She waited until he’d disconnected. “You have to fill me in.”
He gave her a skeptical grimace. “I don’t have to.”
“You know what I mean.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“I took home an assassin that another assassin tried to annihilate. Are you kidding me?”
Jinx hesitated, not sure if he should say anything. But she was right.
For what she’d done, her life was in danger already. Keeping the truth from her would only make things worse.
And for reasons he couldn’t explain, he wanted to protect her. To keep her safe.
“All right, I’ll trade intel for one thing.”
Now it was her turn to look skeptical. “That is?”
“You have anything to eat?”
She covered her face with her hand. “I’m so sorry. I should have thought of that. You must be starving.” Getting up, she headed for her kitchen. “I don’t get a lot of company.”
He glanced around her messy apartment. There were clothes draped everywhere and she’d had a pile of dirty underwear in the bathroom. “I can tell.”
She gave him a peeved glare. “You live alone?”
“In a barracks . . . with people trained to kill.”
She grimaced playfully. “Guess you guys try not to get on each other’s nerves, huh?”
He touched his finger to his brow and saluted her intelligence. “If you don’t mind your mess, we will, and you won’t be happy with the methods we use to train you.”
Eve cringed at the thought. Though his tone was light, she could only imagine the nightmare of living like that. “How old were you when you were conscripted?”
“Eleven.” He started to follow her into the kitchen, but she stopped him.
It was too messy and honestly, she was a bit embarrassed by it and the rest of her place. “My cleaning woman quit. Why don’t you sit at the counter and I’ll see what I have?”
“Did she quit or surrender?”
“You’re not funny. She actually had a baby and decided to stay home to tend her newborn.”
He arched his brow at that. “You trust a person over an AI?”
“Tough call,” she admitted honestly. “People can be bribed, but an AI can be hacked, so yeah. I’d rather have a life form I can kill should they betray me.”
“And you think I’m cold-blooded.”
She passed a side glance as she opened her fridge. “I never said we didn’t have anything in common. And lucky for you, I have enough things in here to make some breakfast.”
“But do you have any clean dishes?” He passed a sneaky glance to the pile in her sink.
That irritated her. “I will when I wash a few. So don’t be a smart ass.”
He held his hands up in surrender.
Then his device began to buzz.
With an aggravated sigh, he went to retrieve it. “Shadowborne Chief Agent reporting.”
Eve didn’t speak until he returned to sit at her counter. “I get that Chief Agent is your rank. Shadowborne?”
“League name.”
She stopped washing her pan to look over at him. “Like the Tavali?”
He shook his head. “Ours aren’t aliases. The League doesn’t let us keep our real names. Part of our programming. We’re assigned numbers or humiliating insults during training that are supposed to harden us. If we survive training, they give us a name to use after we make our first official kill.”
Lovely. “So Jinx isn’t your real name?”
He gave her an adorable smirk that seemed so very unassassin like. “It is. I’m defiant that way. But only those who are almost friends know it.”
There was no missing the bitterness in his tone. “You really don’t like working for them, do you?”
“Most of us don’t.”
Eve returned to scrubbing her pan. “Is that why you’re sharing so much information with me?”
“Not really. It’s more the fact that this is longest I’ve been around anyone in more years than I can remember who wasn’t a Leaguer. It’s nice to have an actual conversation again.”
Once more, his device went off.
Growling in a way that made her remember exactly how dangerous he was, he picked it up and repeated his rank into it. Then he pulled his link out and tapped his ear.
Eve focused on cooking while he called someone else.
“Chief Agent Shadowborne. I’m on assignment and I need this to stop buzzing before you give away my position.”
He rubbed at his cheek, then winced as he accidentally touched a bruise there. “I’m your superior officer and I’m telling you what I’m doing. Now lay off this or, when I return, we will have words and I’m going to wreck your fucking world.”
His gaze narrowed dangerously. “Yeah, you do that. Make sure you spell my name right. S-H-A-D-O-W-B-O-R-N-E. And get yours right, too. A-S-S-H-O-L-E.”
He tapped his ear an instant before she burst into laughter.
“Should I ask?”
“I just got reported for my language.”
Her stomach jerked at the thought. “I’m going to assume that’s a bad thing.”
Jinx gave her a droll stare. “What are they going to do? Beat me?”
“Are they?” She scrapped the toasted scramble onto a plate and put it in front of him.
He took the fork that she offered him. “Probably. But, given how much pain I’m already in, I doubt I’ll feel it.”
She winced at the nonchalance in his tone. “How are you moving?” She was tough, but honestly, if she’d taken a beating like his, she doubted if she’d be able to move for a week.
Jinx held up a bottle that his friend had brought in with the backpack. “That’s what these are for.”
“Are those legal?”
“Hell, no. But we don’t live long enough to have to fear the consequences. Besides, if I grew a third arm, it could help me with my kills.” Winking at her, he placed the pill on his tongue and swallowed it with a bite of her food.
Aching for him, she went to the fridge and got him some juice.
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?”