Jack awoke with a soft grunt of confusion. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep. After his not-so-subtle declaration to Blade, he had wanted to wait and watch, see what sort of response he got. Instead, he had fallen into a deep sleep. Which, he had to admit, had done him a lot of good.
He felt much better. A dull ache in his lower back—probably more a result of the bed than anything else—and a lingering thirst, but that was it. Praise be to Blade’s nursing capabilities and his stock of antibiotics.
The room was dark, only a faint brush of light falling through the doorway. It was also unusually warm—and pungent. Both of which were probably symptoms of the snoring, camel-shaped lump taking up the other half of the room. Apparently, Blade had lost the argument with Sheila about where she would sleep.
Jack snorted softly.
Lifting his head, Jack found Blade. He was sitting in the outer room, in sight of the door. The assassin was curled up on the improvised chair he’d made for Jack, wrapped in a sleeping bag, mug of something steaming in one hand, worn and dog-eared paperback in the other. A small torch cast gentle silver light across him so he could read. The light cut the curve of his cheek out of the darkness, softening the shadow of his unshaved chin. It sparked in his strange eyes as they darted back and forth across the page. Glinted off the tin mug as he raised it to drink, then didn’t, caught up in the story. The mug lowered, rose, then was put down so he could turn the page.
Jack couldn’t remember the last time he’d read for pleasure. Couldn’t even remember the last book he’d really enjoyed. Growing up with a modern-lit lecturer as a father had pretty much ensured Jack’s fate as a reader. His strongest childhood memories were of sitting on Dad’s lap, lost in a haze of imagined worlds and characters as his father read him The Jungle Book. It hadn’t just been the stories, either, for Dad, but the books themselves. The texture of the book, the smell of the paper, the tactile pleasure of turning a page. He hadn’t eschewed e-readers, just preferred a printed book. With the clarity of hindsight, the first sign of his father’s illness had been when he took his beloved books out into the street and set them alight.
Shoving those memories into the bulging filing cabinet, Jack focused on Blade. He seemed to have forgotten his drink, free hand poised at the top corner of the book, ready to turn the page as soon as he’d finished reading it. Jack couldn’t see the title of the book, but it had to be good.
Not the image of a bloodthirsty assassin.
Could the two sides of Ethan Blade—the entranced reader, animal lover, and dedicated carer; the remorseless killer and deadly warrior—exist within one body?
Jack hoped so. With the flick of a switch, he’d killed thirty-six Taliban soldiers in a barracks. Two days later, he’d been celebrating Lionel’s birthday in camp. It wasn’t as if he’d set those charges for purely personal reasons. He’d just been doing his job.
Two weeks later, back in Australia, he’d gotten so drunk he started a brawl and ended up decompressing in a holding cell on base.
How did Blade decompress? With a cup of tea and a good book? Did he need to? Or was he really an unfeeling, cold-blooded killer?
Jack had been in the service for nine years, and the accumulated psychological trauma was still a thick layer of scar tissue over every inch of his life six years later. They’d been an intense nine years, though. First East Timor, then Cambodia, followed by three tours in Afghanistan and ending with the epic clusterfuck in India.
Blade had been in the business for sixteen years. Half his life. At least, that was how long the name Ethan Blade had been active, whether or not this man so entranced by his book was actually the Ethan Blade. How did anyone cope with that much scar tissue?
Scar tissue.
The term sparked something in Jack’s memory. He curled up on his side, watching Blade, and explored the thought. Scar tissue . . . Something to do with eyes. A condition that left the eyes all but colourless, covered in a coating of tissue that had to be cut away from the iris. Which, in turn, stopped the iris from expanding and contracting as it should.
Shit.
“I know what you are.” The words were out before Jack realised he was even going to speak.
Blade looked up from his book, dark brows raised. “Pardon?”
Struggling up, sleeping bag held as a buffer against the cold night, Jack repeated, “I know what you are.”
The assassin smiled tolerantly, an adult patiently listening to a child’s wild theories. “And what is that, Jack?”
“A Sugar Baby.”
Blade went perfectly still, as he had moments before killing three men.
Continuing the theme of this entire madcap experience, Jack carried on recklessly. “A child born to a female Sugar addict, one who doesn’t inherit a dependency on the drug but is born with a thick film of tissue over the eyes.” He was pretty much quoting the text from memory. “Surgery to correct the defect often leaves the child permanently blind. Those who retain their sight are unable to adjust to extremes in light gradients, but develop a heightened night-vision capacity. You’re a Sugar Baby.”
