Spy to Die For

Jack wanted to let Rikki know right away, but Skye stopped him. Skye normally didn’t pay attention to other people’s relationships, but she remembered that one. Misha and Liora were mismatched from the beginning. Liora had lorded it over all of the other women that she had been involved with him, and Misha apparently hadn’t noticed.

When he did, or when something else happened, something Skye did not know want to know about ever (she believed other people’s relationships should be private—extremely private), then he broke up with Liora.

The breakup had been so ugly that Skye avoided both of them. Misha, because Liora stalked him and made nasty comments to any woman who was near him, and Liora because—well, because she had become so very bitter.

She had been so disruptive that the management of the Guild had disciplined her over her behavior. Skye remembered that too, because she had been stunned to see someone else get disciplined and she had also been stunned that the Guild had actually acted against one of its best assassins.

She explained all of this to Jack, who stared at the connection for the longest time.

“And this Olliver woman is the one who hired Heller,” he said.

Skye nodded.

“Don’t you find that odd?” he asked.

“I find it all odd,” she said.

He stood up and arched his back. It popped. Then he reached upward and touched the ceiling. His arms remained bent. She couldn’t touch the ceiling if her life depended on it. Not without standing on a chair or something.

“This discipline that she got, was it severe?” he asked.

“Based on what?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know that much about the Guild.”

She thought about it. She thought her relationship with the Guild was severe, but she had never been disciplined.

Other people had, though. Some got demoted and were no longer assassins. They got moved to other parts of the Guild. Some were happy to be off the assassin track and probably violated some rule so that they would be demoted and not have to kill for a living.

But people like Liora, they rarely got disciplined, and almost never for something personal.

“She was on an accelerated track,” Skye said, thinking out loud. “She was the best at everything, which always made me feel stupid because I was pretty bad at most of it.”

“What’s everything?” Jack asked.

“You know, shooting, using knives, figuring out how new weapons worked. She could hit targets from a crazy distance, but she preferred to be up close. And if there was a timed test, she often beat the time.”

Jack looked down at Skye. She wanted to tell him to sit. This standing made her uncomfortable.

“I thought you didn’t pay attention to other people,” he said.

“It was hard not to with her. The teachers and judges who weren’t very observant always confused us. We look alike.”

Jack frowned. “I saw her. She shares your body type, but it’s pretty clear that she is nothing like you.”

“Not to most of the folks at the Guild. They wanted me to be her. They usually forgot I even existed—until I wanted out, that is. Then everyone knew me.” Skye sounded bitter, but she was bitter. No, check that. She was angry. Furious.

And she’d been happy to see Liora disciplined.

“What happened after she got disciplined?” Jack asked.

“She had to go through some sensitivity training or something, I don’t know,” Skye said. “She couldn’t leave the Guild for months. I remember that because I ran into her during that time and wow, was she nasty. I remember saying to Hazel Sanchez, who’d also been in class with us, that the discipline didn’t seem to be working.”

“And what did your friend say?” Jack asked.

Skye started. She hadn’t said that Hazel Sanchez was her friend. “Um, she said that the discipline generally didn’t work. It usually pissed people off, and if she were in charge, she’d make sure they revamped the entire program.”

He pointed at Skye as if she had said that. “There’s the link,” he said and got back in his chair.

He leaned toward one of the other screens and started tapping at it.

“Is there any way, besides forcing you to remember, to know who got disciplined and who didn’t?”

“That’s not an easily accessible file,” Skye said. “And I don’t remember most of who got disciplined. It really didn’t matter to me.”

“I figured,” he said, sounding distracted. “Can we hack into the private Guild files?”

“We’ll get found a lot faster if we do,” she said.

“Is there a way to figure it out without getting into the private Guild files?”

She sat down beside him. “There is a pattern. Someone is on a career track, then they get yanked off —”

“For months, right?” he said.

“Yeah,” she said. “And they get sidelined in the Guild, and then they’re never on the same track.”

“So this Liora Olliver, she lost her entire career because she had relationship issues.”

“They weren’t issues,” Skye said. “She was stalking him and—”

“You know what I mean,” Jack said.

“Yeah, I do,” she said. “Liora never got promoted after that. She got passed over for all kinds of assignments.”

“And you know that…?”

“Because she bitched about it. She came to me and said that we were two of a kind because we were both bound to the Guild. She had to serve some months doing what they wanted. I told her that we were nothing alike and if she ever said that again, I’d figure out a way to hurt her.”

Skye spoke with the same kind of force she’d used when she threatened Liora.

“You said that to an assassin?” Jack asked.

Skye raised her chin. “I could do it if someone made me mad enough. I’d be stealthy and I probably wouldn’t have physically hurt her. I might’ve hurt her identity or something, but yeah, I would—”

“I’m just impressed,” Jack said.

Skye flushed. Someone else’s opinion hadn’t really mattered to her before.

“Thanks,” she said, knowing the word was inadequate.

He nodded, looking down at the screens, as if what had just passed between them hadn’t been important.

Maybe it hadn’t been to him, but to her, it was a revelation. She let out a small breath. He was becoming important to her.

She didn’t want him to be.

Or did she?

“It’s going to take some work to figure out who got yanked off career paths,” Jack said. “These older files are counterintuitive.”

She took another deep breath, glad he wasn’t looking at her. “Yet, it would all be in the older files.”

She kept her head down, then moved to the other side of the table. She didn’t want to think about Jack right now. She wanted to focus on this search.

But he was very distracting.

“I think we can set up search perimeters,” she said.

“How?” he asked. “It seems to me that being demoted is a personal thing. That whole career track would be something someone would sense, rather than actually experience.”

“You are such a Rover,” she said.

His head came up quickly. He wasn’t smiling.

She held up her hand.