by Kris Delake
Skye frowned. She’d never heard an assassin have a conversation like this, but then, maybe Liora was playing a role to get close to this guy. Although why she would need role-playing was beyond Skye. If this guy was the target, he’d be pretty easy to take out.
Maybe he was supposed to lead her to the target.
“There are things about this job that make it difficult,” Liora said.
Skye twirled the straw in her fizzy drink, keeping her head down, but listening closely. She had no idea what was going on, but she didn’t like it.
“You are the third in line,” Liora said. “I’ll reserve your time, but there’s a good chance that we won’t need your services at all.”
“I find it ironic that you’re even talking to me,” the guy said.
“If you don’t want the work—”
“Oh, it’s interesting,” he said. “I’m all in. My team is all in. Just let us know when you need us.”
“If we need you,” Liora said. “Give me an account to send the information. I’d rather not discuss the rest of this in person.”
The man chuckled. “And here I thought sending it would be dicier.”
“No one will know who the job came from except you,” Liora said. “And the payment will go through so many accounts that even the best accountant couldn’t track it.”
Skye felt cold. What was going on? She wanted to turn around and just ask, but knew better. In fact, she really had to make sure Liora didn’t see her at all, because there was something very, very wrong here.
“It’s not my neck,” the guy said. “Everyone already thinks I’m a criminal. But you, you’re Assassins Guild. You have light and right on your side.”
“Or I will when this is done,” Liora said. “I’ll send everything to you.”
“I’ll be waiting with bated breath,” he said.
“Whatever that means.”
A movement caught Skye’s eye, and she bowed her head. Liora was leaving the table. Skye leaned forward just a little so she could see around the obese man.
Liora didn’t look back. She headed out of the bar as if nothing had happened.
Skye resisted the urge to glance at the guy Liora had met. Skye already had a good image of him, and would track down who he was when she had a private net connection. She didn’t want to try looking up anything in a place this public.
She sat for just a moment, wondering if she should follow Liora. Skye had other work she needed to do—an entire list of people she should be vetting for the Guild—but lately a lot of strange behavior had surfaced while she worked other jobs, behavior involving the Guild, behavior she didn’t understand.
And because she didn’t understand it, she investigated. Unlike so many of her colleagues, she didn’t care if something happened to the Guild. In fact, she rather hoped it would.
That way, she could get out sooner.
Or maybe, just maybe, the right information might free her. And maybe Liora would lead her to that information, whatever the hell it was.
Chapter 8
Jack stood outside the small fence that enclosed the Starcatcher’s open-air section. He felt shaken. He didn’t usually feel shaken. Tired, yes, or maybe even unsettled, but shaken was new. Or old.
He hadn’t felt shaken since he was twelve. A horrible young couple had promised him they would adopt him, and then turned around and adopted another boy in Tranquility House. That boy, the staff had told Jack, was better behaved, smarter, and just plain nicer.
Jack hadn’t talked to anyone for days. He felt like his entire world had fallen apart.
And, oddly, he had felt like that since he left Skye.
That coldness in her eyes as he got dressed reminded him of the couple. They had seemed so loving at first, and then they had rejected him.
He knew he was reacting out of an old, old place, and Skye hadn’t rejected him at all. She had told him, right from the start, what she expected—and he had agreed to that expectation.
The fact that the entire incident had disturbed him was about him, not her. And about his damn heart.
He hadn’t realized how very vulnerable it was.
He scanned the open-air section of Starcatcher for Rikki Bastogne. She had called this meeting and he had suggested the place, much as she hated it.
She had been his only friend in the early years of Tranquility House. In fact, she was the one who suggested he stop waiting for someone to parent him, and to take care of himself. She had even told him to pick his own last name.
He was glad he would see her today. But it seemed she hadn’t arrived yet. Most of the tables were full, but she wasn’t at any of them.
Neither was Skye, not that he expected to see her again. If she followed her plan, she was probably gone already. His heart ached at the thought.
He had no idea how to find her again, or how she would feel if he did.
He wondered if she had thought the night as special as he had or if she had just led him on.
Not that it mattered. It was one night. He had to remember that, and be grateful for that much. If he hadn’t had last night, he would never have known how spectacular lovemaking could feel.
He took a table near the concourse, and ordered his favorite burger from the robotic server that floated near him. He also got a special soda this time and he would drink it. All of it.
Hell, he might even treat himself to a beer later.
Given the year he’d had so far, he deserved it.
Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Skye. But when he turned, he realized he was looking at a woman who had the same body shape and wedge-cut dark hair. Other than that, she looked nothing like Skye. Her face was hardened, her mouth downturned into a perpetual scowl.
She was a woman he didn’t want to cross, one of the many people on Krell he hoped he would never see again.
The burger arrived. He took a bite, and then saw Rikki make her way down the concourse. Her hair was red instead of its usual rich brown, and she looked a little too thin. Something had shaken her up.
