Page 127 of Slack Tide Kill

Sally stopped. She didn't turn. It was tempting, but… "No. I don't want revenge. I made my bed. Now I'm going to lie in it."

She kept walking.

"What if you don't have to?"

That stopped her again. She looked back. Brown hadn't moved. "Not possible."

"Oh, it's possible." Brown took a step closer. "There's always an angle. Did you never wonder why I withheld our encounter in Rye?"

Sally's hands tightened into fists in her pockets. "So this is a shakedown? I've got nothing for you, Tania. If that means you burn what's left of me down, knock yourself out."

"Is it my turn, now?" Brown asked, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a small black object. Rectangular, a square patch glinting silver in the streetlight. "This is the only record of our argument in Rye. I swear." She pulled her arm back and hurled the device out into the Thames.

Sally watched, but it was too dark, the drive too small to track, though she'd glimpsed the item spinning through the light. It only confused her further.

"What the hell is going on here?"

"I'm not here to tear you down," Brown said. "If anything, I'm here to build you up. I think it'll play broad, since we're the paper that tried so hard to break you last time."

"What are you talking about?"

Brown held up her fist. "There's two things that drive clicks and engagement more than anything, Sally. Can I call you Sally? First, tragedy." Her index finger shot up. "The fall from grace. Scandal. Trauma. And your story had it all. Horror. Gore. Death. Cowardice. The lot."

"I'm leaving," Sally said, but didn't budge. She was transfixed, now.

"You want to take a guess what the second thing is?"

"I don't know, Tania. A failed attempt at redemption? You want to make me a martyr?"

Brown smiled. "Simpler than that. It's small boats."

Sally blinked. "What?"

"Small boat immigration on the south coast. There is nothing that riles people up more. Clicks come in their millions every time we run a piece."

Sally tried to put those pieces together. How was that relevant to her? Then the focus sharpened. The pieces began to click together. "You're talking about the Rooks?"

Brown snapped her fingers. "Precisely. The Rook brothers are traitors to this country. They worked with the small boat gangs, making a mockery of our sovereignty. That kind of betrayal, good old local boys getting smashed to bits by an American FBI agent in search of her redemption arc? Well." She sighed happily. "I couldn't fabricate anything hotter."

Sally just stared, still trying to make sense of this moment, whatever this 'offer' really was, outside her apartment in the dead of night.

"Take all the Rook nonsense, you fighting them in the mud, smashing your car into them, then spice it with the Louisiana massacre and the fact you dragged your partner off a bomb boat while your DCI was trying to pepper-spray you? Hell, we've got a blockbuster that will drive the news cycle all week, saving your career in the process and maybe even keeping you on the case."

Sally tried to swallow all that. It was crazy. Maybe, on some level, it began to make sense.

"It's not a teardown," she said. "You want me as a hero."

"The ass-kicking American who gets things done, rules be damned. Our readers will gobble it up. The British state, even British policing, has become sclerotic. Hamstrung, bounded, afraid. You're a breath of fresh air, and I'm going to make them love you."

"Love me?"

"You're the star player. A wild card, a maverick who plays fast and loose with the law, but someone they can believe in." Her expression took on a cold hard aspect. "Break a few eggs to get there, and they will only love you more. That's realpolitik. That's authentic. That's you."

Sally's voice came out hard and cold. "Emily Chakrati was not an egg."

Brown waved her hands. "Semantics, sweetie. Don't focus on the glass half full. The reality is, you slapped the shit out of the Rook boys for days, and that will sell papers and make shitcanning you impossible."

Sally gave nothing. "You heard Deputy McMaster gave me an ultimatum?"