Spy to Die For (Assassins Guild) (23 page)

Thank heavens, the bomb was pretty standard. Skye had unsuccessfully tried to build one half a dozen years ago for one of her classes. She understood the principles, and in that case, she had deliberately screwed up the execution. She hadn’t wanted to build a bomb ever, just like she hadn’t wanted to kill someone ever.

Only she had broken that vow, hadn’t she? By turning off the environmental controls and venting the atmosphere on that lower level, she had killed Heller.

And really, she should have regretted it.

But if she hadn’t, Heller would have murdered Jack—and relatively quickly. Since she had to choose between Jack and Heller, she didn’t even have to think about it.

She chose Jack.

It took fifteen minutes to make certain that the bomb wasn’t active. Jack didn’t want to send it into space, but Skye did. She didn’t want it on the
Hawk
.

Jack thought Heller wasn’t that bright, but Heller had managed to follow them from Krell to Zaeen and back here. He’d also managed to shield his ship in such a way that they almost didn’t catch it.

If they hadn’t had that lucky break, then they would be dead by now. And so would others.

“That should be it,” Skye said. “Let me know when you’re out of the cargo bay.”

“You’re going to have to seal off this level again,” Jack said. “The door into the bay is ruined.”

He didn’t say that Heller ruined it, but that was what happened.

She felt oddly calm about it all, and wondered if that was her assassin training.

“Let me know when you’re out of there,” she said. “And leave the door to the cargo area open.”

“Why?” Jack asked.

“Cleanup,” she said, unwilling to say more. She had scanned the corridors as the video surveillance came back online and she had seen just enough of Heller’s body to know she didn’t want to see any more. Better that it get jettisoned into space along with some of the empty cargo containers.

“All right,” Jack said, and signed off.

She made sure everything was locked down. She watched his heat signature, so that she wouldn’t have to see that hallway again. Jack took the elevator up to this level, and let her know on the comm that he was clear.

“Go ahead,” he said.

She locked down the lower level, then shut off the environmental controls. Then she opened the airlock and the cargo bay doors. For a moment, she thought they weren’t going to work. Then she realized that doors were moving slowly because they were going through the system that Jack had jury-rigged. Apparently Heller had shut down the direct controls to the outside doors and the airlock.

Still, everything opened, and the
Hawk
acknowledged the change in pressure. It didn’t lurch like that other ship had or even move. This ship was in good shape. But it told her that something had gone wrong in the cargo bay—at least from the
Hawk
’s point of view.

From hers, the worst of it was over.

The door opened to the cockpit and Jack stumbled in. His hair was messy, and his shirt was torn. His pants had tears in the knees, and he had scrapes on his elbows.

She had never been so glad to see someone in her life.

She launched herself out of her chair and into his arms.

And all of the panic she had felt, all of the fear, all of the worry, surged through her. She had to blink hard to keep herself from tears.

That made her angry. She wasn’t a woman who cried for any reason.

Still, she clung to him, and he clung back.

She had no idea how long they held each other.

“I thought he was going to kill you,” she said.

“I told you I’d be back,” Jack said.

“You also gave me one hell of a good-bye speech.”

He leaned back so that he could see her face. His looked vulnerable. Then he grinned. Her Jack, always a glass-half-full kinda guy.

“I did, didn’t I?” he said. “I meant every word.”

Then he kissed her.

Or he tried to, because she moved her head just enough. This time, she wasn’t going to miss her chance to speak.

“About that thing you asked me earlier,” she said.

“About the bomb?” he asked, and he was serious. She had no idea what he was referring to.

“About a relationship,” she said. “A permanent one.”

His expression froze. “What about it?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, yes, yes, yes.”

“I thought you didn’t have attachments,” he said.

She nodded. For the first time in her life, going back on something she said didn’t feel like a retreat. It felt like she was moving forward.

“I thought I didn’t either,” she said. “Then you went down to that cargo bay and I realized I was attached already.”

He didn’t smile. “You can still disengage.”

She shook her head. “I can’t. I’m in love with you.”

