by Kris Delake
The surprise made her take a step back. When she had been a Rover, they were just unaffiliated assassins, trying to help each other out. “What? No, I didn’t know that.”
“I want to believe you,” Misha said, “but you see how hard it is? You were part of their group. They target Guild members. You targeted me.”
“I did not,” she said.
“Except on the ship,” he said. “You left me to take the blame for Testrial.”
Her eyes stung. She blinked hard. “When I found out who you were.”
He looked at her intently, as if he was trying to see through her. “Tell me why I should trust you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t play games like that.”
The statement made him wince as if she had said something that reminded him of something else.
“Games,” he muttered, then frowned. And nodded once. “When did you get this?”
“Get what?” she asked, trying to follow the logic of the conversation. Half of it was taking place in his head.
“The information about Kerani,” he said.
Ah, that made sense. He was trying to figure out a timeline. “Yesterday, just before you arrived,” she said.
“So you haven’t had time to research it,” he said. Like that was important.
Maybe it was.
“I was going to research it after I had lunch,” she said.
“Lunch.” He smiled for the first time. His mood suddenly seemed lighter. “We need to eat.”
“Yes,” she said a bit stiffly. “We do.”
He took three more steps toward her. It took all of her strength to hold her ground. He reached for her, slipped his hand along the side of her face, and kissed her.
Not a simple kiss, not a touch. But one of those kisses that made her hot all over. She wanted to lean into him, but she didn’t. She wanted to melt into the kiss, lose herself in him like she had done the day before, but she held onto herself so tightly that she barely moved.
Although she kissed him back.
She couldn’t stop herself from kissing him back.
He leaned back, and looked at her, his eyes that deep blue again. He ran a thumb along her face. “Let’s work on this together.”
“You think I’m with the Rovers,” she said. “You think I’m targeting your precious Guild.”
He shook his head just a little. “I think something strange is going on,” he said. “I think you and I are both part of it, but not willingly.”
She thought about Jack’s strange expression, about the way he had spoken about the Rovers. There weren’t many unaffiliated assassins anymore. Just her and a few others.
She had gotten out of the Rovers because they had started talking about rules. And dues. And organizing.
She hated organizations.
Her heartbeat had increased. She was probably flushed. “What exactly do you want to work on?” she asked. “You don’t want to target this woman, do you?”
“Of course not,” he said. He let his hand drop. Then he tilted his head slightly. “You don’t take every job you get, do you?”
“No,” she said, a little offended that he would even think so.
“You research them first, right?”
“Yes,” she said, feeling even more offended.
“So let’s research who wants to hire you. There’s got to be a reason behind this,” Misha said.
She shrugged. “The mission seems easy to me. Someone wants to bring down the Guild.”
He shook his head. “It’s not that simple. Our last director was murdered. The Guild survived.”
“You think this might be personal?” Rikki asked.
“I don’t know what to think,” Misha said. “Except that I think you and I can help each other, and we should.”
It was a risk. It was a big risk. She was trusting him, and she hadn’t trusted anyone in her life except Jack. And even then, she hadn’t trusted Jack with everything.
“All right,” she said after a minute. “But lunch first.”
“And groceries,” he said with a bit of grin. “How do you feel about working naked?”
“I have a hunch we’d get nothing done,” she said.
“I think we’d get a lot done,” he said. “But probably no work.”
“No probably about it,” she said and kissed him. Quickly. Without touching anything but his lips.
It wasn’t like she had anything to steal. Not for someone from the Guild, anyway. Her risk had less to do with work than it did with her life. And he had had opportunities to hurt her, kill her, ruin her.
He hadn’t taken them.
It was a risk, partnering with him on this.
But it was only a risk to her heart.
Chapter 42
They worked in her office, because she had protected, encoded networks inside. He sprawled on her love seat as if it had been made for him. She sat in her usual spot, legs out. He had brought some of his own equipment from that hidey-hole he’d found two and a half blocks away.
She had gone up to that apartment with him, and wrinkled her nose at the smell. She had stayed in places like that on a job, but she hadn’t enjoyed it.
She helped him carry most of his equipment back to her place, and what few changes of clothing he had brought.
She didn’t exactly feel better about her choice to trust him—in fact, her heart fluttered every time she thought about it. But she wasn’t sure if her heart fluttered because he was nearby or because she had decided to trust him or because she was worried about what might happen between them.
He had put his clothes in her closet, which felt odd. And he had put the groceries away in her kitchen, which felt even odder.
He had as many individual tablets as she did, plus some linked network devices, plus a few things she didn’t recognize. She had shown him the other four tablets she had with information about targets. Misha said he didn’t recognize those people. She wasn’t sure she believed him, but she did think that those people weren’t a priority.
