Spy to Die For (Assassins Guild) (9 page)

The employee lunchroom behind the docking ring was empty. Still, Skye stepped into it gingerly, hoping no one hid nearby.

The lunchroom had been tacked on later, probably placed in what had been designed as a guard station. The ceiling was as high as the ceiling in the ring, which was to say, higher than the interior of Krell, and she knew that Jack would appreciate that.

One large, very clean table stood in the middle of the floor, which was also startlingly clean, startling not just because they were on Krell, but because Skye had never seen a clean employees-only lunchroom, not even in the Guild.

The blinking red lines were the only thing that moved in the room besides her. She stepped out of the panel and let out a sigh of relief.

She had paid off one of the docking ring employees to clear this room, but paying off someone didn’t mean they’d do what she asked. Hell, he might not have done what she asked—the room might be empty at all times except whenever lunch was—but she didn’t care.

She had gotten Jack this far.

Now came the tricky part.

She pulled him forward.

He stepped out of the panel, looked up, and then stood upright with such a sigh of relief that she felt for him. Then he brushed off the top of his head, as if he had touched that horrible ceiling in the passageways. He did have some black streaks on the side of his face.

She probably did too, which made her shudder. Those passageways had been nasty.

She inclined her head toward a nearby sink. Jack looked at her with gratitude, then cautiously made his way over there. She followed. They needed to clean off as best they could and quickly.

Jack finished up, then stepped aside so she could rinse off as well. That hadn’t cleaned up the smell. But she headed toward the door, hoping he remembered her admonition.

It slid silently sideways instead of opening outward. Three employees stood near their stations, theoretically monitoring any ship that wanted to land on Krell. Automation didn’t work here; there were too many variables, most of them with shady reputations.

The employee that Skye had talked with, a man still so young that his enhancements couldn’t cope with all of his bad skin, winked at her. She winked back.

Then she slipped right toward the part of the ring where the high-end space yachts got stored. Most of them had security too tight for her to breach, but two models built for speed rather than comfort didn’t. Apparently a lot of the comfort items on a space yacht slowed it down, or at least ruined the sleeker designs that enhanced swiftness.

She could feel Jack behind her. He was going to have to duck again as they walked into the ring. This part had been upgraded most recently. The walls actually gleamed here, and the ring itself, while still plain, had a bounce to it that suggested custom-made materials.

The ships she wanted were farther down the ring, in their own hangers. She made it to the first. Fortunately, it was also her first choice, primarily because it was newer, and because a cursory search didn’t show any affiliations with known crime rings. She’d learned that one from her parents as well.

She slipped into the airlock and beckoned Jack to follow. The ships docked half in and half out of the ring. When they wanted to leave, they unclamped and backed out before they took off.

This allowed someone to flee even if no employees were working and even if someone else tried to shut down the automated docking system.

Jack slipped in with her. The space was narrow, partly because the nose of the ship pushed up in here as well. Earlier, it had taken her a minute to find the door. It blended into the ship’s blackness with no obvious lines around it.

His body pressed against hers, but he remained hunched. Still, he grinned.

None of the airlocks had security cameras, and apparently he knew that because he said, “You know how to get into this thing?”

Those were the first words he’d spoken in nearly an hour. But instead of answering him, she tapped the side of the ship. The round door opened inward, leading them directly into the cockpit.

“That’s not very efficient.” Jack pushed past her and stepped in first, almost as if he thought he could protect her from someone inside.

“Actually, I think it’s really efficient,” she said as she followed him. “We’re in the cockpit and ready to go.”

The cockpit was large. It took up a third of the ship. That was the other way she knew this ship was built for speed. Another third was cargo, and the remaining third were bedrooms, the kitchen, a bathroom, and oddly, some kind of guarded space which could probably be used to hold prisoners.

She didn’t want to think about that. This ship was probably used for smuggling illegal items, and that space meant some of those items might not be things but people.

At least, that was what she told herself to feel better about all of this.

“Strap yourself in,” she said. “We’re getting out of here fast and I have no idea how good the environmental controls are.”

Mostly, she was worried about the gravity. Some ship owners had the ships set to zero-G after takeoff. She didn’t have the time to find the specific gravity controls before they left.

She had to get the ship to follow her commands, and that would take a few minutes. It was a relatively simple procedure that many yacht owners knew nothing about. With the help of that employee, she’d registered herself as an emergency repair engineer on Krell. Now she uploaded that code into the ship’s systems.

Theoretically, the ship would contact Krell’s automated docking bay system and find her.

Not that it mattered. Even if the Rovers who were after Jack figured out he’d left by ship, they wouldn’t know which ship for some time.

At least that was what she hoped.

She strapped herself into the pilot’s seat, and clicked on the controls, and prayed her plan would work.

Jack watched Skye’s nimble fingers dance along the navigation board. He couldn’t tell what she was doing, but piloting a ship had never been his strong suit. The ship he was leaving behind here had simple controls, designed for idiots with minimal piloting experience.

He had flown a lot, but he didn’t care about mastering the skill, so he just set everything to automatic and hoped that nothing would break down.

