“I think we lost them,” I say, letting the car settle out of its fight-or-die tension. The engine’s growl softens into something like normal.
Saint immediately adjusts her foot on the dash and starts flipping through radio stations like we didn’t just outrun a firing squad. Static, more static, then some over-sweet pop song she leaves on purely to annoy me. Probably succeeding.
I let her have five seconds of quiet before I ask:
“So. My proposal.”
Her head tilts. Barely. A predator’s disinterest.
“What do you think? A truce? Partners? At least until we stop being target practice?”
She flicks the radio volume down a notch.
“Details.”
Of course. She’d ask for the one thing I can’t just hand over. I filter what I can give her through what I refuse to—sorting truths, half-truths, and the pieces that will get both of us killed if I say them out loud.
“If you think you were set up,” she says, “you must have a theory.”
I snort. “If?Like it’s optional? Like I should consider the possibility I tripped and fell face-firstinto treason?”
She gives the smallest shrug. “Stranger things have happened.”
“No,” I say. “This wasn’t an accident. I was there as a favor to a friend. A guard. Nothing more. I’m the reason he’s still alive today. I certainly didn’t try to kill him.”
“Convenient.” Her tone cuts the air like a wire.
“I don’t poison people,” I snap. “It’s too close for me. I like distance.”
She doesn’t respond—not verbally.
Instead, her head turns toward the window.
That tiny movement lands like a knife under my ribs.
Distance.
Her specialty.
Her shield.
And the exact thing that destroyed us.
Once, we were lovers.
Or something just shy of admitting it.
Neither of us willing to name it.
Neither of us willing to say what it was turning into.
Until it ended with one night that broke everything.
She exhales slowly. “Or maybe your plan didn’t work, so you stayed close to salvage it. Finish the job later.”
Of course she’d twist the blade.
“It was a politician,” I say. “Up for re-election. A state dinner. On the ride home, he started suffocating. Lips blackening. Collapsing in his limo.” I shake my head. “I almost didn’t save him. Shouldn’t have. He was touch and go all night, but the bastard refused to die.”
