by Kris Delake
He finally managed to get out of bed, and staggered just a little. His legs were wobbly, his thigh sore from pressing against her. She sighed just a little, then shuddered visibly.
That was when he realized the room had a chill.
He grabbed the edge of the blanket and covered her, pausing for just a moment to look at her. Her nipples were hard, probably from the cold. Her breasts leaned toward the bed, confirming they had no enhancements at all. Her legs were long, considering her height (or lack of it), and her muscles weren’t really visible; they just kept her trim.
He knew if he touched her again, he would wake her. He didn’t want to do that, not yet. But it took as much control as it had when he had started to make love to her.
She was addicting.
He finally understood why some men chose to spend their lives with one particular woman. No other woman would ever measure up.
He tucked the blanket around her, then investigated the en suite bathroom. It wasn’t as large as the bathroom in the captain’s suite. He knew that from personal experience, since he’d made love to her there after they had tested that bed. But the shower was still large enough to handle him.
He took a quick, hot shower, then grabbed some clothes from the pile of clothing Skye had convinced him to buy as they were leaving Zaeen. He almost felt overdressed, primarily because he and Skye had had such a good time naked in this part of the ship.
As he passed through the suite, he glanced in. She was still in the same position, and still sleeping. She was probably as deep-down tired as he was. The sleep he had gotten felt good.
He went to the cockpit. Skye had shown him the basics of this navigation board. He knew how to run the autopilot. The ship was keyed to his voice, so he could do voice commands. And it was also keyed to his DNA so that he could shut the ship off from anyone except Skye.
He used the voice commands now, asking the ship to show him if they were being followed.
The ship didn’t answer verbally. Instead it raised a holographic screen, which showed the ships that had followed them off Zaeen. Those ships flew off when it became clear that the Hawk was heading out of the Brezev sector.
Too many people were wanted elsewhere to leave the sector. And many others preferred easy pickin’s, and figured that anyone who traveled between sectors probably had a lot more defenses than a thief would want to encounter.
He told the ship to keep monitoring, and then he moved to the workstation that he had isolated while Skye was checking the ship. After he had found the trackers, most of his work had been on this station.
It wasn’t because he distrusted Skye, so much as he never trusted anyone. He needed a private place to work and research. Normally, he would have taken one of the cabins, and he probably would (after they had tried all the beds), but he also wanted a station here, since he needed to guard himself.
It felt odd to think about that. He always considered himself low-key, someone who didn’t get noticed, someone not worth noticing. He figured no one would ever come after him for the information he had because no one would ever see him as a threat.
He figured wrong.
He and Skye had programmed the Hawk to leave the sector and head deeper into the NetherRealm. Krell was in the NetherRealm, but close to the junction of three sectors. He tweaked the ship’s navigation program so that it would take the ship past an asteroid belt and into a part of the NetherRealm most traders, government agents, and thieves never entered.
He wanted privacy to research and time to figure out what was going on. Skye said she had no schedule, so she wouldn’t mind.
Or so he hoped.
He set up his research area with passcodes and double access keys, as well as DNA and retinal scanning blocks. He also set the scanners to identify a handprint as the last access. The handprint had to come from him, and the hand had to not just be warm, but it had to have an obvious blood flow.
The last thing he wanted was for someone to sever his hand to get access. He’d learned from his assassin buddies that at least one personal entry code needed proof that the person accessing it was alive.
He settled in and started to work. Before he did anything on the possible conspiracy in the Guild or the ties between the Guild and Heller, he opened one extremely private file.
He needed to know everything there was on Skye, and he needed to know it now.
Chapter 39
Skye woke up disoriented, uncertain how long she’d slept. She remembered clearly what she had done before she had fallen asleep, and that made her smile.
She rolled into the crumpled pillow that Jack had left, inhaled, and felt longing for him that startled her. She knew he had to be somewhere on the ship, but she already missed him.
And that frightened her.
She shouldn’t miss anyone.
She’d prided herself on remaining solitary, on not needing anyone, on making sure no one needed her.
She thought about that as she took a shower—clearly the second shower in that particular bathroom in a very short period of time. The room still smelled of soap and Jack.
The thought of him brought up so many reactions in her. The memory of all that they’d done together aroused her, the thought of him holding her made her smile, and the way that she missed him even though he was nearby terrified her.
She dressed, then checked the internal computer system to see where he was. She told herself that she checked so that she wouldn’t be surprised when she stumbled on him. Then, because she didn’t believe that, she told herself she checked so that she would know what he was doing.
Finally, she admitted to herself that she just wanted to know where he was because it made her feel better.
She frowned. She knew where that emotion had come from. She used to check on whoever was watching her when she was a child because she didn’t believe she could survive alone. Her parents had instilled that in her—that whoever was with her would leave, and she would have to fend for herself.
