Ruby’s teeth ground against each other, instinct fighting training. So much time learning how to identify manipulators and still, it wasn’t enough to be completely immune to it. She also knew she couldn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction.

“My name is already etched in the history books,” Vallejo said, “and who’s to say there are no more chapters?”

“I suspect the consecutive life sentences,” Ruby replied dryly. That was what putting him away meant. It stopped him in his tracks. If only she’d managed it before his iconic thirteenth kill. He’d circled back to his beginnings before she could stop him.

“Don’t think you’re safe just because you gave me room and board here, Ruby,” Vallejo warned. “There are still consequences for interfering with my legacy. Or maybe you’re part of it. We’ll let the biographers decide.”

That may have been the closest she could get to a confession. Interfering, implication of a reach beyond the prison? What more could she reasonably ask for? It could have been his pride talking, but Ruby couldn’t make herself believe in a bluff. Vallejo may have been high on himself; it seemed… below him to take credit where it wasn’t due. Lying wasn’t a scare tactic he leaned on.

“I’m sure they have a lot to say about destinies intertwined,” Ruby replied. “Until then, I’ll just keep your gospel in my notes.”

She stood. Looking down on him did not give her innate power. What Ruby could do was silence him, and all the miscreants that took his actions as sacrament. She memorized his face. In the years to come, she would watch him wither away in the rat maze that was Boone Correctional.

She turned her back on him, rapping against the door for the guard, listening as it unlocked and opened for her.

“Just ask yourself, Ruby… Could you survive another incident like Agent Carnes? You must have a new partner by now. They wouldn’t make you work all alone, would they?”

Ruby didn’t turn back, refusing to look at him in case her expression was too apparent on her face. Even she couldn’t hide her reaction completely, not when he said Asher’s name like that.

“Don’t cast your pearls before swine, Ruby,” Vallejo called after her. “What we have is much too precious to share with an agent who won’t even show his face here.”

She let the door close behind her without looking back.

It was a good thing Gabe didn’t come, but not for the reasons Vallejo implied.

*

Alone, on the hauntingly empty road home, the bordering trees had the effect of a fairytale.