by Kris Delake
The fire, the bruising, the battering that Rikki had undergone—those were the unusual things, things that didn’t fit into Orlinskaya’s usual pattern, things that made no sense, and ultimately made the investigation against her come to nothing.
But the authorities had her DNA on scene. They knew she had been there, that she was the only one who could have killed Rikki’s father.
They simply hadn’t known why.
Rikki couldn’t tell the security official on the ship any of this. She wasn’t sure exactly how she could tell Windham anything pertinent without blowing her cover. Rikki Bastogne was listed as an unregistered assassin in many databases, which could easily get her in trouble.
Yet she wanted to tell Windham how to look it up. She really wanted to. Because there, in the files, Windham would find pictures of Mikael Yurinovich Orlinski who, for the six years prior to the death of Rikki’s father, traveled with his mother on every single kill. Sometimes, the authorities weren’t certain if Orlinskaya had killed her victims herself or if she had sent Mikael to do so, like a female lion providing easy prey to train her cub in the art of survival.
For everyone agreed that Orlinskaya killed to survive. First she had killed at the behest of her government, and then, after decades and their decision to put a bounty on her head, she killed to protect herself (and her cub) and to put food on the table. Killing was all she had known.
It was all Rikki had known as well, but of course, she did not tell Windham this. She didn’t mention how the testing had gone before the authorities put her in government care, how she had shown an incredible aptitude for death-dealing as well.
Death-dealers had thousands of professions. Various societies had learned to recognize death-dealers because ignoring them caused crime and baseless murders. Channeling death-dealers into the military or mercenary positions or, yes, as assassins for hire, enabled society to keep these dangerous people under control.
Rikki had always thought it ironic that the culture thought her dangerous.
Or she did until the first time she had snapped the neck of a man five times her size.
Then she understood what everyone had seen in her.
And it hadn’t surprised her that this thing existed inside her. She remained calm, detached, oddly uncaring after those missions.
After all except Testrial, when she had lost herself in heat and warmth and sensation.
When she had lost herself in Halina Layla Orlinskaya’s son.
Rikki’s stomach turned. She had to swallow several times to keep herself from being ill.
When she had herself under control, she reached across the desk and grabbed Windham’s arm.
“Please,” Rikki said, the tremor in her voice very real, “you have to get me away from him. Somehow, you have to get me off this ship.”
Chapter 18
The lounge in B Deck didn’t seem nearly as exciting as it had the night before. Yeah, the lovely windows were still there. Misha could see himself reflected in them. He looked like he belonged here, in his long topcoat and his brocade vest. He leaned against the bar, a beer in hand, watching a couple at the roulette table lose a fortune.
It didn’t amuse him. Nothing did.
And it didn’t help that the overhead music was mostly waltzes. What was that all about, anyway? Encouragement to go to the ballroom?
He clutched the glass in his right hand and ignored the woman pressing up against him. She had been angling for his attention for nearly an hour now. She was pretty in a slutty way, wearing a dress that opened all the way to her navel revealing the mounds of her breasts without showing the nipples.
He had found Rikki a lot sexier in a gown that covered everything.
The light changed in the windows’ reflections. The door had opened again, and this time, voices hushed, leaving only the damn waltz music. Misha didn’t turn. He knew what the silence meant even before he saw the security guards searching the room.
It couldn’t be a coincidence that they were here, not with Rikki in the security office. What had she told them? She hadn’t confessed, had she?
For the first time, he regretted not going to his room. He wasn’t carrying all of his identification, which was something that usually helped when shipboard security tried to cause a problem in a place like the NetherRealm.
The guards came up on both sides of him. The guards didn’t have to move the woman in the slutty dress. She had vamoosed to a table beside the bar the minute the guards entered. So either she wasn’t supposed to be in the lounge, or she was working the room in the way that the square little guy had thought Rikki was working the ballroom.
“Mr. Orlinski?” one of the guards said softly, putting a hand on Misha’s arm. “Come with us, please.”
He bit back annoyance. They knew who he was. Rikki hadn’t told them; she didn’t know.
Or, at least, she hadn’t known that morning.
But something was happening. Maybe they figured out Testrial was missing and had run DNA on all of the passengers. When a passenger purchased a ticket on this cruise line, the passenger gave up all rights to privacy in cases of an emergency.
Maybe this was one of those emergencies.
Misha did not speak to the guards. He had learned long ago that if he was playing a rich passenger on a ship, that was a cover he shouldn’t drop, not even if the guards knew his real name.
He finished the beer without asking whether or not he could, and then he spun and walked to the door, trusting the guards to follow.
The other passengers watched him go, probably wondering what the hell it was that he had done.
He was wondering what the hell it was that he had done.
Although he would probably find out soon enough.
Chapter 19
Rikki was shaking. She hadn’t lost control of herself like this since—well, since last night. But not in quite the same way. Her cheeks flushed.