She would work on them when this job—and that was how she was thinking of the Guild case—was done.
She piled the other tablets onto the side counter, and worked on two—the one with the image of the Guild’s director, whose name was Kerani Ammons, and the other an unlinked device that she used to back-trace the contact.
The information Rikki had on Ammons included a false name—one Ammons had apparently used back when she was in the field—and some old information on Ammons’s whereabouts. Misha hoped the information would show that this hit request was because of something Ammons had done in the past, not because of who she was now.
But the client trace was proving difficult. Rikki usually refused cases where she couldn’t verify the client. A quick verification made the client seem legitimate, but no good assassin did a quick verification.
All of this made her nervous.
“I’m not finding much,” she said.
Misha was lying on his stomach, three of the tablets on front of him. “What would you usually do in a case like this?” he asked.
“I’d turn it down,” she said. “I need more client information.”
“You wouldn’t ask for that?”
“No,” she said. “I’m not that hard up for work.”
“And if you were?”
She looked at him. His hair was tousled like it had been the day before, his eyes a soft blue. His eyes fascinated her. They changed color with his moods. She had no idea there were so many shades of blue before.
“I’d still turn it down,” she said. “The client seems dicey.”
“You wouldn’t hire a detective?”
She shook her head.
“Search more on your own?”
“No,” she said. “That’s all work with no pay. I don’t work for free.”
He nodded, then leaned back, as if considering her words. “I don’t want to lose this commission. It’s a lead to something I don’t understand and l
etting go of it means someone else will do the job. Or will at least try the job.”
Rikki shrugged. “Sometimes the client returns.”
“That’s a big risk,” he said.
She nodded. “But we might have enough to trace the client with what we have here.”
“I’m not much of a detective,” Misha said.
She tucked her legs against his side, liking his warmth. “What do you do then, give it to some Guild investigator?”
“We do have divisions for everything,” Misha said.
“Hmm,” she said. “I could trace him, given time.”
“And if you don’t have time,” Misha asked, “do you hire a detective?”
She thought about Jack. Then frowned just a little. He was still working for her on Misha.
“Not so much anymore,” she said.
“But you used to?” Misha asked.
That was the first question he’d asked that made her uncomfortable. “Is it important?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” Misha wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the information tablet in front of him. “I’m still not sure why you got this job.”
“Which is another reason I’d turn it down.” She ran a hand over his back, then let her fingers linger near his buttocks. She touched them lightly.
He rolled over, caught her hand, and kissed it. “Work, remember?”
“Hmm,” she said, not really committing to anything.
He hadn’t let go of her hand. She could sense his indecisiveness. He clearly wanted to throw the work aside as much as she did, but they both knew the quicker they finished, the more chance they had of tracking down the client.
“You know,” she said, her voice slightly husky. “It would be better if I said no.”
“To me?” Misha asked, then kissed her palm again.
She shook her head, suddenly not trusting her voice. She cleared her throat, and said, “No to the client. I’m wondering if this is some kind of test to see if I’ll violate my own rules. I think it might be some kind of red flag if I do. There’s enough here for you to notify your director and let your own people track this down.”
He stared at her for a long moment. “I suppose. I don’t like it though. I’d have to report back at the Guild. I can’t just send this information through the networks.”
“Let’s just see what happens when I refuse the job,” she said.
She sent a message back to the potential client, saying she did not feel this job was right for her.
“That’s it?” Misha asked. “No explanation?”
“If they want an explanation, they’ll ask,” she said.
He pulled her close. She could feel his hardness against her stomach.
“And what if I want an explanation?” he asked.
“How about a demonstration instead?” she asked, taking her hand back so she could use it elsewhere.
“Oh, in that case,” he said, his voice just a little strangled, his eyes turning that marvelous blue, “a demonstration will have to do.”
Chapter 43
Rikki slept beside him in that big bed. She was beautiful, absolutely beautiful. And it broke his heart.
Misha hadn’t even really realized he had one, not until he met Rikki. She made him feel more than anyone ever had—at least anyone in his memory. And the emotions were stronger than any he had ever felt, the anger more potent, the desire so powerful that at times he thought it was going to rip him apart.
He wasn’t sure he ever wanted to be without her.
And this choice she’d made, the decision to let that client go, meant that he would have to leave her.
He ran a hand through his hair. His hands smelled of her. The faint scent aroused him all over again, but he was going to let her sleep. He needed to think.
He had to let the Guild know about the threat, and he couldn’t bring her along. He would have to travel alone. At best, he could leave her in Prospera while he went to Guild headquarters, but even that might be too close.
He still didn’t know how much he should trust her, even though he wanted to.
Trust wasn’t something he was used to.
