Spy to Die For (Assassins Guild) (18 page)

Skye gave Jack privacy. She left the entertainment area and wandered, feeling lost. At first she wondered if she were jealous, but she couldn’t be, right? She didn’t have a real relationship with Jack.

Although she had no idea what she should call these past several days. A vacation? A momentary lapse of judgment?

It didn’t feel like a lapse of judgment.

She walked into the galley and made some coffee. Then she took out one of the self-baking cookies she had ordered. They prepared themselves when the stash got low, and the stash had gotten low several times. She hadn’t paid attention to her exercise regime or to her diet during this trip.

Of course, she had gotten a lot of exercise. Just not the type she expected.

She almost smiled, and with that near-smile came the explanation for that lost feeling. When Jack talked to Rikki, this trip was officially over. The privacy, the sense of being alone in a vast universe, the way that Skye and Jack had pretended they were the only two humans of consequence anywhere was over.

Real life had intruded again, and with real life came real problems.

And thoughts of how real relationships worked.

She bit into that cookie, tasting molasses, chocolate, and sugar. It didn’t satisfy like it had before. The coffee was done as well, so she had some.

She couldn’t check if Jack was done because he had a special communicator that allowed Rikki to contact him, and he carried it with him at all times. He hadn’t lost it, even in the chaos of leaving Krell.

He called it the CFA—the Communicator for the Assassinator—which spoke of a fondness between Jack and Rikki that Skye didn’t entirely understand.

She was beginning to realize that in keeping herself from friendships, she had kept herself from a lot of warmth, a lot of closeness, and a lot of silly jokes.

She glanced at the time. Jack had said it wouldn’t take long. Then he would probably return to work. He hadn’t asked for privacy either, although she’d given it to him.

And she did want to know how the discussion went, because it would have a bearing on what the two of them would do next.

She grabbed another cup of coffee, put a few cookies on a plate, and carried it all back to the entertainment center.

The door was open, and Jack was talking. She stopped, about to turn around, when he nodded her in.

He had attached the small communicator to the wall. He was sitting in front of it. He beckoned Skye with a hand that wasn’t visible to the tiny woman on the screen.

Skye stayed out of visual range as she set the coffee and cookies down.

“You know, Rik,” he was saying, “he seems legit, but I have the sudden urge to kick his ass.”

Skye stiffened. Did brothers and close friends respond that way? She knew that lovers did.

“Jealous?” the small image on the screen asked. Her voice sounded tiny and far away. Yet Skye could hear the fondness, and the comfortable banter in it.

“Hell, no,” Jack said quickly. “You know what I mean. It’s just that he better treat you right. A man has to protect his family and you’re all I got.”

Skye wondered if that last was for her. Jack didn’t look at her as he said it, but his hand was out as if he were waiting for her to take it.

She wasn’t going to get close. This was a private conversation, and she felt awkward enough as it was.

“I promise I’ll be careful,” Rikki was saying.

“You better.” Jack glanced at Skye. Outside of the visual range of the communicator he held up a single finger, clearly asking her to wait. It wouldn’t be long now.

He opened his mouth, and Skye could tell that he was about to sign off. Then Rikki said, “Jack? One more question.”

He leaned back. Something in Rikki’s tone didn’t sound right. Skye didn’t know her and even she could hear it.

“Yeah?” he said.

“You hear any rumblings about the Guild? About someone trying to bring it down?”

Skye suppressed a gasp. She wouldn’t have thought Misha was involved in anything. Why would someone like Rikki know about problems at the Guild?

Skye was about to gesture to Jack to ask if she could communicate with Rikki when Jack said testily, “What’s he got you into?”

And the moment was lost. Skye wouldn’t confide in anyone using that tone either. Still, she thought maybe she could salvage it by asking Jack if she could talk.

“He hasn’t gotten me into anything,” Rikki said.

Skye gestured so that Jack could see her. Skye pointed at herself, then raised her eyebrows, asking if she could talk.

