He needed a plan, and he wasn’t sure how to make it. Or where to make one. His ship was now compromised. He couldn’t stay on Krell either. And taking a transport seemed too risky.
He wasn’t used to thinking like this. He had been an investigator forever. He had gone somewhere, found information, and then he had left. Yes, people remembered him—how could they not, he was so tall!—but they never saw him as a threat, because he hadn’t been a threat. Not to them.
He glanced at the door.
“You’re going back out there?” she asked, and her voice was filled with concern.
“Yeah,” he said. Maybe he could risk getting on his ship. Maybe he could get away.
“These men,” she said, “they know what they’re doing, don’t they?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“And you don’t even carry a weapon,” she said.
It had been a point of pride for him. He had been affiliated with the Rovers, but he hadn’t been of the Rovers. He had been different, not a killer. Someone who prevented them from killing the wrong people, he used to say.
Until Heller took over. And then Heller would correct him: You’re just making sure we’re taking out the right people.
Even then, a few years ago, that sentence had bothered Jack. “Taking out” was not the way he wanted to think about the Rovers. And “the right people” meant that the people Rovers killed were legitimate targets.
Over time, there seemed to be fewer legitimate targets. Just people who deserved to die—according to the Rover who killed them.
“You have to trust someone,” Skye said.
He let out an involuntary laugh. “And you think it should be you.”
“We have that man in common,” she said, and it was Jack’s turn to frown in confusion.
“I thought you didn’t know who he was,” Jack said.
“I don’t,” she said. “But it seems he’s here to do more than one job. And I want to find out what the other job is.”
Job. People in his profession used that phrase for an assassination. It was a job. Nothing more, nothing less.
He felt his heart sink. So she was an assassin after all.
“You want to hook up with a man who’s being targeted?” Jack asked.
“Apparently, you forgot,” she said with a smile. “We’ve already hooked up.”
“I’ll never forget that.” Jack didn’t smile. He didn’t feel like smiling at all. “But I think it would be better if we followed your original plan.”
“Because you’ve got a killer after you,” she said.
He nodded.
“Did you do something worth dying for?” she asked, and the question seemed to have a deep meaning for her. That frown had grown deeper.
“Clearly this man believes so,” Jack said, shaking the tablet.
She sighed. “You have no good options, you know.”
“Believe me, I know,” he said.
“I’m the best you’ve got,” she said.
“I’m not sure why you’re trying so hard to convince me,” he said.
She nodded once in obvious surprise. “You know, I’m not sure either.”
And that comment, more than anything else, calmed him just a bit more. If she were trying to con him, she should have continued to push. Instead, she admitted a weakness.
“Give me the tablet,” she said, reaching for it.
He still didn’t let go.
“You know I’m going to figure out who this man is the moment you walk out my door,” she said. “So let me figure it out now. Let’s see what we can do.”
Jack sighed. She was his best choice.
Hell, she was his only realistic choice.
He handed her the tablet, and took a step back, closer to the door. He liked the illusion of escape, even if he was heading into a more dangerous place.
She took the tablet from him, gave him a quick smile, then bent over it.
He should just tell her. But he didn’t want to. Better she find out for herself. He would see the change on her face as she reconsidered her offer. And then he could leave.
“Oh,” she said softly. “This makes no sense at all.”
And neither did her response. It wasn’t one he would have predicted. He didn’t move for the door—not yet. Instead, he waited—although for what, he had absolutely no idea.
Chapter 13
A Rover? Why would a member of the Assassins Guild hire a Rover?
It hadn’t taken long to get the information on that image at all, just a fraction of a second after Skye had activated the tablet’s search with the touch of a finger. She had done it as she got the tablet back from Jack.
Jack.
She looked up at him. His expression hadn’t changed, but his eyes were so different from last night. They reflected a fear, a surprise, and a resolve that she hadn’t noticed ever before.
How had that conversation gone? She reviewed it mentally:
The second guy, the one who refused to go after Jack, had said, Are you serious? I’m not killing one of us.
Then Filip Heller had said, He’s not one of us, don’t you get that?
But the other guy defended Jack. He is to me, the other guy had said.
Skye wasn’t sure what that meant.
Jack’s mouth was open just a little. She wanted to kiss it, just to calm him. But she couldn’t do that.
He looked ready to bolt.
Assassins didn’t feel fear, did they? She never saw actual fear among her colleagues. At least, not when lives were on the line, not even when their own lives were on the line.
She had always heard that Rovers were worse than assassins from the Guild. Rovers were tougher, harder, nastier. Rovers had no sense of right or wrong.
She had gotten none of that from Jack, and she was the person with the gut she had trusted since childhood. That sense was never wrong. She had pitched that sense to the Guild so that she could spy for them to pay off her debts to them, and the notoriously skeptical Guild had agreed with her.
So what had gone wrong here?
One of us. That phrase kept reverberating through her mind.
He had known that this Heller was with the Rovers, and he hadn’t wanted to tell her. He had deliberately avoided her direct question.
And now Jack’s eyes filled with just a touch of sadness. A Rover and an assassin from the Guild meet in a bar. It sounded like the beginning of a bad joke. That’s what she thought about Liora and Heller.
But she could be thinking it about herself and Jack. Except that Skye wasn’t an assassin.
It felt like her world, already topsy-turvy from the night before, had just fallen on its side.
“This makes no sense,” she said, and realized she had said it again. She had spoken out loud when she first discovered who Heller was.
“That he’s a Rover?” Jack asked softly. “Or that I’m affiliated with them?”
He still hovered near the door. He would run out there if she said anything wrong. Maybe, since she had already misjudged him, her assumption that he couldn’t take care of himself was wrong. But she still had that feeling so strongly that she didn’t want him to go.
Or maybe she was so blinded by the attraction between them that she wasn’t trusting her gut.
“Both, actually,” she said.
He didn’t move. “It doesn’t frighten you that I might be a Rover.”
Amazing that he saw that so clearly. She didn’t think she was usually easy to read. But then, she wasn’t acting like a frightened person. She wasn’t sure she knew how.
“It surprises me,” she said. “You don’t seem like the type.”
His smile was thin. “What type is that?”
“The kind who kills for a living,” she said, wondering what kind of answer he had expected from her.