Usually he used flight time to research the latest possible client or target for the Rovers. Or lately, to research some of the things the Rovers had been into.

He would miss his ship. He’d had it for years. Maybe, when this was all over, he could come back for it.

Fortunately, Skye seemed to know what she was doing. She frowned in concentration, and she bit her lower lip ever so slightly as she worked. He liked that quirk.

He liked everything about her.

Then the ship lurched backward. Ships weren’t supposed to lurch.

“Ooops,” Skye muttered.

Jack gave her a sharp glance, but Skye wasn’t looking at him. She was staring at a holographic screen that had just appeared in front of her, showing the docking ring and the ships on it in three dimensions.

It took a moment for Jack to find their ship, a sleek model the shape of a pilsner glass. It was slowly separating from the dock.

Now he couldn’t feel the movement of the ship, which was how it should be. He gripped the seat’s arms, feeling the smooth leatherlike fabric beneath his fingers, and kept his gaze on that 3-D representation of the ship moving away from Krell.

So far, he saw no other ships leaving, but that didn’t mean anything. All someone had to do was contact a ship nearby, and he’d get followed.

“Where are we going?” he asked. “Centaar?”

Centaar was the nearest planet, not too far out of the NetherRealm where Krell was. Centaar’s main city, Oyal, had its own laws, most of which ignored laws from other regions.

If Jack and Skye arrived in a stolen ship, no one from Oyal would care.

“I figure they’d look for us there first,” she said. “I’m thinking we head to the Brezev Sector, and see what we can find there.”

“The Brezev Sector?” he said. “That’s not part of any affiliated group.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Filled with criminals, pirates, roving bands of mischief makers. You know, like the Rovers.”

“Not even Rovers go there,” he said. She shrugged. He felt his heart sink. “You’re serious.”

“I am,” she said. “It’s not as dangerous as it’s made out to be.”

“And you know that how?” he asked.

She grinned at him. “I grew up there.”

Just the fact that she came from the Brezev Sector made him rethink everything she had told him. Even after she had left to find this ship, he hadn’t looked up anything about her. He felt it wasn’t necessary. He had gone with his instincts, something he rarely did.

What a perfect setup. He had given her his name the night before. Then, after he left in the morning, she had checked up on him. Maybe she had already known that Heller was on Krell. Either way, maybe she made up a story about Heller trying to kill him, and then she had moved forward with a kidnapping plan.

But she had to know that there was no one to ransom him.

Although Heller might pay to get Jack back, just so that Heller could kill him.

She glanced at Jack. Her smile faded as she saw the look on his face.

She said, “I’m exaggerating. I sort-of lived in the Brezev Sector. Until I was ten. My parents always fled back to the Brezev Sector when they felt like they’d gotten into too much trouble.”

“The people who named you Skylight to honor one of their escapes.” He couldn’t help letting his sarcasm through.

“Yes,” she said.

“I’ll wager you haven’t been back since,” he said, hoping he was right.

“You’d lose,” she said. “I’ve gone in and out countless times, researching targets.”

He didn’t get the sense she told him this to calm him down. And yet, it had that effect. He was wildly out of his element, and trusting a woman he hadn’t researched.

He hadn’t realized until now just how much he relied on information. Not information someone had told him, but information he found himself.

It gave him security.

Apparently, it also kept him from making things up. That kidnapping thing had to be unrealistic. After researching him—and if she were kidnapping him, she would have researched him—she would have known that he had no resources. Just a savings account, a ship, and his brain.

Which he had apparently shut off the moment he met Skye.

She was saying, “You’d be surprised how many criminals use the Brezev Sector as home base.”

He focused back on the moment. He wasn’t surprised about criminals and the Brezev Sector. Criminals liked places like the Brezev Sector and Krell because those places gave them cover.

“You realize we’re criminals at the moment,” she said in that same conversational tone. “We don’t own this ship.”

He’d been trying hard not to think about that. He figured they would deal with it wherever they ended up.

“What are you going to do with the ship?” he asked. “When we get to the Brezev Sector, that is.”

“Sell it,” she said. “Then get us another ship.”

Or
maybe
I’ll just take a transport
, he thought, then discarded the idea. Who knew what kinds of pickpockets, thieves, and generally bad types populated those transports.

Of course, there had to be good people in the Brezev Sector. He’d just never heard of any.

“And then what?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “We’re playing this by ear.”

“Yeah,” he said, not sure how he felt about it all. “I guess we are.”

Jack sounded mournful, as if he were already regretting this trip. He had trusted Skye on everything, from the threat to the escape. Now she was taking him on a stolen ship to a place that harbored known criminals. She supposed she could understand why he worried.

She might have, in his shoes.

Although she couldn’t imagine being in his position. She would never have worked for the Rovers in the first place. They made the Guild seem like heroes.

She turned on all of the proximity alarms, setting them to scout for ships at the farthest reach of the sensors. Then she hit the holographic navigation screen, setting it so that the walls of the cockpit disappeared, and it looked like the cockpit floated in space.

