Page 56 of Sullied Saints

"Right." I clear my throat. "You’re going to take us to where you think—"

"Know," he interjects.

I sigh through my nose. "Where Cassandra is hiding out. And then… we arrest her. Dirk has had a meeting with Syr. Not on TV this time. Syr Evan has got most of the news media in his pocket. None of them want to cross him. If they do see anything—which the hope is they won’t since we’ll be in and out—they should delay the story by a day or two. Long enough for it to be resolved and hopefully avoid the National Guard deciding it’s time to step in."

"That simple."

I hold his eye. "As long as you stick to our plan. No surprises."

Raising his hands as though in surrender, Needler promises, "I'm on your side."

The curve of his lips isn’t super reassuring. Is it mere mischief? Or something more deviant?

I should go. There are other things I need to be doing, preparing. Even with Tawill turning a blind eye, the debriefs on a move like this are endless. The possibilities all need to be considered. It’s dangerous. Possibly fatal.

"Something else, detective?" Tristan asks when I hesitate.

My jaw works. “Will you hurt Dirk?”

He huffs a laugh. “Eleanor, come on.”

“I need to ask.”

“I’m not going to attack your new boyfriend, no.” When I only stare back at him, Tristan spreads his hands, pointing out, “I saved the guy's life!”

“Yes, before he and I…”

"Have you ever known me to kill someone who didn't deserve it?" he cuts me off.

"The fact remains you are a killer." I bite my lip. Maybe he's telling the truth. What choice do I have but to believe it? Perhaps he doesn't care enough. I shouldn’t ask this, but I do anyway. "What was I, to you?"

Tristan tilts his head, seeming to see the deeper meaning of the question. "You were someone held back by a false past. A past I had no small part in.” Meeting my eye, he answers, “For me, you were meaning. Something soft in a hard world."

"But not something to love," I say. Not bitterly, just factually.

He blinks, and I wonder if he's capable of love, with everything he's done, everything he's been through. I no longer think he’s a psychopath. He just happens to be someone good at killing. "Something healing. Something temporary. I think you knew that, too."

Perhaps I did. Perhaps I hadn’t let myself think for long enough about it. In the end, finding out what my husband was hurt just that bit less for my own betrayal of his memory. Maybe I couldn’t have taken it otherwise, and finding out would have been a hole I never crawled out of.

In the end, being with Needler allowed me to heal, to feel again. Nonetheless, I'm not sure whether his words hurt or reassure me. My nod is almost imperceptible, accepting.

Tristan gives me a wan smile. “I never expected to have you forever, Eleanor. It was enough just to have you.”

***

There’s no armoured truck and body armour for us. It’s late afternoon when Tristan, hands cuffed in front of him, and Dirk and Dean on either side, holding each elbow, is shuffled into a sedan parked near the dumpsters. No sign of protestors out the front of the station today. The place instead has that same eerie quiet it had that day we were raided, making me even more impatient to be behind the wheel and getting the hell away as the sun heads for the horizon.

Putting Needler in the middle, Dirk and Dean crowd him in while I pull out, Howie beside me. We’re all plainclothes, though with bulletproof vests hidden under our sweaters, and each with our issued gun on our hip. We’re going into enemy territory, and all we know to expect is that Cassandra won’t be alone.

To no one’s surprise, Needler directs us toward Crennick, and as I follow his instructions, this odd little excursion feels almost like a road trip. The five people in this car are the only ones who know the details of tonight’s mission. To tell anyone else would risk it getting back to Cassandra, or the streets. It’s a job better suited to some kind of special ops riot team, but Tristan informed us in no uncertain manner that she’d never let them near her. So, it can’t be specialists, and we can’t very well send colleagues in our place. It must be us. She knows us, still wants Dirk and probably me too. The ones who got away. So as fucked as it is, we’re the best shot. And we’ve got to make it count.

The car is quiet, even the radio switched off. Outside, the silence extends, the streets apprehensive in their emptiness. What other cars that slink around the city are doing so with a sense of caution, turning into side streets, avoiding the main roads. Almost like the National Guard has already rolled its tanks through, like the city is already dead. But it’s not. Tonight, Tregam is just playing dead. Waiting.

My knuckles whiten on the steering wheel. “It’s too damned quiet. I don’t like it. I can feel them watching.”

“They’re here, alright,” Dirk notes, gazing up towards a skyscraper as I stop for what feels like an eternity at a red light. I don’t know what he sees, and I’m already too unsettled to ask.

“The minute the people get wind of where we're going, they’ll be there in numbers,” Howie reminds us. “We’re not the only ones to know something has to happen tonight.” The last night before Cassandra’s next planned kill. Everyone knows it’s desperate times. They’re waiting for our desperate measures.

---