The other man remained motionless for a long minute, then slowly looked back down at the book in his hands. His expression remained blank, but he blinked several times in succession, the only reaction to the revelation. Blade closed the book, smoothed down the cover, and put it aside.
“And does that explain everything about me?” he asked calmly.
Wondering, once again, why he dared push this man, Jack shrugged. “Not everything, but it clears a few things up.”
“Such as?”
“Such as . . . I think I heard somewhere a recent study debunked one of the more common beliefs about Sugar Babies. About thirty-odd years ago, when the affliction became relatively well known, it was thought Sugar Babies were also sociopaths. Some with violent tendencies, but all with certain . . . incompatibilities with normal social behaviour.”
Suddenly, Blade was on his feet. Throwing off the sleeping bag, he stalked into the inner room. His eerily colourless eyes picked up the faint light of the torch, burnished predator-bright and silver.
“Is that what you think I am? A sociopath incapable of normal social interaction?”
Shit. Jack had to learn to keep his mouth shut. He scrambled to his feet, feeling the stinging need to be ready to fight.
“No.” He kept hold of the sleeping bag, to be used as a weapon if necessary. Or to at least cushion him from anything Blade might try.
“Then what? I know you don’t trust me or believe me. So tell me, Jack, what am I?”
“I don’t know. I know some things, but not what you really are. Or even who you are. I’m at a disadvantage here, Blade. You know everything about me.”
“Not everything.” His tone was frosty but held a touch of hurt that, like everything else he’d seen of Blade, confused the hell out of Jack.
“All right, I’ll bite,” Jack said tersely. “What don’t you know about me?”
Blade dipped his head and looked at him through a veil of long lashes. It was oddly coy, but the glittering white of his eyes was a chilling contrast.
“There is one thing,” the assassin said softly, and then he was moving, coming for Jack.
Jack reacted on instinct. He tossed the sleeping bag and, before Blade could knock it aside, followed it. Jack crash-tackled Blade, the sleeping bag between them. Blade twisted in mid-fall, getting a foot against Jack’s hip. They hit the ground hard, Blade on the bottom, but with leverage. He shoved Jack off and rolled clear of the bag, but Jack was ready for him. Scissoring his legs, Jack swept Blade off his feet. The other man turned the fall into an elegant flip so he landed, perfectly balanced, crouched on his toes.
On his feet, Jack backed up, wary. He was, at present, outclassed. Still weakened, hampered by the low light and, plain and simple, bloody impressed by Blade’s moves.
Blade didn’t press the attack, watching Jack with a closed, icy expression.
“You made the first move,” Jack reminded him.
“I did,” Blade agreed.
Getting it now for what it had been, Jack lowered his hands, forcing himself to relax. “Did it tell you what you wanted to know?”
“Yes.” Again, that hint of hurt. But it was quickly banished as Blade stood. He flexed his fingers, shoulders losing tension, shifting from kill-ready to calm as quickly as he’d gone the other way. He waved at the bed. “You should sleep. We’ll be on the move again tomorrow.” He turned and went back to his improvised seat.
And Jack was left in a stable, with a soundly sleeping camel and no more information than he had at the start.
Christ!
Muttering under his breath, he wrapped the warm bag around his body and shuffled out to Blade.
“I’m sorry.” Though he didn’t know why. He certainly didn’t owe Blade anything.
As if he could now read Jack’s mind, Blade asked, “What for? Everything you said is true. I’m a Sugar Baby. I spent the first six years of my life blind, and even now I can’t see in direct light. And ever since I was old enough to understand, I’ve been told I’m a monster-in-waiting. A psychological time bomb. Even I believed it for a long time. I can’t blame you for thinking the same thing.”
Jack leaned against the cold bricks. “I suppose not. For the record, I don’t think you’re a sociopath. I mean, you have a camel for a pet.”
“Sheila’s not a pet,” Blade said blandly. “More a casual acquaintance.”
Suppressing a snort of laughter, Jack muttered, “Not doing your reputation any good by admitting that, Blade.”
Lips twitching, he looked up at Jack. “I guess not.”
The touch of humour fled as Jack met those strange but now explainable eyes. “I mean it. I don’t think you’re a sociopath. But I still don’t understand you.”
Blade stood, putting him closer to Jack than he had been when he attacked. “Do you really want to?”
Swallowing the sudden tightness in his throat, Jack could only shake his head.