He stared at her as if he hadn’t heard her. Then he whooped and spun her around the cockpit. She tucked her feet in, afraid she’d hit something important.

He pulled her close and this time, when he tried to kiss her, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back.

They had to do a lot of talking with the authorities on Kordita. They had jettisoned a ship, some cargo (with a half-finished bomb), and the remains of a person just outside of Kordita’s space boundaries. But Skye’s status as a member of the Guild got them through all of the questioning and made most of the problems go away.

They were even able to get Jack into the Guild, but that had nothing to do with Skye. That had to do with Rikki and Misha, who vouched for Jack. It seemed that Rikki and Misha had stopped an attack by Liora Olliver, and saved Director Kerani Ammon’s life in the process.

The director had been injured in the attack, and she was healing. The Guild itself was a great place for relaxation, which Skye always thought ironic. Beautiful stone buildings, well-maintained gardens, perfectly controlled atmosphere.

She always thought of it as an excellent way to hide the violent training that occurred inside the walls.

Because Skye didn’t know who to trust, she had demanded to see the director alone. The director’s apartments were beautiful, airy and light, with lots of arched windows and multicolored carpets. The director herself rested on a divan, a light blanket over her feet.

She had an angular face and dark black hair. Skye had never been able to guess her age.

The director had already figured out that there was a conspiracy, but she was grateful for the names. She also appreciated the warning about the remaining attacker who was at large.

“Jack and I can figure out who that is,” Skye said. “It would take research, but I suspect we’ll find the person who got hired.”

The director smiled. “The trail should be relatively easy to follow,” she said. “Between the research you’ve given me and the research my people have done, we should find this last threat. The threat we hadn’t known was this man you and your friend Jack eliminated. I thank you for that.”

Skye let out a small breath. She wasn’t used to being told not to do something from the Guild.

“Then what do you want me to do?” she asked.

“You are free to do what you want,” the director said. “With this, you have satisfied your obligation to the Guild. We no longer have the right to tell you what to do.”

“I’m
free
?” Skye asked. She’d never expected to hear that, especially two years before her contract was over. “Really?”

“Yes,” the director said, “and before you ask, we will give you documentation confirming this.”

Skye sat down even though she hadn’t been invited to. Her legs no longer held her. “Why?”

The director smiled at her. “You’ve done ever so much more than we expected of you. We would love to keep you, but I know how much you hate it here. So go, with my blessing, and enjoy your life.”

Those words were foreign to her, at least in that context.
Enjoy
your
life?
Really? People did that?

“You have a fantastic partner, and you work well together. Now it’s time to step into your future,” the director said.

Skye’s heart lifted. Was this what it meant to be a glass-half-full person? This joy inside her?

“Thank you,” she said. Then she stood, and reached for the director’s hand. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

The director smiled. “No thanks needed. You have already done more for us than we could ever repay.”

Skye had no memory of leaving the room. She did remember trying hard not to skip down the stairs to the garden where Jack waited for her.

“I’m free,” she said as she approached the white bench he sat on. His head popped up over some blooming birds of paradise, and his feet nearly kicked some greenery nearby.

“Free?” he said.

“I no longer work for the Guild,” she said.

He took her hands and pulled her down beside him. “How fascinating,” he said. “I no longer work with the Rovers. I’m free too.”

“The director told me to enjoy my life,” Skye said, still marveling at that.

Jack’s smile faded. “Can you?”

She understood his sudden seriousness. She squeezed his fingers. “I realized I’ve been going about living all wrong. I’ve been worried about losing something I never had, rather than enjoying something I do have.”

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“I didn’t make attachments because I was afraid they’d go away. I had no idea how wonderful they are.” She looked at their threaded fingers. “How did you learn how to have attachments when you have no idea who your parents are?”

“Rikki,” Jack said. “She helped me through the dark times. You had to go through those times alone. But I’ll be with you for any dark times in the future.”

“Will there be dark times?” Skye asked.

“There always are,” Jack said. “But they’re not so dark when you share them.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder. “I thought I only deserved one night with you. And now I’m going to get a lifetime.”