The ship’s automatic pilot had a setting called “Escape” built right in. She glanced at the onboard manual and saw that it would take an unusual flight path at the highest possible speeds to get to the destination.

She programmed that into the navigation panel and turned the setting on. The ship acknowledged her, then took over. It was better to have a computer randomly set their route than her. Humans could never do true random, always picking a pattern.

“No one followed us,” she said.

Jack was looking at the star-lined space around them. “You’re sure?”

“The ship’s sure,” she said. “That’s good enough for me.”

“Then can I get out of this harness?” he asked.

She smiled at him. She would love to get him out of the harness, and all his clothes. She’d always wanted to make love in space. This would be the next best thing.

“Before you get out of the harness, let me check one thing first,” she said.

She let herself out of her own seat and crossed to his. She sat on his lap and eased her hands around his face, kissing him. He tasted good. She had wanted to do that all day.

But he broke off the kiss and peered around her shoulder. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

His body was clearly interested, but his prodigious brain was obviously not allowing him to focus.

She could get him to focus.

“You don’t think what is a good idea?” she asked.

“Um… this. Now.” He was shy. She loved that about him.

“I think it’s a great idea,” she said. “What else are we going to do? Worry?”

He nodded, his hands still at his side. “Someone has to worry. I’d like to find out what’s going on.”

“We can find that out easier in the Brezev Sector, where no one will be searching for us,” she said. “God knows how they’d look. They might even track data usage. And if we stay off the grid, then what will we discover? Only what’s in this ship’s database.”

His gaze flicked away from the screens to her. Two spots of color rose on his cheeks. “And our tablets,” he said. “We can combine information.”

She wiggled her eyebrows at him. “We can combine other things as well.”

He smiled. The smile seemed reluctant. “Skye, I’m still uncomfortable—”

“With what?” she asked. “Me? The stolen ship? The circumstances? Of course you are. But they are what they are. And if it’s me that you’re not comfortable with, send your mind back to last evening. We didn’t know each other at all then, and we managed to have a good time.”

His smile grew, and this time it reached his eyes. He shook his head just a little.

She was getting to him.

“Besides,” she said, “I’ve always wanted to have sex in space, and I could never figure out how to do it in a space suit. Want to try it here? I could shut off the gravity.”

“I’m not good at anything in zero-G,” he said, his voice thicker than it had been a moment before.

“Well,” she said, “you’re good in Earth Normal gravity. We’ve already tested that.”

She dipped her head and kissed him again. This time his hands came out and caught her waist. He participated fully in the kiss, his mouth open. He tasted her as if she were a favorite dish he hadn’t had for a long time.

She felt like she hadn’t tasted him in forever. Maybe that was because she had already given up on ever seeing him again after they separated. Or maybe she was just addicted to him.

Whatever it was didn’t matter. She had never ever been attracted to anyone like she was attracted to him.

She wedged her knee against the end of the harness, so he couldn’t let himself out of it. He didn’t seem to notice. His hands spread across her back, leaning her in closer, his arousal straining against his pants. She shifted slightly, then, without breaking the kiss, opened his shirt and pulled it out of his waistband.

His hands slipped under her shirt, reaching up, and finding her breasts. They’d never been very sensitive, yet somehow his touch made desire run through her. It was as if he knew every button to push to make her respond in ways she had never responded to anyone else.

She didn’t think she could get more aroused, and yet she was. She wanted him now.

She leaned back just a little, undid his pants, and grabbed him. He was large and warm and ready.

So was she.

“Let me loose,” he said, his mouth against hers.

“Not yet,” she said.

She rose on her knees, undid her own pants, then stepped off him for just a moment as she kicked her pants away. She left her shirt on—she was in too much of a hurry to take it off—and then she lowered herself on him.

Slowly.

He strained upward, but the harness held him in place. She only sank onto the tip of his penis, moving up and down, feeling him at the edges of her, little ripples of pleasure shooting through her.

“Skye…”

She didn’t want him to beg, but she wanted him past ready.

“Skye, if you continue this, I can’t…”

He couldn’t finish a sentence, that’s what he couldn’t do. That was okay. She doubted she could even communicate. His hands remained on her breasts, but squeezed tighter as he became more and more aroused.

She lowered just a bit farther down, taking him halfway, and did the same thing. Up, down, feeling him inside her then at the edges, those ripples continuing.

“Skye, dammit…”

She focused on him, on her, on fractions of an inch, and the differences that made. In, out, forward, back, just a little, as she found new ways to torture them both.

“Skye, really… I… ah, hell.”

He grabbed her hips and pushed them downward. She felt him slide all the way into her, and it was so magical that her entire body erupted. She tilted her head back, feeling the orgasm pulse through her.

Hers had nearly ended when she felt his surge into her, and she joined him again.

Then she leaned forward, spent and damp and breathless.

“My God,” she said. “I didn’t even look at the scenery.”

“You’re disappointed,” he said against her shoulder.

“Hell, no,” she said. “I just figure we’re going to need to try this again.”

“Only if you let me out of this chair,” he said.

She smiled, even though he couldn’t see it.

“My pleasure,” she said.