But Rikki was continuing. “It’s just—I can’t talk with you about it over any kind of net. But I was thinking, you know, with the Rovers—”

“I have nothing to do with them,” Jack said curtly. “I have to go, Rik.”

He had completely misunderstood the gesture. He severed the connection and turned to Skye.

“What?” he said.

“I wanted to talk with her,” Skye said.

Jack shook his head. “It wouldn’t have done any good. I know Rikki. That last was about something she was finding. She says that Orlinski didn’t get her involved in anything, and I believe her.”

Skye handed him the coffee. “I do too. But maybe they had information we don’t.”

“Rikki thought she was being monitored, and you and I are worried about being monitored. I don’t think it would have been appropriate to talk with her about it just now.”

“You should contact her again,” Skye said.

Jack stood, then slipped the CFA off the wall and into his pocket as if he worried that Skye would try to override him.

“Have you thought,” he said, “that they’re already getting to her?”

“Who is ‘they’?” Skye asked.

“The Rovers. She’s asking questions about them and the Guild. What made her put that together?”

“Maybe you did,” Skye said. “She thinks you’re still part of the Rovers.”

“Not after that,” he said. He sighed, then sipped the coffee. “Thanks for this.”

“I think you should contact her again,” Skye said.

He shook his head. “It sounds like she and Orlinski are working things out. I just gave them an excuse not to leave wherever they are for a few days.”

He said that as if it were important.

“And?” Skye asked.

“And I think we’ve got to finish this,” he said.

“Finish what, exactly?” she asked.

“We have to get Heller off my back and we need to figure out what’s going on at the Guild.”

“From here?” Skye asked.

He looked at her, and the look was sad. “No,” he said. “I think it’s time to go back.”

She had known he would say that after talking to Rikki. Skye just wasn’t prepared for how it made her feel.

Her breath caught, and the disappointment made her stomach ache. But she kept her expression impassive. She didn’t want him to know how startled she was by her own reaction.

“I think we need to meld our research into some kind of chart,” he said. “I think that might give us hints as to what’s going on. Then we might be able to figure out who to talk to at the Guild.”

She nodded. He used the same methods she did, organized, responsible, double checking everything. She still thought it odd that they were so compatible. She had thought before she met him that she—and her methods—were unique to her.

“Then we’d best get at it,” she said.

He caught her hand, almost making her spill her coffee. “I’m sorry, Skye. I don’t want to go back.”

She almost said,
Then
don’t
. But she didn’t. They’d had that conversation. She knew what he was saying. He was saying he was sorry he
had
to go back.

And she understood that. She really did.

“It had to come to an end sometime, didn’t it?” she asked. She tried not to sound bitter. She hoped she wasn’t sounding bitter. She felt sad too.

“I… hope not,” he said. “I mean, this has to end, but we can still…”

He trailed off. She waited. Still what? Sleep together? Be together? Become partners in detection and rove the universe searching for information?

She didn’t say any of that.

Instead, she leaned over and kissed him on top of his head. He looked startled. She would wager hardly anyone had ever done that to him.

“We’ll worry about what we can still do when we’re done doing this,” she said. “We have more steps before we’re done with any of this. We’re not even sure…”

She didn’t want to finish that sentence, so Jack finished it for her.

“…that I’ll survive it,” he said.

She laughed without humor. “I meant to say that we would survive it,” she said.

“I’m going to make sure you survive,” he said. “You can count on that.”

But they both knew that she couldn’t. No one controlled the future. And no one controlled people like the Rovers.

But she pretended to agree with him. And then they got back to work.

They had found different things on their research, things they hadn’t told each other until they sat at the large gaming table in the entertainment area, the tabletop divided into a dozen screens, each with information flowing across it.

Jack used one main screen in the center to chart all the information. Skye hated to admit that he was better at charting than she was. Faster, better organized, with all kinds of additions that clarified things instead of making them more confusing.

