Spy to Die For

“Here’s what you don’t know,” he said softly. “I love you. I will always love you, no matter what happens. And I do want something permanent with you. But if this is all we ever have, I’m happy we’ve had it. My life is so much better with you in it. Thank you.”

Then he turned quickly, and let himself out of the cockpit.

She was shaking, his words echoing in her ears.

“Dammit, Jack,” she said, wishing he could hear her. “I love you too.”

Chapter 52

As Jack took the ladder down to the lower levels of the ship, he hoped Skye was tracking him. He couldn’t communicate with her—he had to bet that Heller was monitoring the comm system, as well as the ship’s elevator. Which was why Jack had crammed himself into the engineering ladders, designed only for times when the elevator wasn’t working well.

He barely fit in the rounded hole that the designers had carved into the middle of the ship. The rungs of the ladder were set so that it would be easy for someone Skye’s size to go down quickly.

He kept getting tangled up in his own limbs. But he was moving as fast as he could, and as quietly as he could.

Jack hoped Skye switched the environmental system immediately. He wouldn’t put it past Heller to poison the ship’s atmosphere and then leave. That would be the easiest and most efficient way to kill them.

It would also be cowardly.

And somewhat stupid, because eventually someone would find the ship with the bodies on it. The sector government would get involved and figure out that there was no reason to kill Skye and Jack except simple murder. The Assassins Guild might actually seek retribution.

Heller wasn’t dumb. He probably knew all of that, which was why Jack was gambling that Heller wouldn’t do that.

Of course, Heller might change the atmosphere, then set a bomb. That would be smarter, particularly if the bomb had a timer. Heller could get far away, and no one would know exactly what happened.

If Jack were a betting man, that plan was what he would have put money on. Heller would do his best to kill them, and then dispose of the evidence.

But Heller thought he had time. He figured neither Jack nor Skye knew that Heller was after Jack.

Jack hoped the information would give him an advantage.

Because he wasn’t sure what the hell kind of advantage it would give them. He was an untrained guy, going up against a trained assassin. If he got too close, Heller could just break his neck.

Jack paused on the lower level. Skye had brought a laser pistol on board. She kept all of her things in the main master suite one level down from the cockpit. He eased off the ladder onto that level.

He had to hurry. He slipped down the hall, listening hard for unusual sounds, hoping that Heller hadn’t somehow made his way here.

The master suite was at the far end of the corridor—better views from the portholes on the edge of the ship—and he cursed that. He wanted to get in and out as rapidly as possible.

Each second seemed to take an hour. He reached the door to the suite, opened it, and dashed inside.

The pistol wasn’t near Skye’s research area. She kept everything neat, which he usually appreciated. Right now, though, he wanted a messy desk with her clothes strewn on the floor, and the laser pistol on top of everything.

Instead, he had to search drawers and closets until he found it.

It was inside one of her coats, as safe as it could be in this haphazard collection of clothing and stuff she had accumulated on Zaeen.

He grabbed the pistol, examined it to make sure he knew how to use it, then set the safety and jammed the entire thing in his belt. He didn’t have time to finesse anything.

He had to find Heller, and he had to do it fast.

Chapter 53

For the first time in her life, Skye hated being alone. She paced the cockpit, wishing it were bigger just so that she had more area to walk in. She had all of the screens up as holograms, and she monitored everything.

Monitoring was all that she could do.

She had sped up the Hawk as fast as it could go, hoping that she might get to Kordita before anything bad happened. Jack would probably tell her not to do this, but she had hopes that Kordita’s space cops would be able to help her before the Hawk exploded and took other ships with it.

As she had sped up the Hawk, she had also separated the environmental system of the cockpit from the rest of the Hawk. She had realigned all of the Hawk’s navigational and engineering controls to the cockpit and sealed that realignment with DNA identification and a living hand confirmation. She had locked down this level.

No one, not even Jack, was going to get up here without her help.

She tried to watch what was happening on the video security system, but apparently Heller had shut that down the moment he crawled into the cargo bay. He had entered alone—she saw his scrawny form ease the bay doors open—and then the video went off, as did the heat signature monitoring.

Somehow he had done that without tripping any alarms up here. If this ended well—when this ended well —she would figure out how he did that.

Right now, she kept an eye on the only monitors she had—the heat signatures on the lower decks outside of the cargo bay. The video security got shut off everywhere, but the heat signatures remained everywhere except the cargo bay.

So she could keep an eye on Jack—at least at the moment.

The security system had registered him as a little red dot, which she would have found amusing if it weren’t so stressful. Nothing about Jack was little—not his body, not his brain, and certainly not his courage.

Damn him for that courage.

It was going to get him killed.

And then she really would be alone.

She watched the red dot hesitate near the next lower level, and for a moment, she worried that Heller had found Jack. Then she realized that she would see Heller as a heat signature if he were outside the cargo bay.

Jack was clearly contemplating something else.

And then she realized what it was. He had stopped one floor down and run toward the master suite.

She knew what he had gone for.

Her laser pistol.

And that broke her heart.

He hadn’t had the lessons she had, the training she had. He probably didn’t know that superior firepower meant nothing when facing off with a good assassin, or even with a better trained opponent.

When she’d been training, she’d gone into several simulations with a laser pistol—as the only person armed in the room—and she had been disarmed and fake-killed within seconds. Once she’d actually sprained her arm trying to wrench the pistol away from her opponent. Her trainer had later told her that had that been a real fight, the opponent would have broken her arm, and then broken her neck.

“Jack,” she whispered.

He was going to leave her. Only unlike her parents, unlike everyone else in her life, he wouldn’t leave intentionally. He would leave because Heller would kill him.