She started. How did he know about the Rovers? How did he know that she had once relied on them for vetting services, that she and Jack had used them for training?
Misha continued to stare at her. The Rovers thing was important to him, and she didn’t quite know why.
“I haven’t been affiliated with the Rovers in more than a decade,” she said. “I told you. I don’t join things.”
He frowned just a little.
“Why is it important?” she asked.
“You went to Krell.”
She felt the blood drain from her face. “How did you know that?”
“How do you think I found you?” he asked. “I tracked that lifeship and figured out you’d rented a terrible little ship on Oyal. I waited and examined the logs. You took it to Krell.”
She wanted to hit her palm against her forehead. She had been so mesmerized by him that she hadn’t asked how he found her. And if truth be told, she just figured he was good enough to track her. She no longer doubted that.
“So?” she asked, knowing that was a lame response.
“The Rovers sometimes use Krell as their base,” he said.
She made a face. “
Everyone
in this part of the sector uses Krell as a base, particularly if they are a bit on the shady side. I’ll bet you’ve used Krell.”
The expression that flashed through his eyes confirmed that. Still, he didn’t let up.
“But you’ve been part of their organization,” he said.
“I’m not denying that,” she said. “I told you: I don’t join things. Where do you think I learned that I don’t fit into an organization, even one that refuses to call itself an organization?”
He kept looking at her, as if he was trying to see through her. “You knew they’re trying to destroy the Guild,” he said.
The surprise made her take a step back. When she had been a Rover, they were just unaffiliated assassins, trying to help each other out. “What? No, I didn’t know that.”
“I want to believe you,” Misha said, “but you see how hard it is? You were part of their group. They target Guild members. You targeted me.”
“I did not,” she said.
“Except on the ship,” he said. “You left me to take the blame for Testrial.”
Her eyes stung. She blinked hard. “When I found out who you were.”
He looked at her intently, as if he was trying to see through her. “Tell me why I should trust you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t play games like that.”
The statement made him wince as if she had said something that reminded him of something else.
“Games,” he muttered, then frowned. And nodded once. “When did you get this?”
“Get what?” she asked, trying to follow the logic of the conversation. Half of it was taking place in his head.
“The information about Kerani,” he said.
Ah, that made sense. He was trying to figure out a timeline. “Yesterday, just before you arrived,” she said.
“So you haven’t had time to research it,” he said. Like that was important.
Maybe it was.
“I was going to research it after I had lunch,” she said.
“Lunch.” He smiled for the first time. His mood suddenly seemed lighter. “We need to eat.”
“Yes,” she said a bit stiffly. “We do.”
He took three more steps toward her. It took all of her strength to hold her ground. He reached for her, slipped his hand along the side of her face, and kissed her.
Not a simple kiss, not a touch. But one of those kisses that made her hot all over. She wanted to lean into him, but she didn’t. She wanted to melt into the kiss, lose herself in him like she had done the day before, but she held onto herself so tightly that she barely moved.
Although she kissed him back.
She couldn’t stop herself from kissing him back.
He leaned back, and looked at her, his eyes that deep blue again. He ran a thumb along her face. “Let’s work on this together.”
“You think I’m with the Rovers,” she said. “You think I’m targeting your precious Guild.”
He shook his head just a little. “I think something strange is going on,” he said. “I think you and I are both part of it, but not willingly.”
She thought about Jack’s strange expression, about the way he had spoken about the Rovers. There weren’t many unaffiliated assassins anymore. Just her and a few others.
She had gotten out of the Rovers because they had started talking about rules. And dues. And organizing.
She hated organizations.
Her heartbeat had increased. She was probably flushed. “What exactly do you want to work on?” she asked. “You don’t want to target this woman, do you?”
“Of course not,” he said. He let his hand drop. Then he tilted his head slightly. “You don’t take every job you get, do you?”
“No,” she said, a little offended that he would even think so.
“You research them first, right?”
“Yes,” she said, feeling even more offended.
“So let’s research who wants to hire you. There’s got to be a reason behind this,” Misha said.
She shrugged. “The mission seems easy to me. Someone wants to bring down the Guild.”
He shook his head. “It’s not that simple. Our last director was murdered. The Guild survived.”
“You think this might be personal?” Rikki asked.
“I don’t know what to think,” Misha said. “Except that I think you and I can help each other, and we should.”
It was a risk. It was a big risk. She was trusting him, and she hadn’t trusted anyone in her life except Jack. And even then, she hadn’t trusted Jack with everything.
“All right,” she said after a minute. “But lunch first.”
“And groceries,” he said with a bit of grin. “How do you feel about working naked?”
“I have a hunch we’d get nothing done,” she said.
“I think we’d get a lot done,” he said. “But probably no work.”
“No
probably
about it,” she said and kissed him. Quickly. Without touching anything but his lips.
It wasn’t like she had anything to steal. Not for someone from the Guild, anyway. Her risk had less to do with work than it did with her life. And he had had opportunities to hurt her, kill her, ruin her.
He hadn’t taken them.
It was a risk, partnering with him on this.
But it was only a risk to her heart.
