Page 50 of Escape Velocity

“Or hurt him.”

He could have kept his hold on her. Instead he pushed himself away from her, stood, and offered her his hand.

She let him help her up. “How do I know I can trust him?”

“Because he’s been my friend for ten years.”

“You have friends who would bring slaves to a man who tortures them to death?”

Rafe winced. “Like I said, I didn’t know he was buying a slave. Are you telling me the truth? He really buys women to torture and kill them?”

“We have . . . circumstantial evidence that’s what he’s doing.”

“What kind of evidence.”

Amber answered. “The slave masters talked about him, about his reputation. And Max looked him up on a . . . database. One of the . . .” she paused and fumbled for the right term, “swamp rats heard a woman at his estate over several days screaming and begging him to stop what he was doing. Then she was silent.”

The color had drained from Rafe’s face. “The hell you say.”

“That’s what we know—and that he orders women fairly often,” Max answered.

“Kahlad. I knew he was a bastard. I didn’t know about the torture and murder part.”

Max kept his gaze steady. “Maybe you should tell me how you got mixed up with him in the first place.”

Rafe swallowed hard. “Can we sit down?”

“So, you have time to think of an answer?” Amber demanded.

“Because I’m a little shook.”

“What does shook mean?” Amber asked.

“Shook up. Upset.”

Max nodded. “I think all of us are. We can sit in the galley.”

When he started to usher her down the corridor, she said, “You two go first.”

“Sure,” Max said, picking up the wrench and slipping it back into the tool kit before leaving the control room.

In the galley, while Max opened a storage closet and got out a third chair, she and Rafe stared uneasily at each other. When Max had set the chair on the deck, they all squeezed around the small table. The two men were across from each other. Amber took the position at the end of the table—separating herself from them.

Max looked at his friend. “Maybe you should tell us why you suckered me into doing a nasty job for Elgin Tudor.”

Rafe sighed. “Three years ago, Tudor could have had my cargo confiscated when I arrived on Danalon because my papers weren’t in order. I’d paid a lot for spices from the rim, and if I’d lost the cargo, I would have been in trouble. He read me pretty well, and he made the problem go away, but he also made it clear that he would want something in return. When he contacted me about picking up a package on Naxion, I couldn’t say no.”

He shifted in his seat. “But I’d already taken another job—delivering medical supplies to the Hawkings colony. Supply ships had been ambushed recently, and they thought I had a better chance of slipping through than other pilots. So, I couldn’t just blow them off.”

He looked from Max to Amber and back again. “I had agreed to keep radio silence until I’d finished the delivery. And I couldn’t leave a message on my comms unit saying where I’d gone.

It wasn’t until I was heading back to Danalon that I heard from Tudor and found out that Max had disappeared with the package.”

He looked at his friend. “I knew you wouldn’t steal from me, so I figured you had a good reason for not finishing the job. So, when Tudor asked where you’d gone, I said I didn’t know. But I had a pretty good idea.” He switched his focus to Amber. “Max and I have hidden out here a few times. I figured this was where he’d go if he needed to disappear. But now I knew Tudor was looking for me, and I couldn’t just send Max a message. When I got close, I tried a code we’ve used in the past. He knew it was me.”

“And I knew I could trust him,” Max added.

Amber shifted in her seat, watching these two men. They obviously knew each other well. They had worked together often. And she could sense the bond of trust between them.

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