Now she knew she could fend for herself. In fact, she could survive better alone than with someone.
Only for the first time, she didn’t want to be alone. She wanted to be with Jack.
She almost went to the cockpit to join him, but she stopped herself. She could use this time. She needed to use it, not just to research Liora, but to look up Jack.
Skye had trusted him so far. She had gone with her sense of him. She had looked for the small things, the easily accessible things, but she hadn’t dug deep into the record.
She didn’t know everything there was to know about Jack Hunter, and she needed to.
She couldn’t just go on her gut. She had to know who he was, what he was, and what he might become.
But she also knew that her research would never tell her what she really needed to know. Was he trustworthy? Deep down trustworthy? Personal files on people, files scattered all over various sectors, never told you if a man abandoned his friends in time of need or if he stood by them through thick and thin.
Of course, any file on her wouldn’t say that either. She had carefully avoided close friends.
She had made certain that no one got near her, no one needed her trust, no one relied on her.
If anyone looked her up, they would find the ultimate loner.
Jack had admitted to being a loner as well.
She ran a hand through her hair, knowing that her search would be futile.
She also knew that she had to do it. If something went wrong, she would forever regret not checking up on Jack—at least to the best of her abilities.
She left the suite they’d shared, gone back to the captain’s suite, which had the most comfortable living area, and modified the secondary navigation access panel. She put all kinds of restrictions on it from DNA scanning to passcodes that she had stolen from other people’s accounts to an emergency voice code.
No one could break into this navigation panel even if they wanted to.
Jack couldn’t break in
to this navigation panel, even if he wanted to.
She closed her eyes for a brief moment before starting. Would he be offended that she didn’t trust him? Or would he understand?
Should she even care about that?
She wasn’t certain.
Then she opened her eyes. She couldn’t change who she was, not for anyone.
So she went to work.
Chapter 40
After two hours of searching, Jack could find almost no information on Skye. He had expected that. It both thrilled and disappointed him. He saw the lack of information as a confirmation of much of what she’d told him, but he also realized he might never be able to verify what he’d learned about her in any real fashion.
It surprised him how much he needed to verify.
The last two days had shown him that a lack of information put him in jeopardy. He had known that before, and he had realized it again.
He stood up, stretched, and listened to his back crack. He could access old Guild files like he had done once before, and he still might do that. He wasn’t sure what he’d be looking for about Skye—maybe confirmation that she had gone to school there. But he would be able to find out information about Misha for Rikki, and he could say that was what he was doing if Skye caught him.
He glanced at the navigation board and saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Then he realized what thought had gone through his head. If Skye caught him. As if he’d been doing something wrong.
He hadn’t been. He’d been doing his job.
But was it wrong to investigate a lover? He didn’t know. He’d never taken a lover before whom he had known so little about. He had never taken a lover whom he was attracted to first and foremost. Usually he’d like the information he’d learned about the woman more than the woman herself.
He’d never done it backward before.
And, thinking of Skye, he wondered if she was still asleep.
He clicked off the computer setup, reactivated all of the lockdowns so no one could break in, and left the cockpit. He went to that infamous third bed and saw the rumpled sheets, but no Skye. He peered in the bathroom, noted that it was different than he had left it.
Skye was up, somewhere. He could ask the shipboard computer where she was, but he decided to look for her.
He found her in the captain’s cabin, hunched over one of the navigational accesses.
“Skye?” he asked.
She jumped, then looked at him guiltily. He wondered what she’d been doing, and resisted the urge to get close enough to check.
“You hungry?” he asked, because he could think of nothing else to say.
She nodded. She tapped the screen in front of her, then stood.
She wore one of the outfits she had bought on Zaeen. Their clothes shopping had been haphazard. Mostly they’d told the robot clerks to bring them clothing in their sizes and then bought it all. It was easier than making choices.
Still, the choices she had made emphasized how lithe her body was, and accented the blackness of her hair. The wedge cut was combed now, and she looked completely put together, not the wild woman he had discovered in all those beds.
She came over to him, slipping her arm through his. “Checking up on me, huh?” he asked.
She stiffened.
He smiled to himself. He’d been doing the same with her.
“Did you find much?” he asked.
“Not after you left Tranquility House,” she said. “And nothing before that.”
He nodded, then decided for full honesty. “I didn’t find much on you either.”
She glanced at him sideways, tilted her head back, revealing that lovely neck, and then laughed. “We’re quite a pair.”
“Yeah,” he said. “We are.”
Then, because he couldn’t help it, he kissed her. She slipped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. They fell against the door frame.
“We really need to eat,” she muttered against him.
“We do,” he agreed as he lifted her and carried her to the bed. It wasn’t his preferred bed, but it would do. “Later, okay?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said as she opened his shirt. “Later is just fine.”
