search through it, and if she avoided trigger words, then no one would ever hear this conversation.
Of course, she had no idea what the trigger words were, so she could only hope she would avoid them.
Jack grabbed the cups and handed her hers. He sipped his. He looked a bit nervous, as if something she had said unnerved him.
Although he’d been nervous since they arrived. Even before he loudly stated that he didn’t want to stay here, she had the sense that he hated Zaeen.
She didn’t feel much better about it.
“This morning,” she said, then paused. “I think it was
“Our morning,” he said.
“When I saw one of the most proficient members of the Guild talking to Heller, I started worrying. She had to have a reason to hire someone like him.” She decided to skip the word “assassin,” figuring that might trigger something. She hoped Jack would be as cautious.
“Someone proficient?” he asked, and it took her a moment to understand. He had clearly taken her cue and was also avoiding trigger words. He sipped his beverage again. He seemed to have relaxed since she started into this.
She took a sip of her beverage too. She’d only asked for lemon-flavored water, and that was what she got. She was thirsty, and she hadn’t even realized it until now.
At some point, both of them would have to stop and actually sleep. Not do anything else. Just sleep.
But the idea of being in a bed with Jack made her cheeks warm. She wondered if he could sense what she was thinking about. Probably not, since he seemed preoccupied with what she had just told him.
“She’s one of the best,” Skye said. “And here’s the thing. She said that he was the third in line. She said there was a chance that they wouldn’t need him, but they were reserving his time.”
“For what?” Jack asked.
Skye shrugged. “She was going to send the information to an account, along with payment. She wasn’t just reserving him. She was reserving a team.”
“Oh, God,” Jack said. He seemed to understand what that meant. “This may be tied to something I know, but we can’t discuss it here.”
Then he glanced around, somewhat pointedly. She got the message, even if she hadn’t had it before.
“However, I can ask a few questions,” he said. “Is this woman someone you’re investigating?”
“No,” Skye said. “But there’ve been some unusual things coming out of the Guild, and they don’t entirely make sense. I’m worried, and that’s what I was going to investigate.”
“Worried how?” Jack asked.
“The Guild’s all about rules and regulations. I think there’s a rogue element, not following those regulations.”
“You want to stop that?” Jack asked.
She smiled. She had told him enough to make that question relevant.
Then food popped up from that same part of the table. Her sandwich stood six inches high and had more food stacked around it. It smelled of ham and cheese and fresh bread.
Jack’s was identical, except that it had chicken and different vegetables. Otherwise, there was the same kind of bread and just as much unnecessary food.
“We could have split something,” Skye said.
“And still had enough to feed an army,” Jack said. But he reached over, grabbed his plate, and slid it to him. As he did, silverware and napkins popped up near him.
She grabbed her own food and slid it toward her. After just a few hours, Jack was clearly beginning to figure her out.
That should bother her more than it did.
“Initially, I started tracking this rogue group because I thought maybe I should join them,” she said. “I was looking at a variety of possibilities. I figured that if I could find someone else who broke the rules, I might get permission to break more of them. Then I realized that it was more pervasive than that, so I thought I could use these people as an excuse to get me out of the Guild.”
Jack hadn’t picked up his sandwich yet. He was watching her intently. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been the subject of such regard from someone.
She picked up a baby carrot, which looked fresher than any she’d seen in a while.
“The more I investigated, the more furtive it all seemed,” she said. “And not in a good way. These people were up to something, but what, I couldn’t tell. It bothered me. After all, my job is to investigate things, and I started investigating my own people, and I found things that disturbed me.”
“But things you could use if you wanted to,” Jack said.
She shook her head. “It was more than that,” she said. “It was… scary, on some level. I only got bits and pieces, but what I got didn’t seem right.”
“Right for what?” he asked.
“Right for… decency?” Her voice went up at the end. She wasn’t even sure herself. She had hated the Guild for so long that she knew her feelings about the Guild weren’t always a great guide.
“You found it hard to believe that the Guild broke the rules?” he asked, sounding like he didn’t find it hard at all.
“It wasn’t that the Guild broke the rules,” she said, “although that was part of it. No one trained by the Guild broke the Guild’s rules, not without punishment.”
“Provided they got caught,” Jack said.
She switched the carrot to the other hand. “Yeah. And I haven’t reported them yet, because I want to know what they’re up to. But each time I find something, I discover something else.”
Jack wrapped his long fingers around his sandwich. Skye realized that one of the reasons she hadn’t picked up hers was because it was so thick. She set the carrot down and grabbed her knife and fork instead.
“Heller,” Jack said, “and his people only do one kind of job.”
She so appreciated Jack’s caution. She understood what he meant. Heller and the Rovers were assassins, nothing else.
“I know,” she said.
“So why would someone from the Guild need Heller and what does it mean, as a backup?” Jack took a bite of the sandwich. Parts fell all over the plate. That didn’t seem to bother him.
“I have a theory.” She pressed down on the bread. The interior of the sandwich squished out. He was making a mess. It didn’t matter if she did.
But she wouldn’t be able to talk and eat at the same time.
“One of the Guild’s directors got murdered a while ago,” Skye said. “Someone in-house did it, and everyone said that person was crazy. But what if that’s not true? What if it was supposed to happen? I mean, everyone in the Guild must submit to constant medical testing, both physical and psychological. I can’t imagine how someone’s craziness got through the tests.”
“Yet all this behind-the-scenes suspicious stuff is going on,” Jack said.
“But that’s not crazy,” Skye said. “I’m not sure it would come out in tests.”
Jack nodded. “Have you investigated the director’s death?”
“It happened before I was one of the investigators for the Guild,” Skye said. “There’s some kind of rift, and it’s been around for a while. I just keep thinking that the only reason to hire an outside killer—”
“Is to hide the Guild conspiracy,” Jack said.
She shuddered. She hadn’t really thought about that word until now.
“But why?” she asked. “I mean, if you don’t like the Guild, leave after your time period is up. Start a new organization or join Heller’s organization. Or start your own company. There’s no reason to destroy the Guild.”
“Unless you hate it,” Jack said.
He spoke quietly, calmly, as if hating the Guild were the most normal thing in the universe.
