By the time she returned, he was almost finished.
“My God! Slow down and chew! Did you even taste any of that?”
He paused and put his fork down. “Sorry. Habit. We don’t get a lot of time to eat in the mess hall. Good news is, if you were the worst cook in the universe, I wouldn’t know. It’d still be better than the shit they feed us.”
She rolled her eyes. “Guess you don’t eat around people outside The League, either.”
“Not really. They don’t exactly pay us for fear we’ll save up enough to escape.” He took a drink of the juice before he returned to the food at a much more normal pace.
There was another thing she’d never thought about. “How do you guys function without creds?”
He held his arm up to show his band. “We charge what we need and, so long as it’s a covered expense, The League takes care of it.”
“Covered?”
“If we need lodging, fuel or food while on assignment. But it can’t be extravagant. Just the bare essentials.”
“What happens if it’s not a covered expense?”
He gave her a chilling stare. “You go into the Ring and trust me, the Andarions havenothingon what goes down in a League Ring.”
She winced at his mention of the bloodiest sport on any world. Andarions took their Ring fighting exceptionally seriously.
And it often was fatal.
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged with a nonchalance she was pretty sure he didn’t really feel.
Her stomach tight, she dropped her gaze to his tracker. “So, how do you do your job if they bother you like that, all the time?” It had to interfere with their “stealth” operations. Hard to sneak up on someone when your tracker kept buzzing and giving away your position.
Swallowing the last of the food, he wiped his lips with a napkin. “They’re not usually so obnoxious when they know where we are and what we’re doing. But there’s no eyes here and I should have been back to my barracks last night. If we give an estimate and we miss it, they start panicking like hyper-controlling parents over a virgin daughter.” He gestured at his device. “Had I not called in, their next move would have been to send someone after me.”
“To kill you?”
“If I wasn’t doing what I’m supposed to be doing, yes.”
That actually made her sick to her stomach. “So just by being here you could die?”
Clicking his tongue, he saluted her.
“Should I have called The League when I found you last night?”
He choked on his juice. “God, no!” Clearing his throat, he shook his head. “Had you done that, we’d both be dead.”
“Why?”
“I’m an assassin, Eve. We areneversupposed to be seen weak. If anyone witnesses us getting our ass kicked, they’re not supposed to live to tell it.”
“Seriously?”
“That’s the Code.”
She shook her head. “Your Code sucks.”
“More than you know.”
Eve took a moment to digest the nightmare that made up his life. She couldn’t imagine living like he did. “So what happened last night? Was he your target or were you his?”
