death.
Her heart pounded. She had never felt like this on her own escapes. Not that she’d really run for her life as an adult. She’d slipped in and out of various high-end buildings, lots of space yachts, and more than her share of cabins on various cruise lines. She’d always worried a bit about being caught, but never worried that someone would kill her.
Plus, no one would ever figure out why she’d been in a room because she never stole anything—except information, of course. She figured that down the road, she would get caught and then she would tell them that she had the wrong room, that somehow her passcode had worked or the door was open or something along those lines.
And she knew that whoever caught her would think the moment strange, but would believe her because she had no record and nothing would disappear.
This felt different, though. It wasn’t her life or her liberty at stake.
It was Jack’s.
And she actually cared about that.
The caring had made her act differently, although she had tried hard not to. She had paid off employees so that she could get into the well-guarded section of the dock bay, one for the high-end visitors. The employees had had a price already set, which led her to believe that she wasn’t the first to ever do this.
Of course, on Krell, she probably wasn’t.
She scouted the ships herself, even though one of the employees had pointed her to the ships he believed were the most, in his words, “accessible.” She wondered if he got a fee when someone was caught or if he expected a finder’s fee for whatever was inside.
She had just thanked him and continued the search on her own. Certain models of space yachts were more secure than others. Plus, she had learned, over the years, that some models were easy to break into but hard to fly. She’d never stolen a space yacht. Scratch that—she hadn’t stolen one since she left her parents. (She’d made a daring escape at eight, and her parents had used her to communicate with various space ports, posing as a child who had somehow managed to fly a ship in trouble.)
But she had gotten into a lot of yachts, and because she collected information, she had looked at their navigation systems just to see which ones would be easiest to breach.
She found at least two here. She didn’t look at them too closely—she was afraid that employee would notice, and report it to someone—but she mentally marked where they were.
Then she left conspicuously, saying her thank-yous to all the employees whose coffers she’d fattened.
She wasn’t planning to bring Jack through the front door of the bay. She’d been to Krell often enough to learn the back passages. If the employees caught her, so be it. She had already paid them and she was willing to pay them more.
But she would do this one delicately, and delicately meant smuggling Jack out without anyone seeing his tall, lanky frame.
She wasn’t even going to suggest that he change his hair color or his clothing. That body of his (which she had enjoyed so much) would give him away every time.
She swallowed hard, then slipped into the corridor. She had kept an eye out for tails. The fact that she hadn’t seen any didn’t mean that she wasn’t being followed. Even though she had borrowed one of Jack’s jammers, she knew that some equipment was so sophisticated she wouldn’t be able to fool it. She hoped no one had tried to track her with anything like that.
Her heart started pounding as she got close to the room. She was afraid he had lied to her, afraid that he had left just after she had.
She had the frightened feeling that if he had done that, he would have died quickly.
She hoped he had trusted her long enough to remain safe.
When she reached the room, she opened the door with a palm scan. At first she didn’t see him. She had expected him to be somewhere nearby and he wasn’t.
Her breath shortened, and she had to will herself not to panic, not to make things up. She didn’t say his name. She didn’t say anything. She just let the door close behind her, and hoped for the best.
He peered around the bedroom door, worry lines creasing his forehead. Then those lines vanished. He smiled, just a little, and then ducked under the door frame.
Apparently he had been worried she wouldn’t return.
“You’re early,” he said.
“It took less time than I thought,” she said. “This next will be the hard part.”
She still wasn’t used to looking up at anyone, and she was looking up at him. She had watched him duck under that door frame, and she worried that he might have the same trouble in the back corridors.
“I don’t think we can hide you,” she said. “You’re too tall.”
He nodded. “That’s one thing enhancements can’t change. However, jammers can hide me if you tell me our route.”
“Jamming the security feeds will be suspicious,” she said.
“That’s not what I’m going to do,” he said. He walked over to the wall screen that she hadn’t touched. “I can get into Krell’s systems and change my signature on the security equipment.”
“Someone will find it,” Skye said.
He looked at her over his shoulder, then he grinned. “Yeah, someone will. If someone looks. The problem for Heller is that I was the only one on his team who could do things like this. The Rovers aren’t the Assassins Guild. They don’t have enough money to hire redundant employees.”
“Don’t Rovers get paid for their jobs?” she asked, rather than telling him that the Guild didn’t have anyone quite like her either. He might never understand that. She wasn’t sure the Guild did.
“Sure they do,” he said, “but they get the money directly and then pay the Rovers if they remember. When the job comes through the Rovers, the Rovers keep half of the up-front fee and let the assassin take the rest.”
“Sounds inefficient,” she said.
“Inefficient, impossible to enforce, and ripe for theft,” he said. “I always made sure I got paid up front.”
She shook her head. She couldn’t imagine working like that. It had to be stressful. Her salary and bonuses went to paying off her debts. But she could live off her expense account. If she decided to stay with the Guild after all her debts were paid off, she would make a small fortune.
All the time he spoke to her, he worked the screen. She shifted from foot to foot, not used to waiting for someone else. She had a plan. They needed to execute it, before Heller’s man got to the employees at the dock. If Heller’s man paid them more than Skye had—hell, if Heller’s man paid them less and then promised them a lot more with the capture and/or notification—then she and Jack were screwed.
“Is he smart enough to look at the security feed?” she asked.
“Never underestimate a Rover,” Jack said, still working.
“I meant—”
“I know what you meant. You folks at the Guild follow rules and rarely do anything that hasn’t been approved by someone somewhere. Rovers have to think on their feet. Of course, he would look at the security feed. He probably knows I’m in this room.”
Her breath caught. “Then we have to get out of here now.”
Jack pressed his entire hand on the screen, then turned around and grinned at her. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 17
Skye gave Jack an odd look, then raised her eyebrows just a little as if to say,
He had shut off all but his personal jammer. He hadn’t told her about that. She would probably protest. She would want him to jam as much as possible.