Maybe he should let the Guild know and then resign. He could quit the Guild, quit the business, and spend the rest of his life with Rikki. He had money set aside. She implied that she did as well.
She certainly owned a lot of property all over the sector. That was a sign of some kind of financial independence.
But if he wasn’t with the Guild, if he didn’t work, who was he? And what would she think of him?
He pulled the covers down just slightly so he could look at her body, her firm breasts, her powerful muscles, those legs that could hold him in place with just the strength of her thighs. He still didn’t touch her, even though he wanted to. Even though he was ready to take her all over again.
It surprised him that he cared about her good opinion. He had never worried about anyone outside of the Guild before. He hadn’t trusted anyone outside the Guild before.
Not that he trusted her.
But he almost did.
Finally, he couldn’t wait any longer. He ran a hand down her side, then cupped her breast, lifting it to his mouth. He sucked on her nipple and she moaned, arching toward him. He slid the other hand between her legs. She was already wet.
He spread her legs gently, then slipped between them, going slowly. She moaned again, and moved with him, still not awake. He held her breasts, let her move, enjoying the friction, the dampness, the heat.
She came and that woke her up, her eyes fluttering open, her mouth falling back.
“I thought I was dreaming,” she murmured.
“No dream,” he said and continued the gentle movement. She came again, and he couldn’t hold back his own orgasm. He had to move with her, thrust hard, and she shifted beneath him, taking him, controlling his thrusts, those legs he had fantasized about a moment before wrapped around him.
He cried out, surprising himself. He never lost that kind of control. And then he collapsed on her, his face pillowed against her breasts.
“Wow,” she said. “I could do this forever.”
“Me, too,” he said. Then smiled at himself. “That was a lie, you know.”
Her hand was in his hair. “I know. We’d need occasional rest periods.”
He raised his head to kiss her, when something pinged.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“I have a flag on certain incoming messages,” she said, “particularly if they’re ones I’ve been waiting for.”
“Like our client?” he asked, then wondered if he should have used the word “our.”
She didn’t seem to notice.
“Yeah,” she said. She shifted so she could open the drawer in the table beside the bed. That slight movement made desire flare through him. But for once, she didn’t seem to notice.
“Something important?”
She was frowning. “Yeah. I need to deal with this.”
“The client?”
She slipped out from underneath him. “No,” she said. “It’s Jack.”
Chapter 44
Rikki tapped a code onto the tablet so that Jack would know she wasn’t quite in a position to talk. Then she got out of bed, and carried the tablet with her, even though she wasn’t going to use it to talk with Jack.
She didn’t want Misha to look at it too closely.
Apparently she didn’t trust him as much as she thought she did.
She grabbed a robe as she walked past the closet. Then she ran a hand through her hair. She stopped in the kitchen and got the device that Jack had given her long ago, something he called a “communicator for the assassinator.” Or CFA for short.
It only connected the two of them, and was very hard to hack into.
She pressed the start button, but kept the visual to her face. She didn’t want him to know exactly what she had been doing.
“Hey,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d hear fr
om you so soon.”
“It’s been ten days, Rik,” he said, his voice chiding. “Where are you?”
“Moving to my office,” she said as she padded barefoot down the hall. Her clothes were strewn along the floor, mixing with Misha’s clothing. She smiled at the memory.
“You sound odd,” Jack said.
“It’s been an eventful week.” She stepped inside the office and pulled the door closed.
She wanted to be alone to hear this, whatever this was. She was almost afraid of what Jack would tell her.
Forget the qualifier. She was afraid. She was afraid he’d tell her that everything bad she suspected about Misha was true.
“Good thing you didn’t run this down,” Jack said.
“About Mikael Yurinovich Orlinski?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Where are you? Are we going to do audio only?”
It was probably best, but it would be weird. She put the CFA into its little holder, and suddenly Jack appeared on her countertop—a small well-dressed version of Jack.
“What the hell?” he asked. “A robe? Isn’t it the middle of the day where you are?”
“How do you know where I am?” she asked.
“You said your office. And you only have three, right?”
She smiled at him. “I’m not telling.”
“It looks like there’s a lot you’re not telling me,” Jack said. “You’ve got love bites on your neck.”
Her hand flew to her throat.
He laughed. “Got ya.”
She rolled her eyes. “Jeez, Jack. What are you, twelve?”
“If you recall, at twelve I had no idea what a love bite was.”
She smiled in spite of herself. She remembered explaining some of the more interesting aspects of sex to him around that time. He hadn’t believed her, until she showed him some holograms that would have gotten them kicked out of the government care facility if they had been caught.
“I hope he’s good,” Jack said.
“He was this afternoon,” she said, wondering if Jack knew that the “he” in question was Misha.
“Okay,” Jack said, “we’re moving into the realm of too much information.”
