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One-on-one with Ryder. Who had watched her bomb that briefing along with everyone else in the room.

Except it was only his negative opinion that made her want to crawl under the woodwork.

“Fallon…”

“If you get another migraine, you take your meds and we adjust the schedule.” Fallon’s voice softened. “This isn’t a test, Cass. It’s you doing the thing you’re best at for one person who needs your help. And once he gets that data out, you’re the one who makes sense of it. Nobody else can do what you do with patterns.”

Yeah, she was amazing with patterns…behind a screen, with data, finding the connections nobody else could see. If only her mind wouldn’t also try to find all the patterns with every stranger she came across.

But that didn’t matter. They were on a deadline, and she needed to make sure Ryder could do this. If he got hurt or worse, she’d never forgive herself.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll stay.”

Fallon exhaled. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. I’m going to make his life miserable learning everything he has to in his short amount of time.”

Fallon grinned. “As long as he learns it, makes it out alive, and we take these bastards down, you can make his life as miserable as you want to.”

Cassandra smiled. Somehow she didn’t think Ryder was going to feel the same way.

Fallon stood. “Make this place yours, Cass. The apartment, the lab. Bring your music, your coffee, set it up however you work best. The lab is yours starting tonight.”

She stopped at the door. “I know today was rough. I’m sorry I put you in that room. But I’m glad you’re here.”

Then she was gone.

Cassandra stood in the middle of the apartment and looked at the bag on the bed. Then she unzipped it and started putting things back. Clothes in the drawer. Toiletries in the bathroom. Pharmacy bag on the nightstand, where she could reach it without opening her eyes.

Then she sat down at the desk, opened her laptop, and pulled up everything Fallon had sent her about the Diehl brothers. She’d head to the lab in a few minutes.

Private security consultant. That was the cover. A man who’d been doing corporate work and wanted back in.

She needed employment history, client references, a trail of contracts and invoices that looked like they’d accumulated over years rather than been fabricated in a week. She needed social media that existed but wasn’t trying too hard. She needed a phone number that would ring somewhere convincing if the Diehls called it.

This, she knew how to do.

Chapter 6

The computer facility had pretty much been gutted for her.

Ryder stood in the doorway and took it in. Normally in a lab this size, there would be six workstations designed for a full team, but…nope. Everyone else had been cleaned out, and every surface had been rearranged.

Desks shoved together, monitors clustered, cables rerouted across the floor. A whole shared workspace, cleared out and rebuilt around one person.

Looked like it was the Cassandra show. Again.

Although, granted, he saw multiple empty coffee cups on two of the surfaces, and every screen in the cluster was lit with work on it. Not screensavers, not idle displays. Open files. Active windows.

Cassandra was sitting in the center of all of it. No dark glasses this time. This was the first time he’d seen her in person without them, and when she glanced up at the door, something hit him square in the chest that he wasn’t prepared for.

Those eyes. He’d seen them on a screen three months ago, and they’d knocked him stupid at that point too. Today was no different.

Then the rest registered.

Those eyes were red-rimmed, bloodshot. She’d been in this lab for a long time. Possibly all night.

He tried to make all the pieces of Cassandra fit together. The woman who couldn’t be bothered to look up during a briefing about missing kids yesterday now had three monitors in front of her, files open on all of them. And whatever else he thought about this woman, she’d apparently spent the night building his cover instead of sleeping.