Free The Watcher's Eyes (The Binders Game Book 2) by D.K. Holmberg

unflinching. It was a testament to the type of women Carth used and gave me a renewed appreciation for her.
    “You should not have come,” she said.
    I kept her at the edge of my Sight as I made a sweep around the grounds. I had only seen two other men, but that didn’t mean they were the only two out there. There might be others, and I wouldn’t be surprised again.
    “Probably not,” I agreed.
    “She did not send you this time.”
    I shook my head. “Did she send me the last time?”
    The woman shrugged, a slight movement of her shoulders. “You came, didn’t you?”
    “I came,” I agreed. “Why did she send me?”
    “If you don’t know, then it is not my place to tell you.”
    “That’s not the answer I need,” I said, taking a step toward her.
    A knife appeared faster than I would have thought possible. She held it out, her hand steady.
    I backed up and raised my hands.
    “That’s all the answer you will get.”
    “Why are you here?” I asked. I nudged the fallen man with my boot. “Is it him?”
    She fixed me with an unblinking stare.
    “Who is he?” I studied the man’s face and didn’t recognize him. “I’ll find out even if you don’t tell me.”
    “Are you so confident of your skill?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then you don’t need me to tell you.”
    I tipped my head and pulled a terad-tipped dart from my pouch. “And if you work with her, you don’t need him alive.”
    I made as if to flick it and she put herself in front of me.
    “Don’t,” she said, pushing the knife toward me.
    The corners of her eyes twitched and the pulse in her neck bounded a little more forcefully than I would have expected.
    I lowered the dart and shook my head. “Does Carth know?” I asked.
    “Does she know what?”
    I motioned toward the fallen man and she slipped to the side, making a point of keeping her body in between me and the man. If I really wanted to harm him, she was making it clear that I would have to go through her. “That you care for him.”
    “I don’t—” she started.
    I dropped and started to flip a dart toward him and she threw herself in front of me completely. The knife dropped to the ground and her hands extended over her head, pleading with me now. The confidence was gone, though I didn’t doubt it would return.
    For a moment, I wondered if she played me.
    Knowing what I did of Carth and the way she used her women, I wouldn’t be surprised. She would place a woman here and use her to extort… what? Information? Or was this woman here for a different purpose? Was there something else that she was meant to steal? Regardless, it wouldn’t surprise me for Carth to have someone here so skilled at deception that she could convince another that she cared—truly cared.
    But there were certain signs that would be much harder to fake. The way her eyes occasionally flicked to the man, as if reassuring herself that he still breathed. Or the way that she kept her foot in contact with him. Even the rapid tapping of her pulse in her neck, though that could be as much about me as it was about any feelings she had.
    Given the games I played, and the games that were played with me, I gambled. I thought the odds were in my favor this time.
    “Tell me,” I said.
    The woman shook her head. “Do what you must with me, but please,” she said, that word whispered, as if difficult to say, “leave him out of this.”
    “Who is he to you?”
    I wanted to know, mostly because I doubted that Carth knew, but partly because I was curious. After what I’d been through, and how much I’d nearly lost, it would do me well to know that some good came from what happened here.
    “An assignment,” she whispered. “At first.”
    “Now?”
    She pulled her hands back, blinking as if realizing what she did, and leaned down to retrieve her knife. She slipped it back into a hidden pocket, again moving faster than I would have expected. If all of Carth’s women were like this, they were more dangerous than I