by Kris Delake
But she could be thinking it about herself and Jack. Except that Skye wasn’t an assassin.
It felt like her world, already topsy-turvy from the night before, had just fallen on its side.
“This makes no sense,” she said, and realized she had said it again. She had spoken out loud when she first discovered who Heller was.
“That he’s a Rover?” Jack asked softly. “Or that I’m affiliated with them?”
He still hovered near the door. He would run out there if she said anything wrong. Maybe, since she had already misjudged him, her assumption that he couldn’t take care of himself was wrong. But she still had that feeling so strongly that she didn’t want him to go.
Or maybe she was so blinded by the attraction between them that she wasn’t trusting her gut.
“Both, actually,” she said.
He didn’t move. “It doesn’t frighten you that I might be a Rover.”
Amazing that he saw that so clearly. She didn’t think she was usually easy to read. But then, she wasn’t acting like a frightened person. She wasn’t sure she knew how.
“It surprises me,” she said. “You don’t seem like the type.”
His smile was thin. “What type is that?”
“The kind who kills for a living,” she said, wondering what kind of answer he had expected from her.
“People who kill for a living usually aren’t obvious about it,” he said. “Most folks can’t recognize them. That’s why assassins are so good at what they do.”
“I suppose,” she said flatly. She had always recognized them before. Maybe not as actual assassins, but she could see the tendency. She couldn’t see it in him.
“Who are you, really?” he asked.
She took a deep breath. This was the moment of truth. She didn’t even know how to lie to him. How could she lie away her reaction? This room? Why she was here? How could she convince him that she was an average person when she clearly was not?
“I investigate people for a living,” she said.
He started, as if the answer surprised him deeply.
“I usually can tell what a person is, even if I don’t know who he is,” she said. “Everything about this is surprising me.”
“Even Heller?” Jack asked.
“No,” she said. “I knew what he was. I just didn’t know who he worked for.”
“You were surprised he was a Rover,” Jack said. “You thought he was from the Assassins Guild?”
When he asked it so plainly, she saw that the assumption made no sense. If Heller had been from the Guild, she would have known him, right?
She hadn’t thought that through. Although she might not have known him if he had been a wash-out or a relatively new recruit.
Except that he hadn’t looked new.
“You haven’t answered me,” Jack said. “Who are you?”
He was relying on her. And honestly, she wanted to help him. She couldn’t remember the last time she wanted to help anyone.
Maybe it was selfish. Maybe she wanted to think about his rangy six-foot-six frame hunching its way through the sector. Maybe she wanted the possibility of seeing him again, even if she knew realistically that it would never ever happen.
He wouldn’t be able to save himself. Even if he was a Rover. An unarmed Rover. Which was just plain strange.
She had investigated his body closely last night. He didn’t have the muscles for a man who killed barehanded. And he didn’t have the enhancements that some in the Guild used to make their own bodies into weapons.
He should have been armed. That detail bothered her.
A lot.
If she was going to help him, she would have to reveal a lot about herself just to get him off Krell.
“My official name is Skylight Jones.” It felt strange to hear herself say that. Had she ever said that to anyone outside of the Guild? She wasn’t sure. Not since she had become an adult, anyway. She couldn’t call herself a spy. That was too much. She was going to hedge just a little. “I’m an investigator for the Assassins Guild.”
He let out a small laugh. Then he shook his head, and laughed again. His gaze didn’t meet hers. His laugh grew, until it sounded almost panicked.
“God damn,” he said after he managed to collect himself. “What are the odds?”
His reaction was strange.
“The odds?” she asked.
Instead of answering directly, he said, “I didn’t lie to you about my name. I’m Jack Hunter. And, until recently, I was an investigator for the Rovers.”
Chapter 14
At first, Skye thought he was joking with her. Unlike the Guild, which had rules and regulations, the Rovers didn’t. They weren’t a real organization, not one with bylaws and meetings. They didn’t even have a real headquarters.
She had investigated a number of Rovers, especially lately, and they didn’t even seem to have a code of ethics like some groups that skirted the edge of the law did.
Jack didn’t belong to the Rovers, not in the way that she had initially thought. It did explain, at least, why he didn’t have a weapon, why one man would say he’s one of us and another man would deny it.
“You can look me up on your little tablet,” Jack said, “although it’s risky, considering. A tablet that can overcome one of my jammers is powerful indeed, although why you would overcome a jammer to use a public system is beyond me.”
She set the tablet on a nearby table. She would talk to him first.
“The tablet has its own database,” she said. “I wasn’t on any system at all.”
He nodded, still looking a bit shocked. She glanced at the tablet, wondering if she should look him up.
Then she realized she no longer trusted him. Not after he claimed he did the same job for the Rovers that she claimed to do for the Guild.
She had misread him. She thought he was a straightforward guy, one who wouldn’t lie to her. But he had. And if he worked for the Rovers, he’d been lying to her all along.