He felt a momentary sense of disappointment. All morning he had been looking forward to confiding in her. But he didn’t think he’d have a chance now.
He hadn’t seen Rikki look this upset since he’d met her. When she first arrived at Tranquility House she had been through such a traumatic experience, she hadn’t talked for weeks. It wasn’t until that night those horrible potential adoptive parents had rejected him that she had said anything, and then it had been to give him advice.
The least he could do was listen to her. After all, she had contacted him. She clearly didn’t need to hear his problems right now.
She grinned when she saw him, then stopped next to the table. She picked up a spoon and rubbed some dirt off it.
“I can’t believe you’re eating here,” she said as she picked up a napkin and wiped off a chair. Then she spread another napkin on the chair itself.
He said, “I can’t believe you’re going to sit on that. I think they wash the napkins less than they wash the chairs.”
She started and for a minute, he thought she was going to shove the chair away. Instead, she turned just a little green.
“Then I’m just going to stand,” she said.
He grinned. He had missed her. She had been his best friend forever, and she still was, no matter what was going on. Their relationship was purely platonic and would always be that way. He thought of her as his sister, not as the beautiful woman she had become.
“Hover,” he said, his mouth full. “You’re just going to hover.”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. You could be a gentleman and give me your jacket to sit on.”
“My jacket has been staying in this hellhole for the past three days, waiting for her ladyship to arrive.” As if that had been all he was doing here. He was still investigating, even though he had enough evidence against the Rovers to… what? That was what he hadn’t yet figured out.
She muttered something, then gave up
and sat down.
They bantered for a few more minutes because that was their routine—that was how they felt comfortable. Then they’d get to the important stuff.
Still, as Rikki bitched about the restaurant and the food, he smiled at her. He had missed her. And he didn’t realize how much he needed a conversation with an old friend until right now.
Chapter 9
Skye stepped out of the bar. She had a few errands to run: she needed to reserve her room again and then she needed to find some kind of private place to check the scruffy guy’s image. Her stomach was a bit queasy from the lemon fizzy thing, or maybe it was the lack of sleep, or maybe the strangeness she had just witnessed.
Liora had taken off down the concourse a few minutes ago, but Skye didn’t want to follow her. Now that she knew Liora was here, she could actually track her, using the Guild system. Generally assassins on the job kept their Guild tracker off or on low, but Liora wasn’t acting like she was on any job at all. So Skye had checked as she stepped out, and saw that Liora hadn’t been thinking about her tracker. The folks at the Guild on Kordita couldn’t track her at the moment, but any assassin within a five-hour radius probably could.
She scanned the concourse for the scruffy guy. He had gone in the opposite direction from the one Liora had taken. Skye could see his back as he made his way through the crowd. He was heading the same way she had to go if she was going to renew that reservation.
She sighed. At least that would give her an opportunity to study him.
Then, because she couldn’t help it, she glanced at the Starcatcher. She wanted to lie to herself, to pretend that she wasn’t looking for Jack, that she was actually thinking of a greasy burger to settle her stomach.
But lying wasn’t going to work. If only she were already free of the Guild. If only her life were her own. She would go to him, and say, Forget what I told you about a single night. Let’s acknowledge that we’re in space. There is no such thing as day and night, and we can make sure our single night lasts for weeks.
She smiled at the thought. Maybe if she saw him again, after she got out. Maybe she would track him, like she tracked so many other people. Maybe she would “accidentally” show up wherever he was, and proposition him all over again.
The very thought reminded her of that spark in his eye when he realized she had propositioned him, a spark that she saw later when he touched her bare skin for the first time.
The memory aroused parts of her that she thought too tired to respond. Then she shook her head at herself.
And in doing so, she caught a glimpse of Jack sitting in the crowded open-air section of the Starcatcher.
She did need lunch. She could do some of her work from the open-air section of the Starcatcher. She could take Jack’s hand and see if he wanted to change his mind—one more real night only—and then, she could collect a few more memories.
After all, she had so very few good ones from the rest of her life, who would blame her if she stored up one or two more?
She took a few steps across the concourse and froze as a buxom redhead talked to Jack. He laughed, and so did she. Then she wiped off a nearby chair with a napkin.
He was clearly inviting the woman—who was drop-dead gorgeous—to sit with him.
Drop-dead gorgeous and in fantastic shape, the kind women got without enhancements, with a lot of physical work. Rather like Skye.
Only unlike Skye, this woman had other unenhanced parts that seemed to come as standard issue for attracting men—the large breasts, the narrow waist, the stunning face. And she looked so comfortable with Jack.
If Skye had to guess—and she rarely had to guess, that internal sense of hers was right so often—she would say that the relationship between these two had something to do with work, and a whole lot more.
They seemed so comfortable with each other.
Skye watched, mesmerized. She should have moved away, stepped out of view, paid attention to her surroundings. But she couldn’t.
