The interior is no better. Takeout containers, water bottles, and what might be a petrified french fry skid back and forth every time Frank takes a turn. There aren’t even real seats in the back, just a turned-over milk crate that creaks with my every shift. My ass stopped having blood flow three blocks ago.
He pulls up to Departures and brakes like he’s docking a submarine. He stops at the very beginning of the curb, the place normal people avoid because it pisses off airport security. Naturally, Frank is obtuseand incredibly paranoid. Glancing around, his beady eyes blinking fast behind his ultra-thick glasses.
“You first,” he says to Saint.
She meets my eyes. The braids transform her. She looks… average. Normal. Like any other traveler with a carry-on, a flight to catch, and absolutely no plans to commit felonies before lunch. It’s disorienting.
And, yeah. I hate it.
She hoists her bag, says nothing, and steps out.
The van door slams behind her, cutting the sound of rolling luggage and airport chatter into a neat, muffled clip.
I shift forward, climbing to the passenger seat, gun case on the floor between us. Frank rolls down his window and coasts toward the far end of the terminal.
When he finally stops, he turns to me. No speeches. No macho farewell.
Frank just nods like he’s sending me into mild inconvenience instead of potential death.
I take his hand, grip firm. “Thanks,” I tell him. “For everything.”
He nods again, eyes steady, then pulls away. That’s about as much sentiment as you’ll get from Frank. I watch him drive away only a second, wondering what he does with that van. But knowing his diet, it’s best not to give these things too much thought.
I sling the gun case at my side and set off toward the sliding doors, merging into the current of unapologetically stressed-out travelers.
Up next: security.
My personal favorite place to test how much anxiety a human body can hold before spontaneous combustion.
Saint is about fifteen people ahead of me in the security line, already chewing one piece of pink gum and unwrapping a second.
Great.
Fantastic.
Phenomenal.
She only double-gums when she expects a fight.
Saint has this sixth sense, like an internal barometer that measures incoming chaos. And the gum? It’s her meditation bead. Her rosary. The thing that centers her right before she unleashes absolute devastation with nothing more than a pocketknife and spite.
The line moves at a decent clip for airport security, but not fast enough to keep my skin from crawling. I know how to blend in. I’ve spent the last two years of exile doing exactly that, becoming wallpaper everywhere I go. But this is different.
Because it’s not just me on this mission.
And blending in becomes a goddamn performance when your brain won’t stop calculating every threat she might walk into.
I force myself into the mindset of a normal traveler. Irritated. Sleep-deprived. Mildly homicidal toward airline baggage fees.
Not someone scanning for a Guild of assassins crouched behind a stranger’s carry-on.
Saint reaches the front. Her fake ID scans clean. She breezes through like she hasn’t murdered a few hundred people.
She moves to the conveyor belts, dropping itemsinto the bins with bored efficiency.
I peel off to a different guard several booths down, then a different scanner entirely.
I’m not worried about the carry-ons. Our tech’s good enough that the scanners see whatever we want them to see. Cute little TSA-compliant silhouettes. Probably socks and a travel-sized shampoo bottle in Saint’s backpack. Nothing fun.
