Chapter 6
Saint sits across from me, eyes still bright from the chase. She hasn’t touched the sandwich. The coffee sits untouched too. No surprise. She probably thinks both are poisoned.
I wouldn’t blame her. If our roles were reversed, I be suspicious.
Forty-eight hours. That’s all the time I had.
Two days since my broker whispered that the Guild planned to sacrifice her the way they tried to sacrifice me.
And in those two days, I had to find her—never easy, especially when she doesn’t want to be found—shadow her through the job that would mark her as an exile, and slip a tracker onto the bumper of the car she stole so I’d know where she dumped last night’s corpse.
Then came the waiting.
Sitting in the hotel room across from hers while the Guild put a hit out on their golden girl.
Five assassins came for her; five ended up in my room instead.
My broker’s switch in the reservation system worked perfectly.
Busy night at my door. Bloody, too. The double queen beds are buried under bodies now, stacked neatly.
When her Guild app finally woke her up and betrayed her, my broker’s device was already planted in her room, piggybacking off her network access. The text came seconds later: She’s up.
I left two minutes before she did. Had to deal with one last assassin in the hallway. No time to hide the body, so I propped the old man in a chair like any other drunk who’d passed out where he stood. The cleaning staff is in for a memorable morning.
Now she’s here. In front of me. All fire and heat, exactly as she’s always been. That soft floral scent mixed with worn leather hits me like a ghost of a life I used to be a part of.
She hasn’t changed.
Except she has—she’s better at hiding her tells.
I don’t even see the shift in her expression before her fist cracks into my nose.
“Fucking Christ, Saint,” I growl, grabbing a napkin and pressing it to my face before blood gets everywhere.
She finally picks up the coffee depositing her pink gum to the edge of her plate. She takes a slow sip. A bite of the sandwich. Apparently she’s decided I’m not here to kill her.
Her gaze lifts, sharp and bored at the same time.
“You’ve wasted a minute staring at me,” she says. “You’re down to four now, so I’d get to the point.”
Mi Pícarita*. Always impatient.
And I do have a point.
Just not one she’s ready to hear.
I lean back in the seat, napkin still pressed to my nose, and watch her eyes. Hungry. Suspicious. Running on instinct and caffeine fumes.
“I’m here to propose a truce. To be partners.”
She snorts. “In what universe?”
“In this one,” I say. “The only one we get.”
Her jaw ticks. She hates when I talk like that—quiet, certain, as if the truth is something I decide.
“I don’t partner with traitors,” she says.
“And I apparently don’t exist anymore,” I counter. “Yet here we are.”
Her gaze flickers, a crack in the mask. She doesn’t want to think about the day two years ago that is so eerily similar to her reality today.
It’s still too new for her to feel real yet.
“You’re an exile, Alejandro. The Guild burned your file and salted the earth.”
I let out a soft huff. “And now they’re doing the same to you. Welcome to the other side.”
Her fingers curl around the coffee cup like she’s imagining strangling it. Or me.
“You expect me to believe you?” she asks, taking another bite. “After the stunt you pulled two years ago? After you vanished?”
Vanished. That’s one word for it.
Exiled is the one the Guild prefers.
Framed is the one that ruined us.
I study her face—the tightness around her eyes, the grief she refuses to look at. She isn’t asking for truth. She’s asking if she’s a fool for still wanting it.
“Believe what you want,” I say quietly. “But the reason I disappeared is the same reason you’re sitting across from me now.”
She tries to hide the flinch. Fails.
“Don’t,” she whispers. “Don’t pretend we’re the same.”
“We are the same,” I murmur. “We were framed. Both of us. Different jobs. Same architect.”
She goes still. No breath, no blink.
There it is.
The shock. The cut. The crack. She can’t deny there could be truth to it.
But she recovers fast—always faster than I expect.
“If you know who set me up,” she says, “say it.”
“I will,” I tell her. “When you agree to work with me.”
She scoffs. “You’re unbelievable.”
“I know.” I drop the napkin, test my nose and it’s not bleeding anymore. “But I’m also right.”
She narrows her eyes. “You’re stalling.”
“I’m negotiating.”
“You’re hiding something.”
“So are you,” I say. “But it doesn’t matter. We have a common enemy. The Guild wants us both dead.”
Her laugh is humorless. “You think that earns you trust?”