“Are you ready for that?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I’m ready. And we’re free to choose where we spend that lifetime. We’re not bound to anyone.”

“Except each other,” Jack said.

She grinned at him. She couldn’t believe the happiness that filled her.

“Except each other,” she agreed. And she knew that would be more than enough.

Read on for an excerpt from the first book in the Assassins Guild series

Assassins in Love

Available now from Kris DeLake and Sourcebooks Casablanca

Hands fumbling, fingers shaking, head aching, Rikki leaned one shoulder against the wall, blocking the view of the airlock controls from the corridor. Elio Testrial leaned against the wall at her feet. She hoped he looked drunk.

Things hadn’t gone as planned. Things never went as planned—she should have learned that a long time ago. But she kept thinking she’d get better with each job.

She completed each job. That was a victory, or at least, that felt like one right now.

The corridor was wide and relatively straight, like every other corridor on this stupid ship. Every floor looked like the last, which had caused problems earlier, and all were painted white, as if that was a design feature. She didn’t find it a design feature. In fact, it was a problem feature. Because any dirt showed, and blood, well, they said blood trailed for a reason. It did.

So far, though, she’d managed to avoid a blood trail. Of course, she’d thought about avoiding it, back when Testrial really was drunk. And because she thought about avoiding it, she had.

But there was no avoiding this damn airlock.

Her heart pounded, her breath came in short gasps. If she couldn’t get a deep lungful of air, her fingers would keep shaking, not that it made any difference.

Why weren’t spaceships built to a universal standard? Why couldn’t she just follow the same moves with every piece of equipment that had the same name? Instead, she had to study old specs, which were always wrong, and then she had to improvise, which was always dicey, and then she had to worry that somehow, with one little flick of a fingernail, she’d touch something which would set off an alarm, which would bring the security guards running.

High-end ships like this one always had security guards, and the damn guards always thought they were some kind of cop which, she supposed, in the vast emptiness that was space, they were.

Someone had fused the alarm to the computer control for the airlock doors, which meant that unless she could figure out a way to unfuse it, this stupid airlock was useless to her. Which meant she had to haul Testrial to yet another airlock on a different deck, one that wouldn’t be as private as this one, and it would be just her luck that the airlock controls one deck up (or one deck down) would be just as screwy as the controls on this deck.

She cursed. Next spaceport—the big kind with every damn thing in the universe plus a dozen other damn things she hadn’t even thought of—she would sign up for some kind of maintenance course, one that specialized in space cruisers, since she found herself on so many of them, or maybe even some university course in mechanics or design or systems analysis, so that she wouldn’t waste precious minutes trying to pry open something that didn’t want to get pried.

She cursed again, and then a third time for good measure, but the words weren’t helping. She poked at that little fused bit inside the control, and felt her fingernail rip, which caused her to suck in a breath—no curse words for that kind of pain, sharp and tiny, the kind that could cause her (if she were a little less cautious) to pull back and stick the offending nail inside her mouth.

She’d done that once, setting off a timer for an explosive device she’d been working on, and just managed to dive behind the blast shield (she estimated) fifteen seconds before the stupid thing blew.

So she had her little reflexes under control.

It was the big reflexes that worried her.

“Need help?” Male voice. Deep. Authoritative.

She didn’t jump. She didn’t even flinch. But she did freeze in place for a half second, which she knew was a giveaway, one of those moments little kids had when they got caught doing something wrong.

“I’m fine, thanks,” she said without turning around. No sense in letting him see her face.

“Your friend doesn’t look fine.” He had just a bit of an accent, something that told her Standard wasn’t his native language.

“He’s drunk,” she said.

“Looks dead to me,” he said.

She turned, assessing her options as she did. One knife. (People were afraid of knives, which was good. But knives were messy, hard to clean up the blood, which was bad.) Two laser pistols. (One tiny, against her ankle, hard to reach. The other on her hip, obvious, but laser blasts in a corridor—dangerous. They’d bounce off the walls, might hit her.) Fists. (Might break a bone, hands already shaking. Didn’t need the additional risk.)

Then stopped assessing when she saw him.

