by Rebecca York
She didn’t think he’d do that. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to get her. But he could burn her.
She was thinking that maybe she should take the risk, when the one holding her stopped before another featureless door. His friend leaned forward, stabbing the gun into her back as he pressed his palm to the lock plate. It opened, and her captor shoved her inside. She would have fallen forward, but he grabbed her hair again to steady her, and she yelped in pain.
They were in a dimly lit room, furnished with a few pieces of derelict furniture—a sofa with one corner chewed away by something—a couple of chairs with half the upholstery gone. There were boxes piled along two of the walls. The far wall was empty, except for a couple of metal rings hanging high up. The man holding her pushed her across the room. The other raised her arms and used cuffs to secure her hands to the wall above her head. She was prepared to kick out at them, but one pounded her knee with the metal bar he’d used on Max. He had short blond hair and a metal disk hanging around his neck. The other had long dark hair and some very nasty artwork on his arms. Skulls and horrid looking animals.
When she cried out, he grinned.
“Don’t damage her,” the other one cautioned. “Tudor don’t want damaged merchandise.”
“I know.” The man bent and secured Amber’s ankles to rings on the floor.
“Got ya,” he said with grin that made her feel sick.
His partner wasn’t quite so confident. “We gotta call Tudor and say we found his shipment.”
“Not yet, Kado. He don’t even know if we can score, and I want to have some fun with her. Plus, we gotta think how to negotiate. I want an extra finder’s fee.”
His friend made a low sound. “Everybody knows Tudor’s dangerous. You want to make him mad?”
“We scored what he wants.”
“And she’s gotta be a virgin when he gets her.”
“Sure, but we can still do other stuff. Like fek her in the ass. I’ll bet she’s got a nice tight asshole.”
Amber made a pleading sound. “Don’t.”
“Cause we’re too crude? What do you think your new master is going to do with you?”
She shook her head. “Just let me go.”
“You ain’t goin’ nowhere until we say so. And then it’s onto a transport.” As he spoke, he stepped toward her and yanked at the front of her shirt, tearing off the buttons which made a rattling noise as they bounced to the floor. The garment came open, but the fabric she had wound around her chest kept her breasts from springing free.
“Let’s see what you’ve got under there.”
“No,” she moaned, trying to twist her front toward the wall.
With one hand, he flattened her shoulders against the cold metal. With the other, he clicked open a knife. She gasped as he slashed the cloth and pulled the raw edges aside, exposing her breasts. He took a moment to stare at them.
“Nice titties.” Lifting them in his hands, he felt their weight. “That cloth made you look small, but you got some heft on you, baby.”
She made a gagging sound.
“You don’t like me touchin’ you? “How about this?” He squeezed her right breast hard, and she cried out.
Dipping his head, he bent to lick one nipple, sucking it into his mouth and closing his teeth on the tender tip.
She yelped.
“Let’s get those pants off so we can see your snatch.”
As he pulled her pants down, the other one was getting into the spirit of terrorizing her. “Did the guy you was with already fek you? Is that why you’re wearing his drawers?”
When she pressed her lips together, he slapped her. “When I ask you a question, you answer me.”
What was the best answer? “No,” she finally said.
“So, he knew he couldn’t ruin you.”
“He didn’t know anything. He was being a . . . gentleman.”
The questioner sneered. “Then why did he steal you?”
Again, she hesitated. Finally, she said, “That was my fault. I tricked him into it.”
“Well you got him in big trouble. Tudor’s gonna go after your friend, and when he catches him, he’ll cut off his balls and let him bleed to death.”
“No,” she gasped out.
“If you didn’t want him to get hurt, you shoulda let him do his job.”
###
The hang-arounds had whisked Amber away, but as soon as they’d thought they were safe in a hidey-hole, they’d grown careless. Neither of them had locked the door behind them.
Beamer in hand, Max eased the portal open, then angled himself so that he could see inside.
He held back a curse when he saw Amber fixed to the wall by bands around her wrists attached to metal rings.
He might have rushed in, but the men were talking to her, and the stuff they were saying stopped him.
It was her fault Max had stolen her? She’d tricked him? What the hell did that mean?
When he saw one of the men yank her pants down, he figured he’d worry about the conversation later.
“Nice snatch,” the guy said as he ran his fingers through her pubic hair. But probably Tudor’s gonna shave it. I hear he likes his pussy naked. Part of making his girls feel helpless.”
With the kidnappers’ attention focused on Amber, Max eased the door open farther.
It gave a small squeak. One of the bastards must have heard the noise because he whirled, pulling his beamer as he turned. Max drilled him, and he dropped, but the other guy also had a gun. He leveled a blast at Max. He’d already ducked to the side, and the blast burned his shoulder instead of the middle of the chest.
It stung like hell. Before Max could fire back, the guy moved in front of Amber. Max’s only option was to dodge back around the door frame and wait.