Of course, he had laughed when she told him. Was that a laugh of surprise, a laugh of recognition, or the laugh of a man who had just uncovered something he could use?
“I didn’t think Rovers had investigators,” she said.
“Rovers are subject to laws of the sector like anyone else.” He sounded tired. “They’re licensed assassins, just not through the Guild. And if they kill someone and get arrested for doing so, they have to show that they have a client who authorized the work and that the work was authorized for a reason that would get the target convicted in at least six cultures on five worlds.”
The Guild rarely parsed the rules like that. Instead, the Guild explained to its potential assassins that they had to go after targets who were bad people—mass murderers, serial killers, child rapists—people who had somehow slipped through the existing legal system. People who couldn’t be stopped by any other means.
When someone looked at the various rules as coldly as the Rovers seemed to, there was a lot more leeway. A person who stole high-end items could get convicted on most worlds, but by Assassins Guild rules didn’t justify an assassination. The Rovers got their difficult reputation partly because they were willing to assassinate someone who committed what the Guild called lesser offenses, someone who had managed to escape (or would escape) conventional justice.
The Guild always denounced the Rovers for their loose interpretation of the rules of paid assassination.
Only, technically, the Rovers rarely violated those rules.
Until lately. She had gotten a lot of hints of actual murder for hire. Murder, not assassination. The Guild defined murder as a death that came out of emotion, not logic, one that was based on betrayal or a personal crime against one human being, not crimes against humanity.
Skye had never entirely understood those distinctions before, and had ridiculed the Guild privately for them. Yet she was standing here, judging a man she was attracted to because he worked for an organization that bent (maybe broke) rul
es that she had mocked.
“Still,” she said, “I didn’t think the Rovers cared whether or not they violated treaties or interstellar laws. I thought they took money and did the job.”
His cheeks flushed. The color was darker than it had been in the throes of passion, almost as if it matched his mood.
“Still,” he said using the same tone that she had just used, “they would need an investigator to help them find the target.”
She had offended him. She wasn’t exactly sure how, but she had. Apparently, he was sensitive to the accusation that he lacked a moral code.
She didn’t dare tell him that she believed most of the Guild members lacked one too, which was why they used the Guild’s codes to substitute for their own moral compass.
She had actually said that to Director Ammons once. The director had glared at Skye, but hadn’t corrected her, which made Skye believe even more that she was onto something.
“It doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not,” he said. “I have to get out of here. I trust that you won’t say anything to your Guild counterparts about me?”
She wasn’t sure why that mattered. If he left this room, he would probably die.
“And I thank you for the warning,” he said. He reached for the door.
“Wait,” she said. “I want to help you get off Krell safely.”
“Why would you want to do that?” he asked tiredly. “You don’t believe me, and even if you did, you think I’m ethically challenged. You Guild people are exceptionally judgmental for people who kill other people for a living.”
She supposed she deserved that. Still, she couldn’t help being defensive.
“I’ve never killed anyone,’ she said.
He raised his head. “Then how can you be part of the Assassins Guild? Are you a student?”
He seemed to know a lot about Guild customs.
“I’m unusual,” she said. “I didn’t test well on the assassin’s part of the study. I’m very good at investigation.”
“So am I. And yet here I am, rather surprised that I’m a target.” He sighed. “Right now, I don’t need investigators. I’m better off with an assassin. But barring that, I need a smuggler. I need a good way off Krell, and I don’t think there is one.”
The word “smuggler” made her smile. “You underestimate me, my friend,” she said.
“I’m sure I do,” he said tiredly, “but that really doesn’t matter at the moment.”
“It does matter,” she said. “Do you know how I got my name?”
“I didn’t even know what your name was until five minutes ago,” he said.
“Well, let me tell you a story,” she said. “And then we’ll figure out a way to get you off Krell for good.”
Chapter 15
Jack wasn’t in the mood for a story. He certainly wasn’t in the mood for a story as strange as the one Skye told him.
Her parents had been smugglers or pirates or, she said, “Just plain thieves with fancy credentials.” Her entire childhood had been a continual series of escapes from bad situations, usually caused by her parents. They were constantly on the run from this person, that community, or some government. They avoided all forms of law enforcement.
They named her “Skylight” because of their closest call. They’d been trapped in a building on some planet (she never found out which one) and it had a skylight forty feet up. Somehow they had managed to climb the walls and go through that skylight without tripping any alarms.
They’d thought they were going to die, and they didn’t. Then they discovered that Skye’s mother was pregnant, and they retired from their crooked life.
“That lasted until I was born. I was always being grabbed and pulled out of some place I had just settled.” Then Skye’s face clouded. “Until they figured I was old enough to stay behind.”
He wanted to find out about that, he really did. But not right now. His heart was pounding hard, because he felt that, with each passing moment, he would lose his own life.