He sat in front of the chart, adding to it as she added information. She wandered around the table, glancing at screens. She also maintained one other screen toward the far end of the table, and that screen scanned for connections that neither Jack nor Skye had seen.

That screen found the thing that nearly made Jack crazy. Apparently Liora Olliver had once been involved with Misha Orlinski.

Jack wanted to let Rikki know right away, but Skye stopped him. Skye normally didn’t pay attention to other people’s relationships, but she remembered that one. Misha and Liora were mismatched from the beginning. Liora had lorded it over all of the other women that she had been involved with him, and Misha apparently hadn’t noticed.

When he did, or when something else happened, something Skye did not know want to know about
ever
(she believed other people’s relationships should be private—extremely private), then he broke up with Liora.

The breakup had been so ugly that Skye avoided both of them. Misha, because Liora stalked him and made nasty comments to any woman who was near him, and Liora because—well, because she had become so very bitter.

She had been so disruptive that the management of the Guild had disciplined her over her behavior. Skye remembered that too, because she had been stunned to see someone else get disciplined and she had also been stunned that the Guild had actually acted against one of its best assassins.

She explained all of this to Jack, who stared at the connection for the longest time.

“And this Olliver woman is the one who hired Heller,” he said.

Skye nodded.

“Don’t you find that odd?” he asked.

“I find it all odd,” she said.

He stood up and arched his back. It popped. Then he reached upward and touched the ceiling. His arms remained bent. She couldn’t touch the ceiling if her life depended on it. Not without standing on a chair or something.

“This discipline that she got, was it severe?” he asked.

“Based on what?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know that much about the Guild.”

She thought about it. She thought her relationship with the Guild was severe, but she had never been disciplined.

Other people had, though. Some got demoted and were no longer assassins. They got moved to other parts of the Guild. Some were happy to be off the assassin track and probably violated some rule so that they would be demoted and not have to kill for a living.

But people like Liora, they rarely got disciplined, and almost never for something personal.

“She was on an accelerated track,” Skye said, thinking out loud. “She was the best at everything, which always made me feel stupid because I was pretty bad at most of it.”

“What’s everything?” Jack asked.

“You know, shooting, using knives, figuring out how new weapons worked. She could hit targets from a crazy distance, but she preferred to be up close. And if there was a timed test, she often beat the time.”

Jack looked down at Skye. She wanted to tell him to sit. This standing made her uncomfortable.

“I thought you didn’t pay attention to other people,” he said.

“It was hard not to with her. The teachers and judges who weren’t very observant always confused us. We look alike.”

Jack frowned. “I saw her. She shares your body type, but it’s pretty clear that she is nothing like you.”

“Not to most of the folks at the Guild. They wanted me to be her. They usually forgot I even existed—until I wanted out, that is. Then everyone knew me.” Skye sounded bitter, but she was bitter. No, check that. She was angry. Furious.

And she’d been happy to see Liora disciplined.

“What happened after she got disciplined?” Jack asked.

“She had to go through some sensitivity training or something, I don’t know,” Skye said. “She couldn’t leave the Guild for months. I remember that because I ran into her during that time and wow, was she nasty. I remember saying to Hazel Sanchez, who’d also been in class with us, that the discipline didn’t seem to be working.”

“And what did your friend say?” Jack asked.

Skye started. She hadn’t said that Hazel Sanchez was her friend. “Um, she said that the discipline generally didn’t work. It usually pissed people off, and if
she
were in charge, she’d make sure they revamped the entire program.”

He pointed at Skye as if she had said that. “There’s the link,” he said and got back in his chair.

He leaned toward one of the other screens and started tapping at it.

“Is there any way, besides forcing you to remember, to know who got disciplined and who didn’t?”

“That’s not an easily accessible file,” Skye said. “And I don’t remember most of who got disciplined. It really didn’t matter to me.”

“I figured,” he said, sounding distracted. “Can we hack into the private Guild files?”