“I’ll kill her,” the guy called.
###
Amber stared at the man lying motionless on the floor.
His friend could have rushed to help him. Instead, he had backed up, putting Amber directly in the line of fire. Both actions made him lower than a dung beetle.
Taking a chance that he wasn’t also insane, Amber shouted, “He won’t. I am too valuable. A powerful man bought me.”
“Cunt,” her captor shot back. He kept his face and his weapon pointed toward the door, watching for Max to come back in.
The man couldn’t see what she was doing, and she pointed her foot downward, trying to wiggle out of the restraint that held her ankle in place.
She worked slowly, patiently, praying that the guy wouldn’t feel her moving and notice what she was doing.
Finally, she eased the foot free. Pulling her leg up, she aimed a mighty kick at the guy’s ass.
The man gasped and flailed. Unable to keep his balance, he landed on the floor.
“Max, he’s down!”
She saw him risk a look around the doorframe and spot the guy sprawled on the floor.
Her heart leaped into her throat as he charged into the room.
From his prone position, the kidnapper raised his gun hand. Before he could fire, Max burned him. The man went still.
Max hurried to check the two dung beetles on the floor. Both were dead.
“Are you all right?” he and Amber both asked.
“More or less,” he answered.
“I kicked him,” she gasped out.
“Yeah.” He crossed to her and began working at the hook that held her wrist to the wall rings. The moment he freed her hands, she wrapped her arms around him and clung.
She had never been so glad to see anyone in her life, and it seemed his feelings were also strong because he held her tightly, whispering that everything was going to be okay.
Was it?
Or had she messed up so badly that neither one of them would ever recover?
“Thank you,” she breathed.
Again, he asked, “Are you all right?”
“I am now.”
“You kicked him?”
“Yes.�
��
“How did you get your foot out?”
“When he was focused on you coming through the door, I angled my toes downward and slipped out of the ring.”
“Good work.”
When he eased away, she protested.
“We can’t stay here.”
“I know.”
As he stepped away from her, she made a small sound. She could see him taking in her nudity, but she knew he was nothing like these men. Turning slightly, she pulled her pants up and tried to tug the front of her shirt together.
She knew there were things Max wanted to ask. And more things she should explain. But there was no time for that now. When he said, “Tie the tails of your shirt under your breasts,” she nodded and complied.
As she put herself back together, she saw him looking around the room. Two of her buttons were nearby on the floor. He picked them up and put them in his pocket.
“Try to find the rest.”
She began searching the floor while he studied the two dead men.
He shifted both of them slightly so that they were facing more toward each other and not the door.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Making it look like they could have gotten into an argument and killed each other.”
“You think that will work?”
“It’s plausible, given the kind of trash they are. Did you find the rest of the buttons?”
She held them out, and he counted them plus the ones in his pocket. Then he matched them against the number of buttonholes, like their lives might depend on getting the numbers right. Which might well be the case.
“We have to make sure nobody knows you were here.” He snatched up the length of fabric that she had wound around her breasts.
“Anything else you brought in?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay. Then there’s no evidence that anyone else was here besides these two hang-arounds.”
“What does that mean?”
“Guys who hang around a station or a spaceport—looking for work. Preferably illegal.
“Why do they want to be illegal?”
“It pays better than unloading ships.”
He looked toward the boxes that were lined up against the wall.
“You said we have to leave.”
“Yeah, but I’d like to find something different for you to wear—and maybe me too. Probably those cartons are full of smuggled or stolen goods. Hopefully some of it is clothing.”
Using his shirt to shield his hands, he opened some of the cartons.
“What are you looking for?”
She crossed to the wall. “Give me that cloth.”
When he did, she imitated him and used the fabric to keep her fingers off the box flat surfaces.
She saw hand tools that a farmer might use, medical supplies, food packs.
“All of this is stolen?”
“Unless they bought odd lots from ships coming in. Which isn’t too likely, given their likely credit balance,” he answered over his shoulder as he kept searching. He sounded very matter of fact and very focused on what he was doing. And she knew he was keeping his emotions in check.
She was trying to do that too, although it wasn’t easy after her brush with disaster. When they got back to the ship—if they got back to the ship—there was going to be a reckoning.
Finally, she found a useful cache. “I think I have something,” she called out.
He crossed to her and watched as she pulled out a colorful dress.
“Okay, good. Pull it on over what you’re wearing.”
She did as he asked, and the clothing underneath made her look like a woman too heavy for the outfit she’d chosen. That was probably fine. In fact, he confirmed the assumption by asking her to pull on another dress over the first to heighten the effect.
She pulled it on and stepped back. “Does this work?”
“Yeah. But we gotta do something about your face.”
He dug in the box, found another dress, and used it to fashion a kind of head covering that hid her hair, came down low over her forehead and trailed down her back. She touched the side portion.
“This looks good?”
“It’s not supposed to be good. You can just be another station weirdo. And as you saw, there were plenty of them.”