They worked in her office, because she had protected, encoded networks inside. He sprawled on her love seat as if it had been made for him. She sat in her usual spot, legs out. He had brought some of his own equipment from that hidey-hole he’d found two and a half blocks away.
She had gone up to that apartment with him, and wrinkled her nose at the smell. She had stayed in places like that on a job, but she hadn’t enjoyed it.
She helped him carry most of his equipment back to her place, and what few changes of clothing he had brought.
She didn’t exactly feel better about her choice to trust him—in fact, her heart fluttered every time she thought about it. But she wasn’t sure if her heart fluttered because he was nearby or because she had decided to trust him or because she was worried about what might happen between them.
He had put his clothes in her closet, which felt odd. And he had put the groceries away in her kitchen, which felt even odder.
He had as many individual tablets as she did, plus some linked network devices, plus a few things she didn’t recognize. She had shown him the other four tablets she had with information about targets. Misha said he didn’t recognize those people. She wasn’t sure she believed him, but she did think that those people weren’t a priority.
She would work on them when this job—and that was how she was thinking of the Guild case—was done.
She piled the other tablets onto the side counter, and worked on two—the one with the image of the Guild’s director, whose name was Kerani Ammons, and the other an unlinked device that she used to back-trace the contact.
The information Rikki had on Ammons included a false name—one Ammons had apparently used back when she was in the field—and some old information on Ammons’s whereabouts. Misha hoped the information would show that this hit request was because of something Ammons had done in the past, not because of who she was now.
But the client trace was proving difficult. Rikki usually refused cases where she couldn’t verify the client. A quick verification made the client seem legitimate, but no good assassin did a quick verification.
All of this made her nervous.
“I’m not finding much,” she said.
Misha was lying on his stomach, three of the tablets on front of him. “What would you usually do in a case like this?” he asked.
“I’d turn it down,” she said. “I need more client information.”
“You wouldn’t ask for that?”
“No,” she said. “I’m not that hard up for work.”
“And if you were?”
She looked at him. His hair was tousled like it had been the day before, his eyes a soft blue. His eyes fascinated her. They changed color with his moods. She had no idea there were so many shades of blue before.
“I’d still turn it down,” she said. “The client seems dicey.”
“You wouldn’t hire a detective?”
She shook her head.
“Search more on your own?”
“No,” she said. “That’s all work with no pay. I don’t work for free.”
He nodded, then leaned back, as if considering her words. “I don’t want to lose this commission. It’s a lead to something I don’t understand and letting go of it means someone else will do the job. Or will at least try the job.”
Rikki shrugged. “Sometimes the client returns.”
“That’s a big risk,” he said.
She nodded. “But we might have enough to trace the client with what we have here.”
“I’m not much of a detective,” Misha said.
She tucked her legs against his side, liking his warmth. “What do you do then, give it to some Guild investigator?”
“We do have divisions for everything,” Misha said.
“Hmm,” she said. “I could trace him, given time.”
“And if you don’t have time,” Misha asked, “do you hire a detective?”
She thought about Jack. Then frowned just a little. He was still working for her on Misha.
“Not so much anymore,” she said.
“But you used to?” Misha asked.
That was the first question he’d asked that made her uncomfortable. “Is it important?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” Misha wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the information tablet in front of him. “I’m still not sure why you got this job.”
“Which is another reason I’d turn it down.” She ran a hand over his back, then let her fingers linger near his buttocks. She touched them lightly.
He rolled over, caught her hand, and kissed it. “Work, remember?”
“Hmm,” she said, not really committing to anything.
He hadn’t let go of her hand. She could sense his indecisiveness. He clearly wanted to throw the work aside as much as she did, but they both knew the quicker they finished, the more chance they had of tracking down the client.
“You know,” she said, her voice slightly husky. “It would be better if I said no.”
“To me?” Misha asked, then kissed her palm again.
She shook her head, suddenly not trusting her voice. She cleared her throat, and said, “No to the client. I’m wondering if this is some kind of test to see if I’ll violate my own rules. I think it might be some kind of red flag if I do. There’s enough here for you to notify your director and let your own people track this down.”
He stared at her for a long moment. “I suppose. I don’t like it though. I’d have to report back at the Guild. I can’t just send this information through the networks.”
“Let’s just see what happens when I refuse the job,” she said.
She sent a message back to the potential client, saying she did not feel this job was right for her.
“That’s it?” Misha asked. “No explanation?”
“If they want an explanation, they’ll ask,” she said.
He pulled her close. She could feel his hardness against her stomach.
“And what if I want an explanation?” he asked.
“How about a demonstration instead?” she asked, taking her hand back so she could use it elsewhere.
“Oh, in that case,” he said, his voice just a little strangled, his eyes turning that marvelous blue, “a demonstration will have to do.”
Rikki slept beside him in that big bed. She was beautiful, absolutely beautiful. And it broke his heart.
Misha hadn’t even really realized he had one, not until he met Rikki. She made him feel more than anyone ever had—at least anyone in his memory. And the emotions were stronger than any he had ever felt, the anger more potent, the desire so powerful that at times he thought it was going to rip him apart.