used to be—but he couldn’t forgive himself for having been that person.

He was someone who couldn’t see the good in himself.

He’d been so careful with her in that lodge. Had taken a situation that was practically impossible and had made her feel safe. And then when she’d found out about his past, she’d let it erase everything she’d seen with her own eyes.

He hit the bag again.

“Ryder. Stop this.”

His hands stopped. He caught the bag and held it still, his back to her, his breathing rough. Then slowly he turned around.