She nodded, then watched as he pulled out a man’s shirt from another box. When he started to stick his arm through the sleeve, he cursed.
“What’s wrong?”
“A little burn.”
She looked at his upper arm, seeing that the fabric of his shirt was scorched. When she pulled it away, she focused on a patch of fiery red flesh.
“He hit you,” she gasped.
“It’s not bad. I can take care of it later.”
She bit back a protest because there was nothing she could do for him now.
He clenched his teeth as he put the new shirt over the one he was wearing, the double layer padding his body.
He took out another shirt and used it to wipe the rings on the floor and wall, then walked back to the door and wiped the knob. When he was finished, he ushered her into the hall and stood surveying the room. She looked around him, trying to evaluate the scene from the perspective of someone who stumbled in here and discovered two dead bodies.
“How long before someone finds this place?” she murmured.
“Depends on how long it takes for the smell of rotting thugs to drift into the corridor.”
She winced, reminded that Max had killed two men. But they were guys who had tried their best to kill him.
He pulled the door shut, using the shirt to shield his fingers.
With the door closed between herself and that awful room, she felt like a weight had been lifted off her chest. But she wasn’t kidding herself. There would be fallout from this visit to the space station.
“How did you find me?” she asked in a low voice.
He turned to face her. “I put a tracker on you, in case you got lost.”
“Or you thought I might try to disappear.”
He shot her a startled look. “How do you know that?”
“You had to be cautious.”
“Yeah.”
There was so much more that they needed to talk about, but there was no time for explanations now.
“We have to get out of this corridor before someone sees us—and back to the ship,” he said. “And lucky for us they don’t have cameras on Freedom Station.”
He started walking, and she followed. “What do you mean?”
“If this were a Confederation facility, they would have devices that make moving pictures of everything.”
She shuddered, thinking that would make it more difficult to pull off their escape. “Why not here?”
“Because people who come to the station value their privacy. That’s how the place stays viable.”
“Okay.”
He kept up a steady pace as he talked. “I want to avoid the great hall as much as possible.”
She wanted that too. A few hours ago, she’d felt like she was having an adventure as they’d walked among the stalls and the throng of people. She’d thought she had a lot of options, but she hadn’t been aware of the danger. Once she had gotten off Naxion, she’d started feeling safer. But she hadn’t seen the whole picture. The man who had bought her had hired thugs to find her if she showed up at Freedom Station. And she knew she had barely avoided falling into his clutches. She had told the bad guys Max was a gentleman. He was more than that. He had been determined to find her, and she knew she was walking down this corridor only because of him.
Chapter Eight
Max led Amber along the down-under corridor, still considering his options. The shop owner—Ilina—had seen the two hang-arounds grab Amber and whisk her away. But no one else had been in the store. Perhaps the woman was the only one who had taken notice.
“I didn’t see what happened after they grabbed you,” he said over his s
houlder.
“Yes, the one with the pipe knocked you out.”
“Not for long. What about the people outside the shop? Did they see you were in bad trouble?”
“Maybe. But I think they were determined to mind their own business.”
“Yeah.”
Was anyone else looking for Amber on the station? He hoped not, but he still thought their best bet was to stay out of sight as long as possible and leave as quickly as they could.
He kept going along the corridor until he came to a set of stairs that led upward—not the ones he’d taken down.
Cautiously, he opened the door. When he saw the stairwell was empty, he led Amber upward. Since he’d never been down here before, he didn’t know where they would emerge. He was hoping they’d be close to the shuttle bay where he’d docked the Golden Fleece. But they came up into the great hall not far away from the dress shop. As they stood at the edge of the crowded marketplace, Amber reached for his hand and held tightly. He squeezed back, sure that she was seeing this place in a different light than when they’d first arrived. Maybe coming here had been a fun new experience. Now tension wafted off her as she scanned the crowd.
“Try to act normal,” he said.
“If I can.”
He wasn’t feeling so normal himself as he took in the balconies and the throng on the main floor, wondering if they were going to encounter another pair of lowlifes on the lookout for them. Or what if someone had already discovered the bodies and had alerted the authorities?
He cursed under his breath when he wondered if he’d outsmarted himself. He and Amber were wearing clothes from the boxes in the storage room—a dead giveaway that’s they been in that room if they were caught in the station.
But as far as Max could tell, nobody seemed to be paying them any attention except for occasional glances—probably at their odd appearance.
Looking like a man headed for a shop or bar, he kept up a steady pace as they wove their way through the stalls—except when he had to stop and orient himself. He took as direct a route as possible, avoiding eye contact but watchful in case someone looked like a threat. To his relief, they finally reached the corridor leading to docking bay twenty-five. He was about to enter, then realized that he’d better have a reason for coming to the station—besides charging his fuel cells. The only other transaction he’d made had been with Harry, and he’d paid in cash—to keep that bit of business off the books.