He wasn’t what she expected. Tall, white-blond hair, the kind that got noticed (funny, she hadn’t noticed him, but then there were two thousand passengers on this damn ship). Broad shoulders, strong bones—not a spacer then. Blue eyes with long lashes, like a girl’s almost, but he didn’t look girly, not with that aquiline nose and those high cheekbones. Thin lips twisted into a slight smile, a
knowing
smile, as if he understood what she was doing.

He wore gray pants and an ivory shirt without a single stain on it. No rings, no tattoos, no visible scars—and no uniform.

Not security, then. Or at least, not security that happened to be on duty.

“He’s drunk,” she said again, hoping Testrial’s face was turned slightly. She’d managed to close his eyes, but he had that pallor the newly dead sometimes acquired. Blood wasn’t flowing; it was pooling, and that leached all the color from his skin.

“So he’s drunk, and you’re messing with the airlock controls, because you want to get him, what? Some fresh air?” The man’s eyes twinkled.

He was disgustingly handsome, and he knew it. She hated men like that, and thought longingly of her knife. One slash across the cheek. That would teach him.

“Guess I’ve had a little too much to drink myself,” she said.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” the man said as he approached her.

She reached for the knife, but he caught her wrist with one hand. He smelled faintly of sandalwood, and that, for some reason, made her breath catch.

He slammed the airlock controls with his free fist. The damn alarm went off and the first of the double doors opened.

“What the hell?” she snapped.

He sighed, as if she were the dumbest person he had ever met, then let her go. She did reach for the knife as he bent at the waist and picked up Testrial with one easy move.

She knew that move wasn’t easy. She’d used an over-the-shoulder carry to get the bastard down here, after having rigged the corridor cameras to show footage from two hours before. Not that that did any good now that this asshole had set off the alarm.

He tossed Testrial into the airlock itself, then reached inside and triggered the outer door. He barely got his hand back into the corridor before the inner door closed, protecting them from the vacuum of space.

“What the hell?” she asked again.

The man gave her a withering glance. “He was dead, you were going to toss him out, and then you were going to go about your business as if nothing happened. I just helped you along a little.”

“And now every security agent on the ship will come down here,” she snapped.

“Yeah,” he said. “But it won’t be a problem.”

“It won’t be a problem?” she asked.

But he already had his arm tightly around her shoulder, and he dragged her forward. The movement felt familiar, as if someone had done this to her before.

Except no one had ever done this to her before.

“C’mon,” he said. “Stagger a little.”

“What?” she asked, letting him pull her along. Her hand was still on her knife, but she didn’t close her fist around the hilt. Not yet.

“Do you know any drinking songs?” he asked.

“Know any… what?”

“
Stagger
,” he said, and she did without much effort, since he was half-carrying her, not allowing her feet to find a rhythm.

They stepped onto the between-decks platform, which she loathed because it was open, not a true elevator at all, and he said, “Down,” and the stupid thing jerked before it went down, and suddenly she was on corridor cameras.

“Do you know any drinking songs?” he asked again.

“No,” she said, ready with an answer this time. “I don’t drink.”

“No wonder you lack creativity,” he said and added, “Stop,” as they passed their third deck. He dragged her down the corridor to the airlock, and slammed it with his fist.

Another alarm went off as the inner door opened, and he reached inside, triggering the outer door.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked again.

“Is that the only question you know?” he asked.

“Just answer me,” she said as he turned her around and headed back toward the between-decks platform.

“Weren’t you ever a teenager?” he asked.

“Of course I was,” she said.

“Then you should know what I’m doing,” he said.

“Well color me clueless,” she said, “because I don’t.”

His eyebrows went up as he looked at her. “Color you clueless? What kind of phrase is that?”

“The kind of phrase you say when someone won’t tell you what the hell they’re doing.”

“Watch and learn, babe,” he said. “Watch and learn.”

He took them to the platform again, and as it lurched downward, he pulled her toward him using just his arm and the hand clutching her shoulder. A practiced move, and a strong one, considering how much resistance she was putting up.