“No.” I lean forward, lowering my voice. “But it earns me five minutes of your time. And I plan to use them well.”
“I don’t believe the Guild did this.” Her gaze is a wildfire held behind glass. Dangerous. Beautiful.
Exactly as I remember.
“Then you are naive, Saint James. And naivety won’t survive a single night.”
I wait for the refusal. The insult. The knife.
Instead, she stands up and walks away. “You have two minutes left.”
Same old Saint. Always making me work for it.
I follow her down the length of the train, and, as always, the world moves for her. People take one look and part like tide around rock. When I come through, they suddenly forget how to step aside. I shoulder past a businessman who huffs. Pathetic.
Saint doesn’t slow. Her hand lifts occasionally as she sips the coffee I brought—tiny, cautious tastes, like she’s still debating whether I poisoned it. Eventually, she drops the rest in a trash can.
“So what is this?” she calls, not bothering to face me. “You hovering behind me until I get sentimental?”
“It worked once.”
“It didn’t.”
“A little,” I say.
She reaches the final car, the one that houses the secondary conductor cabin. Dark. Locked. And absolutely not meant for passengers.
Saint inspects the lock as she pulls out that ridiculous pocket knife she refuses to stop carrying. Stainless steel, worn handle, multi-purpose attachment she sharpened herself. I lean against the opposite wall, arms folded.
“You are still using that?” I ask, letting the disbelief coat every syllable. “You know they make real tools now.”
She doesn’t look up as the lock clicks open. “Some of us don’t have to overcompensate with a sniper rifle the length of a small car.”
I step behind her, close enough for my shadow to swallow hers. “You know damn well I don’t overcompensate for anything, Pícarita.”
She gives an eye roll so exaggerated it might qualify as choreography. “Everything with a Y chromosome says that.”
She slips into the conductor cabin. Wind hums faintly around the sealed window as she starts working the rubber lining free—methodical, efficient, silent. I stay close, because I know she’ll let me talk as long as my words don’t evoke my earlier agreement to having my throat slit.
“We can work together,” I say.
“No,” she says immediately.
“You didn’t even hear the offer.”
“You didn’t give one.”
“Yet.”
She tightens a strap on her pack. Another around her waist. Another across her chest. All silent preparations for a plan she clearly finalized long before I sat across from her with breakfast she didn’t trust.
I try again. “We share an enemy.”
“We share nothing.”
“You’re an exile now,” I say softly. “Just like me.”
She goes still for half a second. Then: “Who set you up?”
Direct. Precise. The same way she kills.
I say nothing, keeping my eyes fixed on hers and the silence becomes heavier around us.
She nods once, resigned. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
Her hands flex around the window frame. “Well… time’s up.”
Her heel snaps back like a piston.
Saint’s kick hits the exact pressure point along the frame, and the entire reinforced pane rips free in a single slab. It tears out of the housing with a deafening metallic crack and gets sucked backward into the slipstream.
Wind detonates through the cabin, slamming into me hard enough to steal my breath. The pane hits the tracks behind us—barely visible before it disintegrates under the train’s speed, pulverized into sparkling debris the wheels chew to dust.
Sensors scream. The brakes seize in rapid, angry pulses as the system registers the catastrophic breach.
I throw an arm up to shield my face but Saint doesn’t flinch.
She gives me a casual little salute—the kind that says she’s enjoying this more than she should—steps to the edge and grabs the cord hiding within the panel of her backpack.
“Hasta luego*, Alejandro.”
The parachute deploys instantly, ripping her out of the train in a blur of black fabric, wild hair, and absolute refusal to stay anywhere I want her to.
“Fuck—”
Two years without a trace, and now I’ve had her within arm’s reach for less than five minutes before she hurls herself back into the void.
She hasn’t changed.
Not the danger or the audacity.
The train begins to slow, hazard alarms pulsing through the cabin, but it won’t matter. I know exactly where she’s going. I knew the second she headed for the train station.
My pulse steadies. The hit from seeing her—alive, furious, close enough to touch—is still there, vibrating under my skin, but I clamp down on it. Later.
Right now, there’s work to do.
I pull out my phone and dial.
My broker answers on the first ring. “Did it go well?”
“Blow the tracks in ten seconds,” I say.
On the other end of the line there is a half a huff disguising an amused chuckle. “Guess not.”
* my little troublemaker
* See you later