The woman sat down, ordered, and then her smile faded. She seemed upset. And that upset seemed to bother Jack.
Not only had they been close once, they still were.
Skye had to concentrate to breathe. She had to remind herself that she had set the rules. A one-time thing. A man who clearly told her he didn’t do that ever. He had been so shy, so uncertain, that she had found it a turn-on.
She had thought him less experienced, not inexperienced, just not quite as comfortable as she was. But what if he had actually had a girlfriend? A wife? A partner? Someone who let him go off with other women because it was hard to maintain a relationship out here, but someone to whom he felt a loyalty.
He had said he didn’t, but men lied when they were being propositioned. And she had already told him it was a one-night thing. Maybe he thought the relationship was none of Skye’s business.
Maybe his uncertainty had nothing to do with his experience, and everything to do with this woman. Maybe, despite an openness (that, granted, Skye was just assuming was there), maybe he felt like he had cheated on the lovely redhead.
Maybe that was why the redhead seemed close to tears.
He reached across the table and put his hand over hers. Then she slipped her fingers through his.
The gesture had a lot of tenderness, on both sides.
The tenderness made Skye’s heart hurt.
She wasn’t jealous. She had nothing to be jealous of. She had no relationship with this man. Just a great night, one she would always treasure.
Or maybe she was jealous, but not of the other woman’s relationship with Jack. Maybe she was just jealous because no one in her entire life had treated her with such tenderness, in a restaurant, in the middle of a conversation.
Or anywhere. No one had touched her out of love, not even her parents, who, if she told herself the truth, had abandoned her when she was ten, which was how she ended up on the Guild’s doorstep. Not because they had brought her there, but because the man they had left her with finally gave up on them ever returning, and dumped her on the Guild.
She always took responsibility for that. When that “uncle” had dropped her at the Guild, she had not researched where her parents had disappeared to. She hadn’t tracked them down for the very first time. Before that, she always had. Before that, she’d catch up with them, and then they’d find a creative way to dump her again.
She blamed herself for the Guild because she just didn’t want to trace her parents all over the universe again.
She’d been following people for her entire life, spying on them and tracking them, and she was getting tired.
Just like she was tired of the fact that no one had ever touched her the way that Jack touched the redhead.
Jack hadn’t even touched her that way. Not last night. His touch had been gentle, yes, but it had had purpose, and that purpose had been brought him as much gratification as it brought her.
This touch with redhead seemed like something he did for comfort, something that was selfless.
Skye blinked. She had something in her eye. She ran a finger over her lashes, found moisture. Odd. She usually thought it too dry on Krell.
But it was a sign. She needed to put Jack in her past. She had Liora to worry about and a few other jobs to finish.
First, however, she needed a room. And it wouldn’t be the one she shared with Jack. She couldn’t think about him any longer. She’d get something small and unobtrusive.
And if there was a God, she would never ever come back.
Chapter 10
Skye made her way to Upscale Reservations. It was a hole-in-the-wall, given to past guests who had paid a lot of money on Krell. Too many of Krell’s customers specialized in identification theft, so Krell used all sorts of methods to ensure that each “guest” was the one she was supposed to be.
The higher up Skye went on their guest list, the more in-person hoops she had to jump through. She always thought it strange that Krell allowed her through, because she
had never once stayed here under her real name.
Still, the name she used made the folks who ran Krell sit up and take notice—primarily because she had been a regular guest for four years.
She opened the door and stepped into an antechamber. To her surprise, the scruffy guy stood off to one side, talking with two other men. They wore similar clothing to the scruffy guy, and had the same scrawny power. They moved away when they saw her, standing outside of normal ear range.
Fortunately, she didn’t have normal ears.
She moved toward the main door, but made it seem as if she had a few other things to prepare before she entered. Then she focused her hearing on the scruffy guy. With luck, he would tell her what job he was doing for Liora.
Instead, Skye heard a name she hadn’t expected.
“…yes, Jack Hunter,” the scruffy guy was saying. “At the Starcatcher.”
“He’s probably working for someone else now,” one of the other men said.
“It doesn’t matter who he’s working for,” the scruffy guy said. “He’s still our problem.”
Skye’s mouth went dry. How many conversations like this had she overheard over the years? None had made her heart rate increase like this one was.
She had to work hard to continue to feign disinterest. She pulled a small reservation tablet from the stand near her. She fiddled with the tablet as she listened.
“You know he won’t do anything,” the other man said. “He’s a good guy.”
“That’s our problem,” the scruffy guy said. “He doesn’t think we are any longer.”
A light went on near the door. It meant that the reservation room beyond was empty. Skye moved slightly to block that light from the men. She wanted to listen to this conversation for another minute.
“So?” one of the men said. “He’s not going to be a problem. He’s just an investigator.”
“He’s talking to Rikki Bastogne right now,” the scruffy guy said. “He may be an investigator, but she’s not.”
“She left long ago,” the third man said.