Shockingly, Blade smiled, a surprisingly innocent expression that nearly reached his eyes. “Then stop trying to psychoanalyse me. It’ll get you nowhere and only cause you grief.”
There was truth in those words, and Jack vowed to live by them.
Being this close showed him a new side of the unstoppable killer. There were dark smudges under his eyes and a stretched quality to the skin of his temples.
“How long since you slept?” Jack asked.
“Three days, give or take. I didn’t want to leave you unattended in your illness. Sheila offered but her bedside manner is rather deplorable.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” About both statements. “You go sleep. I’ll keep watch.”
“You’re still not—”
“No arguments. I’m fine. You need to sleep.”
“But—”
“Shut the fuck up and get into bed!”
Blade took a startled step back, eyes wide. “I have a sudden urge to salute.” It sounded only about half joking.
“Blade.” Every ounce of warning Jack could muster turned the name into something closer to its literal meaning.
“If you insist.”
Blade slid past Jack and entered the inner room. Jack snatched up the sleeping bag the assassin had left behind and tossed it in after him. He was rewarded with a muffled gasp of surprise when it hit Blade in the face.
Jack had settled into the crate-chair, his own sleeping bag around his shoulders, when Blade spoke.
“May I ask you a question, Jack?”
Jack looked into the other room but couldn’t make out much past the pale oval of Blade’s face. The tone, however suggested a quiet seriousness. After the night’s revelations, Jack was more than willing to entertain the idea.
“Sure. I reserve the right not to answer, though.”
“As you wish. Do you like your job?”
Nowhere near what he’d thought it might be. Nonplussed, Jack took a moment to consider his answer. “Today? Not particularly. But generally, yeah, I do.”
“Why?”
“Why?” he repeated to give himself a bit of time. “I guess, because it’s good work. We’re protecting people. Safeguarding freedom.”
“And you see what I do as wrong?”
“You don’t?” It was out before Jack considered how it sounded.
“I asked you first.”
Jack took a deep breath. “All right. Justify one of your kills for me.”
“Easy. Valadian. You’re after him yourself.”
“Not to kill. To neutralise. And he isn’t dead yet. Pick again.”
Blade didn’t answer straight away, and all sounds from his side of the room—soft rustling, low breathing—stopped. When he did speak, it was quiet and low.
“They were part of a smuggling group, taking women out of Colombia for transport to Argentina, where they were sold as sex slaves.”
“Who?” Jack had guessed but he wanted it confirmed.
“The US Marines.”
“Can you prove it?”
“I can. The investigative team looking into it couldn’t. Their progress was stymied by political red tape and military cover-ups. The longer the powers that be tried to deny it was going on, the more it happened.”
“So you took the matter into your own hands. Vigilante justice, Blade?”
A hint of dry humour in his words this time. “Not vigilante. I was paid by the person who decided to bypass the bureaucratic nonsense.”
Jack shook his head. “Are you saying all of your kills are equally worthy?”
“No. But if I have a choice, then yes.”
What had Blade said when they argued about the difference between soldiering and assassination? “At least I get to pick my targets.”
“So, to answer your question,” Blade said. “Yes, what I do is wrong. But for me, I’m doing it for the right reasons.”
Crap. When was Blade going to stop tipping Jack’s preconceived notions on their heads?
“All right,” Jack conceded. “Tell me this, then. Do you like your job?”
Blade smiled. “Today? Yes.” He rolled over and snuggled the sleeping bag around himself, and within moments, his breathing lulled into a relaxed, easy rhythm.
Jack picked up Blade’s mug, sniffed a strong tea blend, and put it down with a disappointed grunt. Before he picked up the book, he tried to think of what Blade might find so fascinating and came up with nothing. Resigned, he turned it over and read the title.
Ice Station by Matthew Reilly.
Not immediately familiar. Curious, Jack read the first page.
Half an hour later he was no clearer on his impression of Blade. The book read like an action film—fast paced, wildly imaginative, highly improbable, and chock full of clichés. Jack couldn’t quite mesh this with what he knew of Blade.
An hour after that, he still had no clue but he was thoroughly hooked by the book and had no intention of putting it down.
By the time dawn crept around the edge of the building, he was only a couple of pages off the end.
“Please, whatever you do, do not spoil the ending for me.”
Not even looking up at the sound of Blade’s voice, Jack muttered, “If you don’t see the end coming a mile off, then you’re not as smart as you want the world to think you are. I didn’t think leopard seals were that vicious.”
Blade put his hands over his ears and stalked away.
Smiling tightly, Jack finished the book in peace.