She slept with him. Willingly. The man who murdered her father. And he probably laughed at her the entire time.
Bess Windham didn’t look moved. She continued to look at the floating screens around her desk, the screens that were opaque from the back so that Rikki couldn’t see them.
“There’s no murder here,” Windham said.
“What?” Rikki asked. “He’s a member of the Assassins Guild, for God’s sake. You just told me that.”
Windham nodded. “By the laws of the various sectors, which he seems to be quite scrupulous in following, that means none of the deaths he was party to were murders. They were legal assassinations.”
The heat in Rikki’s cheeks rose. She felt unbelievably warm and cold at the same time, despite the fact that the environmental controls were set at comfortable. It was an emotional reaction. An emotional reaction only. She had to remember that.
“I know,” Rikki said as calmly as she could. “This would have happened before—”
She stopped herself. Windham was looking for a murder connected to Rachel Carter, not one connected to Rikki Bastogne.
Did Rikki give up her name here for protection?
She thought about it for a brief second. It was an impossible choice. Either she gave up her real name, which meant she gave up her profession, which put her under even more suspicion, or she backed off and dealt with it on her own.
She blinked hard, surprised at how easy it was to fake tears.
“Never mind,” she said. “Obviously, you don’t want to help me.”
She stood up, feigning outrage. Only she wasn’t really feigning, not really. She was outraged, at herself, mostly, but at Misha too. Or at Mikael Orlinski. God, she had slept with him. Enjoyed him.
And all the time, he had laughed at her.
What amazing cruelty.
She staggered away, hand to her throat, to the pretend injuries from the pretend attack that seemed a lot less like pretend now. She wished she had been assaulted while under the influence of touch drops. That was a lot more acceptable than the fact that she had slept
with her father’s killer.
Misha—Mikael, she had to call him Mikael—had known about it too. He had repeatedly told her he knew who she was. Repeatedly, as if giving her a clue.
And he smiled at her. A lot.
Damn him for smiling.
“Miss,” Windham said from behind her, “it’s not that I don’t believe you—”
“Oh, you don’t,” Rikki said, surprised to hear her voice wobble. “Just let me leave the ship when the time comes. Okay? Don’t charge me extra, and let me get off by some side exit.”
“It’s not normal procedure,” Windham said.
“Of course it’s not,” Rikki said and let herself out of the room. She tugged her dress up a bit, covering her neck and wiped at her eyes.
A hand banged against the door, so that it didn’t close. Windham was following her.
“We can give you some protection. Does he know what room you’re in?”
Rikki didn’t think so, but she wouldn’t put it past him. “I don’t know.”
“We’ll give you a new identi-card and a different room,” Windham said.
“What will that do?” Rikki said. “If he wants to kill me, he’ll find me. That’s how assassins work.”
She thought it ironic that she was explaining this to Windham, because Windham had no idea who she was.
“We can solve this,” Windham said.
“No, we can’t,” Rikki said. “I’ll just let my family know that if I turn up dead, you’re liable.”
If she had any family. She didn’t really, not blood family. Although she had Jack Hunter, her heart-brother. They’d been raised together in a government home for orphaned and abandoned children. She had taken care of him, and he had taken care of her.
He would care if she died.
But she couldn’t even give his name to Windham because Windham would tell him about Rachel Carter, not Rikki Bastogne.
Did Windham think she couldn’t get away from Misha—Mikael, dammit. Did she think he was that much smarter than she was?
Well, he had outsmarted her so far, but he had had information, information that she now had.
And, apparently, he went by the book. She rarely did. That would give her an advantage.
Windham grabbed her arm. Rikki whirled, ready to strike. No one grabbed her like that, particularly when she was upset.
“Let us help,” Windham said.
“What the hell does she need help for?” a strange voice said from the front of the security office.
Rikki looked up. The pugnacious bulldog man stood there, clutching a bandaged right hand.
The hand he had tried to grab her with. The hand she had bent backwards.
That flush in her cheeks grew even hotter.
She had had a hunch this plan would backfire.
And now it had.
Chapter 20
“She doesn’t need help,” the bulldog said. “She’s the one who attacked me.”
He stood near the desk, with the same security official who had first greeted Rikki. That official was standing near the bulldog, looking a bit confused. The official took a step back, raised his hands as if he was the one being arrested, and glanced at Windham.
Rikki couldn’t see Windham’s response, but she felt it. Windham let go of her arm.
“What’s this?” Windham asked from behind Rikki.
“That bi—woman,” the bulldog said. “She broke my thumb.”
He waved his injured hand around. If the thumb had been broken, then some medical bot had set it and wrapped it so he wouldn’t use it while the heal-a-bone grafted over the break.
Rikki just stood in place, completely off balance. She usually knew how to flow with changes, but the realization of who Misha—Mikael, dammit—was had left her completely unable to form rapid thoughts.
“I just wanted a dance,” the man said, “and she attacked me.”
“I did not attack him,” Rikki said. “He grabbed me. I stopped him.”
