Page 56 of Radiant Exception
Keeping my voice low and calm, I leaned in, wrapping my fingers around the lapel of Cassidy’s uniform to make sure he had nowhere to go until he’d heard what I had to say. “I can’t afford to let you leave the ship while we’re on this run, but when it’s done, you’ll find a new assignment.”
Cassidy’s face had gone pale. He nodded emphatically in agreement.
But I wasn’t done.
“And if I ever see you near my wife again, I’ll throw you out the airlock without a second thought. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir,” he whispered, his eyes wide with fear.
I released his jumpsuit and took a step back. “Report back to your station.”
Without confirmation, he turned and fled.
Natalie watched him go before turning to me, a single eyebrow raised.
Ignoring her, I pulled up a private window and activated a separate tracking beacon that the crew didn’t know about. When each of them joined, they had been given a pin noting their ship and rank, and embedded in the metal of each of their pins was a tracker that only I had access to.
I’d learned the trick while working black ops and thought it might be a handy tool to have, and I had a friend who owed me a favor and didn’t ask a lot of questions when I’d requested a dozen or so of them before the maiden voyage of theRadiant.
“No,” I gasped when I saw the signal’s location.
Lark wasn’t even at the port; she was on a vessel heading in the opposite direction of our flight path.
Without another moment to spare, I got on the ship-wide comm frequency. “Prepare for launch, immediately.”
“Captain, Chadwick’s still in the port somewhere,” Natalie cried.
His pin tracker was indeed in the port, but she was so much more important. “He’ll figure out a way home,” I replied coldly.
Jordan’s voice came over my comm. “Sir, is everything alright? We just finished refueling, but we weren’t expecting to leave so soon.”
“Armstrong, report to the bridge. There’s been a change in our route.”
“What about the schedule?” she asked, clearly bewildered by the new instructions.
“Fuck the schedule,” I told her, my tone short. “We’re heading out on a rescue mission.”
The comm was silent for a moment before Jordan replied, “On my way, sir.”
Iblinked awake, trying to remember when I’d fallen asleep. My head was pounding and my arms burned. When I tried to shake them out, I realized that my hands were fastened to a handrail that lined the wall.
I am so fucked.
But as my wits slowly returned to me and my eyes adjusted to the dim red emergency lighting in the place where I’d awoken, things started to come back to me.
I’d gotten in a fight with Vaughn. Cassidy had kissed me—the jerk—which Vaughn had, of course, walked in on. I’d discovered a cache of Elysian hidden in a wall panel, and when I’d been unable to find Vaughn to help me figure out what to do, I’d gone into the port to locate an encrypted line so I could call Darren instead. And that was where I’d run into Simon…
“Simon,” I cursed, my voice cracking, as my throat was completely dry. I was heading for his ship to make the call, and that was all I could remember.
Something moved beside me and I jumped. But then I heard a soft groan from across the room, and I realized the small hold I was in was full of bodies.
Perfect.
It appeared as though I had gotten myself kidnapped by human traffickers.
I couldn’t quite tell because of how low the lighting was, but I guessed there were a dozen or so other people in the hold with me. The sedative they’d given me had my temples pulsating when I tried to look around, but it seemed like I was the first one awake.
Inwardly, I scolded myself. I knew better. I’d been trained better than this. Darren was going to kick my ass if I made it out of this alive. Normally, I was so careful in places as seedy as Port Vesta, but I’d been completely distracted by everything that I hadn’t been checking to see if I had a tail.