Chapter 41
Skye spent the next several days in a sex-induced haze. That was the only way she could describe it to herself. She researched Liora Olliver and explored everything she could find about the Guild, but she did it between sessions in bed with Jack.
In bed, on the built-in couches, on the table in the kitchen, in the showers, on the cockpit floor—
He was endlessly inventive, and she was endlessly appreciative.
And she tried not to think about the implications of it all. That moment of terror after they had first fallen asleep together kept resurfacing. She wasn’t made to be close to anyone.
But for the past several days, she pretended that she was.
When she wasn’t spending time with Jack, she dug into Guild files. She found some connections with the Rovers that she hadn’t known existed. Apparently, the Rovers called themselves that because they had “roved” away from the Guild.
In the early years of the Rovers, most of the assassins had been Guild trained. Either they had been banished from the Guild, or left after they had finished their apprenticeship. They all complained that they didn’t like the Guild’s tight rules, and they all claimed they preferred to be loners.
Some in the Guild believed that they liked receiving full payment for a job instead of paying a commission to the Guild.
But she had no way of knowing that.
Most of the early Rovers were dead or retired now. And none of them seemed to have a connection to Heller.
Only Liora Olliver had one, and the only way Skye knew about that was because of the meeting. Skye could find no other obvious connections.
Her research made her more and more uneasy, though, and she blamed some of her inability to assemble the pieces on a distraction named Jack Hunter.
She would wake up, often alone since he was more restless than she was, and think she needed to bring the ship into a port, so that they could go on their separate ways. They had helped each other, and they had taught each other about the two organizations.
But every time she either thought of leaving Jack on his own to face the Rovers who wanted to kill him or trying to convince him to take the ship and run, she remembered the conversation they’d already had about it, the look on his face as he said he couldn’t do that, and the conviction in his voice.
What she believed now was that he might lie to her. He might actually tell her he was running away, just to keep her safe.
He would never vanish, not as long as the threat remained. And she couldn’t leave him alone in more ways than one. Yes, she wanted him in her bed every chance she got. But she also knew he needed help so that he could survive this Rover threat.
Whatever that meant.
Still, she was enjoying these quiet days where no one interrupted them. She had never enjoyed any time more.
And she tried not to think about how much that worried her.
Chapter 42
They spent days in the same pattern. Making love, researching, making sure they were alone. Jack thought it the most perfect two weeks of his life. He had never experienced anything like it before.
Skye didn’t mind that he researched privately in the cockpit and he didn’t mind that she did the same in the master suite. They often compared notes, and they helped each other as much as possible.
They set up one research area for joint research, and decided—together—to plunge into the Guild files. The joint area was in what would have been the entertainment room, had there been a crew to entertain.
But there wasn’t. Just a few consoles, mostly to access parts of the cockpit if necessary, several gaming tables, and too many couches.
Jack and Skye tried out all of the couches. They even tested a couple of the gaming tables, and discovered only one that didn’t hol
d their joint weight.
Skye had laughed as the table collapsed and they landed in a pile of plastic, felt, and chips. At least we own the ship, she had said. No one’s going to dock us for destroying it.
Or ask us how we damaged it, Jack had said. He had laughed as well, even though the reminder that they owned the ship caught him. He had almost forgotten that she had paid for it.
Jack mostly let Skye dig into the Guild files, but he had some research to do on his own, and not just research about Skye. He did that when she wasn’t around, and he did as little of it in the Guild files as possible.
What he had found confirmed what she told him: she had been left at their doorstep, she had been a scholarship student, she had flunked a lot of classes, and she then disappeared off everything except their student registries.
He didn’t think she had tampered with any of that information, but he didn’t know for certain.
So to make a comparison, he looked for Mikael Yurinovich Orlinski, the man that Rikki had asked him to research. Jack found a lot about Orlinski, things that unsettled him and would upset Rikki. Apparently Orlinski and Rikki had more of a history than Rikki remembered. Jack checked and double checked and triple checked.
Then he sighed, and waited a few days before contacting Rikki, just because he knew how much the information would bother her.
He used those few days to explore the Guild files under the guise of looking for more information on Orlinski, whom everyone seemed to call Misha.
The man was the straightest of straight arrows. He seemed to revel in rules, which was the opposite of Rikki. But that, and the earlier part of the history, made him sound like less of a problem than Rikki said he was.
The information also squared with everything Skye had said about Orlinski, that he was a good man so far as she knew, and she would trust him with her life.
In researching Orlinski, though, Jack found more about Liora Olliver, the woman who had hired Heller. And she didn’t seem like such an upstanding citizen. She’d gotten in trouble with the Guild from the beginning, and she seemed to like chaos.