He held her in a viselike grip, and then, before she could move away, kissed her. She was so startled, she didn’t pull back.

At least, that was what she told herself when he did let go and she realized that her lips were bruised, her hand had fallen away from the hilt of her knife, her heart was pounding rapidly.

That was a hell of a kiss, short but—good God, had she ever been kissed like that? Mouth to mouth, open, warm but not sloppy, his tongue sampling hers and hers, traitor that it was, responding.

“Yum,” he said, as if she had been particularly tasty, and then he grinned. He was unbelievably handsome when he smiled, and she didn’t like that either, but before her addled brain figured out what to do, he added, “Stop,” as they reached one of the lowest decks.

He propelled her forward with that mighty arm of his, and she tripped stepping from the platform into the corridor, which was a good thing, since a male passenger stood near the platform, looking confused.

The passenger, middle-aged, overweight, tired, like most everyone else on week three of an interstellar cruise, peered at them.

The man beside her grinned, said, “Is this the way to the lounge?” and then kept going.

The male passenger said, “What lounge?” but they were already too far away to answer him.

They reached yet another airlock and the handsome man still holding her hit the controls with his fist, setting off yet another alarm and doing his little trick with the doors.

This time he kept going straight, swaying a little, knocking her off balance.

“Too bad you don’t know any drinking songs,” he said. “But then, you don’t smell like booze. Enhancer, maybe? Too many mood elevators? No, that doesn’t work. You’re not smiling.”

They rounded a corner, and came face to face with three terrified security guards, standing in three-point formation, laser rifles drawn.

“Stop!” one of them, a man as middle-aged and heavyset as that passenger, yelled. He didn’t sound nearly as in control as Rikki’s companion had when he told the platforms to stop. In fact this guy, this so-called guard, sounded dangerously close to panicking.

Rikki stopped, but the man didn’t and neither did his arm, so he nearly shoved her forward, but she’d faced laser rifles before, and had even been shot with one, and she’d never forget how the stupid thing burned, and she wasn’t going to get shot again.

“Ah, jeez, Rik,” the man said, and she jolted. The bastard knew her name. Not the name she was using on this cruise. Her
real
name. “Let’s go.”

“I said stop,” the guard repeated.

“
You
,” the man said, turning to the guard, and slurring his words just slightly, “are too tense. C’mon with us. We’re heading to the lounge.”

“What lounge?” the female guard asked. Not only was she the sole female, but she was the only one in what Rikki would consider regulation shape. Trim, sharp, but terrified too. Her rifle vibrated, probably because she wasn’t bracing it right.

Amateurs.

“I dunno what lounge,” the man holding Rikki said. “The
closest
lounge.”

He grinned as if he had discovered some kind of prize, and if she didn’t know better, she would’ve thought he was on something.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” the third guard said. “Is that what this is all about?”

“I dunno,” the man said, “but you sure got a lotta doors leading to nothing around here. Where’s the damn lounge? I paid good money to have a lounge on each floor and I been to—what, hon? Three floors? Four—”

He looked at Rikki as he said that and pinched the nerve on her outer arm at the same time. She squeaked and hopped just a little as he continued.

“—and we ain’t found no damn lounge anywhere. I wanna drink. I wanna enhancer. I wanna burger. Real meat. You got real meat on this crappy ship?”

The first security guard sighed, then lowered his rifle. The other man did the same, but the woman didn’t.

“Oh for God’s sake,” the female security guard said to the guard in front. “You gonna let them get away with this just because they’re drunk?”

“I’m not drunk,” Rikki said, and the man pulled her close again so that she had to put a hand against his waist to steady herself.

He tried to kiss her again, but she moved her face away. “She’s not drunk,” he said rather grumpily, “because we can’t find the damn lounge.”

The front guard shook his head.

“They opened three airlocks,” the female guard said.

“They’re
passengers
,” the male guard hissed at her.

“Reckless ones,” the female guard said.

“What’s your room?” the guard asked.

“Um…” the man said, his hand so tight around Rikki’s upper arm that he was cutting off circulation. “B Deck, Something-something, 15A?”