Chapter 8
“Saint, what the hell—” I snap the moment the fresh corpse hits the back seat.
She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even look at me. She just climbs over the bench seat with the grace of a cat burglar and slides into the passenger side as if we aren’t being hunted through the forest.
Seatbelt on.
Posture relaxed.
Expression bored.
“What? You’ve never seen a dead body before?”
She opens two pieces of pink gum and pops them both in her mouth with a sly grin. And yes, I fucking look at that mouth before turning back to the… lack of road.
A sniper round punches into the trunk, reminding me we’re not.
“Puta madre*…” I mutter, jerking the wheel as the car fishtails across uneven terrain. Roots, rocks, dips—this forest hates cars almost as much as it hates assassins. “Me cago en todo lo que se mueve…”*
But we’re close.
Just ahead is a narrow maintenance road, and beyond that, a highway entrance where I can lose the riffraff behind us.
The car bucks hard as we hit a patch of exposed roots. Saint barely reacts—just reaches up to adjust the elastic band around her hair like the force of impact personally offended her styling choices.
I’m weaving between trees, scanning for the road, when a second vehicle barrels up beside us, matching our speed. I risk a quick glance.
“Ah, hijo de puta*… you’ve got to be kidding me.”
La Cucaracha*.
The Guild’s most irritatingly persistent assassin. You could drop a building on him, and he’d crawl out asking for a raise.
His window rolls down.
He grins at me—big, stupid, toothy grin—like we’re old buddies catching up at a reunion.
His gun rises.
I shout over the engine, “Long time no see, Cucarach—”
A silver blur slices past me.
Saint’s dagger.
It buries itself dead-center between his eyes. His grin freezes, drops. The gun slips from his hand. His foot slams down on the accelerator as his head snaps back.
The entire car veers left—straight into a tree.
Full speed.
Metal crunches. Glass shatters. The impact echoes through the canopy.
I blink once. “Rude much? I didn’t even get to say hello.”
Saint pops a big pink bubble of gum, lets it snap loud enough to sting my pride, and says, “Pretty sure his last thought was relief he didn’t have to hear your voice again.”
I open my mouth. Close it.
She does that to me—drops a casual insult like a grenade and strolls away from the explosion.
The passenger side smacks into a dip, and she’s yanked halfway out of her seat before bouncing back in. She doesn’t swear. Doesn’t gasp. Just adjusts a curl behind her ear.
“Driving like this… must be exhausting for you,” she says. “All that effort. Just to stay average.”
I choke on air. “Average? ?Qué cono estás diciendo?*”
I slide us onto the maintenance road, tires spraying gravel. As soon as I try to form a rebuttal bullet punches into the rear windshield. Both of us duck.
She’s out her window a heartbeat later, balanced like a gymnast in a gunfight. One clean shot and she hits the front tire of the nearest car.
It fishtails, spins sideways, and rolls—slamming into two others in a spectacular pileup.
A fireball shoots up like the forest is competing in an action-movie audition.
“Subtle,” I mutter.
“My specialty,” she boasts, settling back into her seat like she isn’t a menace.
The highway appears ahead, a concrete salvation. I put the pedal down, engine snarling as we rocket toward it. I check the mirror every other second, watching for followers, while Saint props her foot on the dash and twirls a piece of her curly hair like we’re out for Sunday brunch.
I hate how good she looks doing that.
A break in the median appears. I angle toward it. Just as we pass, I slam the brakes. Saint lurches forward, hands slapping the dash to brace herself.
The dead guy in the back rolls off the seat with a thud.
“Hold on tight,” I warn.
I shift into reverse, throw an arm across the back of her seat to brace myself, and gun it backward through the median and onto the opposite side of the highway.
“You threw my friend on the floor,” she says flatly.
I grin. “Somehow, I think he’d be more pissed about you throwing him out a window than me tossing him onto the floorboard of our getaway car.”
Her eyes narrow and my smirk widens.
Now she knows that I tailed her last night.
Dios*, I love irritating her. It lights her up in ways bullets never could.
“You’re driving the wrong direction,” she says.
Like I don’t fucking know I’m reversing at top speed, dodging confused commuters who have no idea an international kill squad is right behind us.
Once I clear the densest pack of cars, I slam the brakes again and yank the wheel. We spin. Fast. Clean. A perfect arc.
At the exact moment the nose of the car swings forward, I hit the gas.
We lurch, straighten, and tear down the highway—now pointed in the right direction and leaving a chorus of honking cars and bewildered drivers behind us.
I keep the pace up until the last shadow drops off the mirror. No headlights. No engines. No crawl of movement along the tree line.
Finally, I ease off the gas.
“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-first into 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.”
A humorless laugh escapes me.
“And the next day he stands in front of cameras and blames his opponent for trying to kill him. It worked. He won.”
Saint’s silence sharpens the air.
“If I wanted him dead,” I continue, “he would be. You know that. We both do. This was something else. Something coordinated. Something bigger.” I glance at her. “Two countries were on the brink of war. He stopped it. But imagine if they’d succeeded in killing him that night.”
Her eyes narrow. “War would’ve been immediate.”
“Yes.” My fingers tighten on the wheel. “Lots of profit in selling wars.”
She shifts slightly, posture still relaxed but attention razor-edged. “So, you think someone was orchestrating conflict. Placing politicians where they need them. Manipulating global pressure points.”
“Not someone,” I say.
My throat works once.
“The one.”
She stiffens like she’s daring me not to say it.
I say it anyway.
“The Guildmaster.”
* Motherfucker
* “I swear to God, everything is fucked.”
* You son of a bitch
* The Cockroach
* What the hell are you saying?
* God, I love irritating her.