“So,” she said, “let me get you out of here.”
What choice did he have, really? He was an investigator, a spy, an information guy. The kind of person who lurked in the shadows, observed too much, and sent those observations back to whomever had paid for them.
He’d never once had to escape from anything. Sure, he had to slip out of a room when a subject noticed that Jack was staring too hard, and yes, he’d had to dump some net accounts because a subject’s security systems had identified him, but he had never ever had to run away from some place. If he got confronted, he’d laugh and make up a story—he was good at that—and no one had a second thought about him.
Except maybe that the tall guy was a bad choice for a spy, so obviously he couldn’t be one. He was too memorable.
“What do you propose to do?” he asked. “I’m very recognizable, and they’ll be guarding my ship. Someone will remember if I get on a transport.”
“Yes, they will,” Skye said. “Do you have money?”
There it was. That was what this was all about. She was shaking him down. Heller hadn’t caught up to him after all. She was trying to get Jack to pay for her extravagant lifestyle.
“No,” he said so flatly that she looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“I don’t need it,” she said. “I just thought you might feel odd if I paid for everything.”
He was about to tell her that he would not give her anything, not for any reason, when he realized what she had said.
“Pay for everything?” he repeated lamely. “And then I’d pay you back?”
That would be the scam.
She shook her head. “The Guild covers all of my expenses, no matter how extravagant. They know I’m tailing high-end targets, so the Guild expects me to have a huge expense account. They pay me a base expense amount every month, whether I bill them or not. I have more money than I know what to do with.”
He frowned, trying to wrap his brain around that. He had clearly joined the wrong organization. Not that he’d had a choice. He hadn’t gone near the Assassins Guild, afraid that they’d turn him into a killer.
He had just floated along in his life. Researching the Rovers, then deciding to leave them was in some ways, the first time he had ever done anything for himself.
And he had felt off balance the entire time he did it.
Still felt off balance.
Of course, Skye wasn’t helping. She had surprised him on such a deep level, he wasn’t thinking clearly. Not that he had thought clearly about her last night either.
“You’d fund our escape?” he asked.
“It’ll be the most excitement I’ve had in years.” Then she grinned. “Except for last night, of course.”
In spite of himself, he smiled at her. “I’ve never met anyone like you,” he said.
“You said that yesterday,” she said.
“And I had no idea just how right I was,” he said.
Her grin faded. “I already have a plan. But you’ll have to trust me. If someone was watching you, they saw us hook up, but they probably don’t know you’re in this room. You’ll have to wait here while I set up our escape. I would understand if you don’t want to do that, but you’re so recognizable that it’ll be harder if you come with me on the initial rendezvous.”
He clenched his hands into fists, then made himself release them finger by finger. He knew she was right about being recognized. He also knew that she was right that he would have to trust her.
She had been the one to tell him about the threat. She had been the one to show him this room. The money still bothered him, primarily because her offer was so unusual.
“I need the image back,” he said.
She frowned at him, not understanding what he was going to do. Good. That meant she wouldn’t have time to prepare for it.
She handed him the tablet.
“Are there other images of Heller on here?” he asked.
“I took a few other shots,” she
said.
He poked at the flat screen until he found one of the other images. Then he recognized the place. It was the interior of the bar where he and Skye had been the night before.
But he had no idea how long that interior had looked like that. He would wager it had probably looked like that as long as he was alive. She could have taken this months, even years ago. Or doctored the image.
This was where his investigative skills came in, however. He knew how to find out if something was doctored or old. He tapped on the flat screen, looked at the image, then examined it in great detail. Then, he glanced at the other images the same way.
They were from this morning.
And one of them had the back of a woman who looked like Skye on it. He moved through the images until he caught the side of the woman’s face. Not Skye. That woman he had seen earlier, the one who had the same general body type.
“Who’s that?” he asked, showing Skye the image.
She hesitated for just a moment. Then she said, “Her name is Liora Olliver. She’s an assassin with the Guild.”
“She’s the one who is supposed to kill me?” he asked.
“She hired Heller this morning. That’s what I thought was strange. Why would a Guild assassin hire a Rover to do a job?”
“Do you think that has anything to do with targeting me?” he asked.
“No,” Skye said. “They were talking about a different kind of plan. Liora said that Heller might not even be used on it. She hadn’t even given him all of the information yet.”
No wonder Skye had called that strange. A Guild member should never hire a Rover.
It was intriguing, but not his business at the moment.
Jack handed the tablet back to Skye. He had confirmed what he could. Now he had to decide if he was going to trust her completely.
“I’ll give you half an hour,” he said. “And then I’m leaving the room.”
“That works,” she said, pushed past him, and let herself out.
Chapter 16
Skye needed less than thirty minutes. She slipped back into the corridor near the room with ten minutes to spare.