Jack—at least to the best of her abilities.
She left the suite they’d shared, gone back to the captain’s suite, which had the most comfortable living area, and modified the secondary navigation access panel. She put all kinds of restrictions on it from DNA scanning to passcodes that she had stolen from other people’s accounts to an emergency voice code.
No one could break into this navigation panel even if they wanted to.
She closed her eyes for a brief moment before starting. Would he be offended that she didn’t trust him? Or would he understand?
Should she even care about that?
She wasn’t certain.
Then she opened her eyes. She couldn’t change who she was, not for anyone.
So she went to work.
Chapter 40
After two hours of searching, Jack could find almost no information on Skye. He had expected that. It both thrilled and disappointed him. He saw the lack of information as a confirmation of much of what she’d told him, but he also realized he might never be able to verify what he’d learned about her in any real fashion.
It surprised him how much he needed to verify.
The last two days had shown him that a lack of information put him in jeopardy. He had known that before, and he had realized it again.
He stood up, stretched, and listened to his back crack. He could access old Guild files like he had done once before, and he still might do that. He wasn’t sure what he’d be looking for about Skye—maybe confirmation that she had gone to school there. But he would be able to find out information about Misha for Rikki, and he could say that was what he was doing if Skye caught him.
He glanced at the navigation board and saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Then he realized what thought had gone through his head.
He hadn’t been. He’d been doing his job.
But was it wrong to investigate a lover? He didn’t know. He’d never taken a lover before whom he had known so little about. He had never taken a lover whom he was attracted to first and foremost. Usually he’d like the information he’d learned about the woman more than the woman herself.
He’d never done it backward before.
And, thinking of Skye, he wondered if she was still asleep.
He clicked off the computer setup, reactivated all of the lockdowns so no one could break in, and left the cockpit. He went to that infamous third bed and saw the rumpled sheets, but no Skye. He peered in the bathroom, noted that it was different than he had left it.
Skye was up, somewhere. He could ask the shipboard computer where she was, but he decided to look for her.
He found her in the captain’s cabin, hunched over one of the navigational accesses.
“Skye?” he asked.
She jumped, then looked at him guiltily. He wondered what she’d been doing, and resisted the urge to get close enough to check.
“You hungry?” he asked, because he could think of nothing else to say.
She nodded. She tapped the screen in front of her, then stood.
She wore one of the outfits she had bought on Zaeen. Their clothes shopping had been haphazard. Mostly they’d told the robot clerks to bring them clothing in their sizes and then bought it all. It was easier than making choices.
Still, the choices she had made emphasized how lithe her body was, and accented the blackness of her hair. The wedge cut was combed now, and she looked completely put together, not the wild woman he had discovered in all those beds.
She came over to him, slipping her arm through his. “Checking up on me, huh?” he asked.
She stiffened.
He smiled to himself. He’d been doing the same with her.
“Did you find much?” he asked.
“Not after you left Tranquility House,” she said. “And nothing before that.”
He nodded, then decided for full honesty. “I didn’t find much on you either.”
She glanced at him sideways, tilted her head back, revealing that lovely neck, and then laughed. “We’re quite a pair.”
“Yeah,” he said. “We are.”
Then, because he couldn’t help it, he kissed her. She slipped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. They fell against the door frame.
“We really need to eat,” she muttered against him.
“We do,” he agreed as he lifted her and carried her to the bed. It wasn’t his preferred bed, but it would do. “Later, okay?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said as she opened his shirt. “Later is just fine.”
Chapter 41
Skye spent the next several days in a sex-induced haze. That was the only way she could describe it to herself. She researched Liora Olliver and explored everything she could find about the Guild, but she did it between sessions in bed with Jack.
In bed, on the built-in couches, on the table in the kitchen, in the showers, on the cockpit floor—
He was endlessly inventive, and she was endlessly appreciative.
And she tried not to think about the implications of it all. That moment of terror after they had first fallen asleep together kept resurfacing. She wasn’t made to be close to anyone.
But for the past several days, she pretended that she was.
When she wasn’t spending time with Jack, she dug into Guild files. She found some connections with the Rovers that she hadn’t known existed. Apparently, the Rovers called themselves that because they had “roved” away from the Guild.
In the early years of the Rovers, most of the assassins had been Guild trained. Either they had been banished from the Guild, or left after they had finished their apprenticeship. They all complained that they didn’t like the Guild’s tight rules, and they all claimed they preferred to be loners.
Some in the Guild believed that they liked receiving full payment for a job instead of paying a commission to the Guild.
But she had no way of knowing that.
Most of the early Rovers were dead or retired now. And none of them seemed to have a connection to Heller.
Only Liora Olliver had one, and the only way Skye knew about that was because of the meeting. Skye could find no other obvious connections.
Her research made her more and more uneasy, though, and she blamed some of her inability to assemble the pieces on a distraction named Jack Hunter.
She would wake up, often alone since he was more restless than she was, and think she needed to bring the ship into a port, so that they could go on their separate ways. They had helped each other, and they had taught each other about the two organizations.