“We’ll get found a lot faster if we do,” she said.

“Is there a way to figure it out without getting into the private Guild files?”

She sat down beside him. “There is a pattern. Someone is on a career track, then they get yanked off—”

“For months, right?” he said.

“Yeah,” she said. “And they get sidelined in the Guild, and then they’re never on the same track.”

“So this Liora Olliver, she lost her entire career because she had relationship issues.”

“They weren’t issues,” Skye said. “She was stalking him and—”

“You know what I mean,” Jack said.

“Yeah, I do,” she said. “Liora never got promoted after that. She got passed over for all kinds of assignments.”

“And you know that…?”

“Because she bitched about it. She came to me and said that we were two of a kind because we were both bound to the Guild. She had to serve some months doing what they wanted. I told her that we were nothing alike and if she ever said that again, I’d figure out a way to hurt her.”

Skye spoke with the same kind of force she’d used when she threatened Liora.

“
You
said that to an assassin?” Jack asked.

Skye raised her chin. “I could do it if someone made me mad enough. I’d be stealthy and I probably wouldn’t have physically hurt her. I might’ve hurt her identity or something, but yeah, I would—”

“I’m just impressed,” Jack said.

Skye flushed. Someone else’s opinion hadn’t really mattered to her before.

“Thanks,” she said, knowing the word was inadequate.

He nodded, looking down at the screens, as if what had just passed between them hadn’t been important.

Maybe it hadn’t been to him, but to her, it was a revelation. She let out a small breath. He was becoming important to her.

She didn’t want him to be.

Or did she?

“It’s going to take some work to figure out who got yanked off career paths,” Jack said. “These older files are counterintuitive.”

She took another deep breath, glad he wasn’t looking at her. “Yet, it would all be in the older files.”

She kept her head down, then moved to the other side of the table. She didn’t want to think about Jack right now. She wanted to focus on this search.

But he was very distracting.

“I think we can set up search perimeters,” she said.

“How?” he asked. “It seems to me that being demoted is a personal thing. That whole career track would be something someone would sense, rather than actually experience.”

“You are such a Rover,” she said.

His head came up quickly. He wasn’t smiling.

She held up her hand.

“I didn’t mean that as an insult,” she said. In fact, she’d meant it as banter. But she didn’t say that. “I just meant that you’re from an organization that’s ‘loosely’ affiliated. I come from one with rules. There’s an actual career track. Look.”

She called it up, and showed it to him. The good grades, the high marks on the physical side of things, the internship, the early jobs, and then the successful jobs. Only the most successful assassins got the work that took brains and skill. The rest got pretty routine work, mostly dealing with fairly dumb criminals that couldn’t get prosecuted usually for some silly reason.

Only a handful of assassins from each graduating class got assignments of the kind that the Guild was famous for. And after her relationship with Misha, Liora hadn’t gotten any of those.

Misha had, though. He had never gone out of favor with those in charge of the Guild.

That had driven Liora crazy as well.

Skye explained all of this to Jack. He studied it as if it were a different language.

“Wow,” he said. “It’s like the Guild is some kind of government in its own right.”

“It is,” she said. “Once you’re in its sphere, you don’t leave.”

Or
you
rarely
leave
, she thought. She was one of the few who planned to. Even the folks who hadn’t done well in her class planned to stay after their early assignments were over. The Guild gave everyone a home, and protection.

Provided they survived their first few years as an assassin.

“That’ll help,” Jack said. “We might actually have a chance of figuring all of this out.”

“Information is always out there,” Skye said. “It’s just a case of putting it together.”

He grinned at her. “Did I say that to you?”

“No,” she said with a mock frown. “I’ve been saying it for years.”

“So have I,” Jack said, then lowered his head and went back to work.

Compatible. Similar. With the same methods and the same interests. She sighed softly. And he was impressed with her.

His life might be threatened, but she was the one in trouble.

She had succumbed to the ultimate attachment.

She had fallen in love.