She would have to stick with that story.
“So the man with the touch drops,” Windham said, “you didn’t hurt him?”
Rikki glared at her. This was over. She had the information she wanted, and she would deal with Misha—damn, damn, damn, Mikael—on her own.
“No wonder you warn people that they’re on their own legally on these ships,” Rikki snapped. “We really are. You not only have no jurisdiction, but you abdicate all effort of even trying to keep us secure. I’m sorry I came here.”
She shoved past the bulldog, who stepped away from her as if she frightened him, then banged open the security door.
As she did, she nearly hit a group of people coming down the hall. She looked up and found herself face to face with Misha.
Mikael.
Whatever his name was.
His eyes widened, and he looked really, really sympathetic. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“You tell me,” she snapped, her heart racing. She didn’t want to be anywhere near him.
“Rik—”
She lifted a hand. “Don’t say another word,” she said and hurried past him.
The discomfort she’d been playing at when she first went into the security office was play no longer. Her breath was coming in small gasps. She had to get away from him, from them, hell, she wanted off this ship, and she wasn’t sure quite how she wanted to do it.
But she would figure out a way.
She headed to the lift, Misha calling behind her, not using her name now, smart man.
“Wait,” he said. “Just for a few minutes. Wait.”
Yeah, right. The last thing she wanted to do was wait for this man. She never wanted to see him again, never wanted his fake sympathy. Never wanted him.
She got on the lift and closed her eyes.
How could he still be so attractive with all that she knew about him? Why was it so hard to resist his voice?
Did he know that about her?
She made herself take a deep breath as the lift took her to K Deck. She would barricade herself in her room. She would come up with a new plan.
She would get the hell off this ship.
She had to.
Chapter 21
Something was very wrong. Rikki had looked at him like she had never looked at him before. With bafflement and anger and… fear?… was that fear he saw? He couldn’t be sure.
Misha stood in the hallway, the security guards around him, and he watched Rikki run to the lift. She no longer seemed like the confident goddess he had seen in the ballroom, but like a woman in trouble.
He frowned, then glanced at the security office. Had they figured out that she had killed Testrial?
“Mr. Orlinski?” one of the security guards said. “You’re wanted inside.”
He didn’t move. He continued to stare at the lift. He could no longer see Rikki, but he had this sense that he should go after her, that he should find her.
He surreptitiously checked his tracker, saw that her icon was moving toward K Deck. He let out a small sigh. He would find her as soon as he was done here.
He turned away from the lift, nodded at the security officer still holding the door, and stepped inside. Then he stopped. That square little man, the one who claimed that Rikki had hurt him, stood near the door, clutching his bandaged hand.
Misha frowned. A woman standing in the corridor frowned back at him.
“Mr. Orlinski,” she said in a businesslike voice. “A word, if you please.”
“That bitch’s been lying to them,” the square little man whispered. “Claims she’s the victim, not us.”
Misha shot him a confused look. Misha hadn’t thought of himself as a victim, and he suspected the square man got what he deserved. But he didn’t say anything. Instead, he followed the security woman into the corridor.
She stopped a few yards from the door, near a group of other doors, but not inside any office.
“I’ve become aware of who you really are, Mr. Orlinski,” she said in a
formal tone. “You do know that assassins are supposed to register with us whenever they ride Mariposa Starlines. You did not do so. In fact, you used a false name.”
What was Rikki up to? Why had she given him away? Had she told them about Testrial? Had she said he had killed Testrial?
Misha frowned, and forced himself to concentrate. “Actually, Ms.—”
He peered at her, but she didn’t give him her name. So he continued.
“Assassins are not required to register with any starline unless we are following a high-profile target, and there is the possibility of a high-profile death. Even then, it’s recommended that an assassin report to the starline after the death so as not to compromise the completion of the job.”
The woman huffed, and her mouth became a thin line. “Recommended by the Guild, I suppose,” she said.
He nodded.
“I don’t like it, Mr. Orlinski. You should have contacted us.”
She wasn’t saying anything about Testrial. It felt odd.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
“See that you don’t,” she said, then nodded at him, as if she expected him to leave.
He turned and started to go, when she added,
“One more thing, Mr. Orlinski.”
He stopped just like she wanted him to. But he didn’t turn around. He was a paying passenger after all. A paying wealthy passenger. She didn’t dare mess with him too much.
She said, “I understand that you might have been using touch drops last evening.”
“What?” Now he did turn around, so fast that she actually backed up one step before catching herself.
“I’ll have you know that we don’t allow the use of touch drops on this ship. They’re illegal most places and they’re just plain nasty.”
“I don’t use touch drops,” he said. “I’ve never used touch drops. Who told you that I did?”
But he knew the answer before he finished the question. Damn Rikki. What was she playing at? She knew that he hadn’t used touch drops. There had been no aphrodisiac involved. Not a one, or the two of them would have loathed each other by the next morning.
