Spy to Die For

all leave traces, Skye. Sometimes the traces are really simple ones. We’ve left a lot of DNA in this ship, and no matter how thoroughly we clean it, we won’t get it all.”

He half thought she’d smile at the comment about DNA, but she didn’t. Instead she set that slice of apple back on her plate.

“You’re afraid they’ll find you,” she said. “They probably won’t, particularly if what you say about the Rovers is true. If you were their go-to guy and you’re gone, then who would search?”

He had wondered that himself. It would take a long time for someone else to learn his job—not that they could. They’d have to already know how to do it, because there was no one in the Rovers or affiliated with them who knew how to get information the way that Jack did.

“I want this settled,” he said. “I don’t want to spend my entire life on the run. I don’t want to worry that if I relax for one moment, someone will find me and assassinate me. I mean, imagine if I have a family or something. You know these assassins. They’ll take out an entire neighborhood to get one guy.”

She made a sound of astonishment. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I wish I were.” That was another thing that had disgusted him about the Rovers. At first, Jack thought he could stop the killing of innocents by better research. He could even give some assassins real-time information.

But so many of them didn’t want to hear from him at all, and so many of them didn’t care who they hurt in the process of earning their money.

Sure, governments could prosecute for collateral damage, but so many of the governments either hired Rovers or members of the Assassins Guild that they often did nothing at all. And when they did do something, it was usually in the form of levying a small fine, something any well-paid assassin could easily afford.

“Well,” Skye said primly. He hadn’t thought she was capable of prim. “No one in the Guild would level a neighborhood to get one target.”

He swiveled in his chair. Her naivete was breathtaking.

“Really?” he said. “Because I know of several cases in which that happened, and those were Guild cases.”

“I’m sure whoever did it was sanctioned or kicked out of the Guild.” Skye still sounded prim, although there was a small frown in the middle of her forehead.

“No, they haven’t,” Jack said. “Most of the folks I know about still work for the Guild. In fact, some of them have risen pretty high in the Guild infrastructure.”

She took a deep breath. “That’s seen as punishment. The Guild has a lot of rules, a code, really, and anyone who violates it—”

“Gets kicked out, demoted, or can no longer act as an assassin.” He leaned back, having a sudden thought. “Were you demoted?”

She laughed, then frowned when she realized he wasn’t laughing with her. “You’re serious.”

“Yes,” he said.

“No,” she said. “I never became an assassin in the first place. I didn’t lie to you about that.”

Now he had offended her and he hadn’t meant to. She was helping him for no reason he could understand.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and meant it. He had worked alone too long. He really had no idea how to deal with other people on more than a casual basis.

He didn’t say anything else. He finished his meal instead. Then he picked up both plates and headed to the kitchen.

He really did need to make some decisions, and he needed to make them alone.

Chapter 25

Skye remained motionless in her chair. Jack had offended her.

He had offended her about the Guild.

She found that very strange.

She would have said she hadn’t felt enough loyalty to the Guild to be offended. After all, they had essentially tricked her just to get her services.

Yes, they had taken her in as a ten-year-old, but then they had had her sign a legal document at fourteen, the earliest age they could, telling her that they would cover her room, board, and schooling, which she could work off long after she graduated.

She had always thought she could work off that schooling as a chef or a teacher or one of the support staff at the Guild. And then, when the Guild put her into assassin’s training, she balked. She had said she didn’t want to be an assassin.

And they told her she had signed up for it.

She went through everything, and failed much of it, because she wasn’t suited to it. Her case had gone all the way to the top of the Guild. Director Ammons made a deal with her, so that she would spy for them instead of kill for them. Skye was stuck with it, until her massive debt was paid off.

She always said she hated them for that.

And yet she had just defended them to Jack.

Did she actually care about the Guild?

She stood up. He had left, clearly troubled. His apology had sounded heartfelt. Poor man. He had a lot to deal with right now. Including her.

And including their rival organizations.

Or rather, his former organization.

What had he done for them to want him dead? What did he know?

Maybe he should share that with her, and then they’d be able to solve this all together.

He had to know something that would threaten the Rovers’ very existence. Right? Or was this Heller guy just acting alone?

Something moved in the spacescape in the back corner of the room. It took her half a minute to remember that they were in the cockpit of a ship. She had been so focused on Jack, on the past, that she had lost track of where she was.

She went back to the navigation panel, and tapped it, magnifying the image a thousand times of whatever she had seen.

Ships. She saw ships.

And they seemed to be heading toward Rapido.

She hit the ship-wide communications array.

“Jack, I need you here now,” she said.

Then she poured over the route that Rapido had set. It was random, like she had programmed. Then she went deeper into the navigational system and found something she had missed earlier: This ship had a program that allowed it to bypass “dangerous” systems. The program was customized, meaning that whoever owned Rapido had designed the dangerous systems route to stay away from places where he was in danger, whatever that meant.

She was afraid she knew what it meant.

“What?” Jack ducked under the door.

“Look.” She showed him the ships. The navigation panel showed that they were even closer than they had been.

Then she explained about the dangerous route program.

“Crap.” Jack sank into his chair. “So what we know about this guy gets worse with each passing moment. He took an expensive ship built for speed to Krell, which isn’t the most savory place in the universe. He has more aliases than a Rover with a death wish, and he has places he needs to avoid. We, of course, flew right into one of them.”

Somehow she felt that as a personal affront, although she knew that Jack didn’t mean it that way. “If I’d