Microsoft Word - MaximumVelocity.rtf, page 4
“You got it,” Johanna called back.
“Come on. We’d best hightail it up to the bridge. Tyler, as soon as we get up there, you
can take us off this godforsaken planet as quickly as possible. As far as I’m concerned New
Jamaica can go to rot.”
“It will be my pleasure, love,” he said, smiling down at her, with that oh so sexy smile.
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked. She didn’t like the way he was looking at her.
“I was just thinking when I saw Veronica I was so happy it wasn’t you that had been
poisoned. And I feel so awful for having such a singularly selfish thought.”
Samantha didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t given her this much concern in six long
months and her stomach rolled with the suspicions blanketing her mind. She couldn’t get like
this, she hated hearing about the wives were always suspected their husbands of doing something
nefarious. Tyler had never been like that, even during their separation she’d known he’d still
loved her but now—her throat went dry. She shook her head. “Don’t worry about me, Tyler. I
always make it out alive.”
He stared at her with a look that almost seared right through her. “That you do,” he
mused, forcing a smile on his face and narrowing his gaze at her. She looked away from him.
Why did she feel like she was staring at a stranger? Snap out of it, Samantha. You’re getting a
little too obsessive compulsive about this, there is nothing wrong with Tyler, and he’s your
husband no matter how you might think about Devlin 24/7. Her face flushed. “Come on, we need
to get to the bridge.” She walked ahead of him, darting one last look behind her. He straightened
and met her gaze. A chill went through her. She blinked, snapping herself out of her reverie. She
could cope with Tyler, the man of many personalities. She would keep her marriage on track no
matter how hard she had to work on it or how hard she had to fight her burgeoning emotions for
a man she claimed to despise.
They made their way onto the bridge and Tyler immediately settled himself in the empty
pilots chair. Dylan stared at Samantha from the co-pilots chair and pointed at the console.
“I think you might just want to listen and watch the visual distress call that’s been sent to
us. The signal conks out at points so you’ll have to rely on audio only.” He pressed the
activation control, and crackling static poured out to them, until the channel cleared.
“Samantha, I hope you and Johanna are receiving this message. I need your help. I’m
into shit right up to my waist, and I don’t even think that hip-weighters will help me at this point.
They’re coming after me, and they’ve already gotten Rory.”
It was at this point that the view screen filled with a handsome man’s desperate image.
He looked dirty, ragged and tired.
“Quinn! ” she breathed, not willing to believe her eyes. “What a prick! He has some
nerve getting in touch with Johanna and I after what he has done.” Anger filled her being and she
flared her nostrils and took a step forward.
“Maybe you should give the hottie a chance,” Lucy said, as she shimmered into
existence.
“And maybe I should get Dylan to deactivate you.”
“You know, you’re always threatening me with that but you never deliver.”
“Listen to me, you little....” Samantha droned off right when gunfire rang out over the
communiqué.
“I’m sorry for all of the shit that I’ve disturbed in our past. Can you please forgive me?
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Samantha, you’re the only one that I can trust. They took Rory in the middle of the night, and I
think they’re planning on selling her to the Republican’s Slave Trade. Please don’t allow that to
happen to her. I’m only a bloody smuggler, I’m up over my head this time.”
Samantha grimaced, and snagged her teeth on her upper lip.
Dylan suddenly paused the distress call and stared back at her in concern. He leaned
forward and pierced her with his aquamarine gaze.
“The following gets a bit sketchy, but I want to know how you feel about it right now.”
“He cheated me out of my inheritance,” she said dully. She walked away and shakily
poured herself a cup of black coffee. Struggling to control her rioting emotions, she just barely
managed to bring the cup up to her lips without spilling any of the precious brew.
“You can’t hold a grudge forever,” Tyler remarked.
“Look who’s talking,” she scoffed, staring at Tyler and then Dylan. “This is coming
from the two brothers that no longer associate with any member of their family.”
“We do that, because they could not accept us!” Tyler and Dylan said almost
simultaneously.
“I won’t forgive him. EVER! ” she stressed.
“What about Rory?” Tyler countered matter-of-factly. “Whether you want to
acknowledge it or not, she’s part of your family too. Maybe we should call up Johanna to weigh
in on this issue.”
“Johanna, will have the same opinion that I have.”
“I wouldn’t bet your life on it,” Dylan muttered.
“So what do you expect me to do? Help the man that stole everything from my mother,
and forced Johanna to quit her internship and me to go into the family business?”
“Sorry to break this to you, Samantha, hon, but you would have gone into the family
business either way,” Tyler pointed out.
“Maybe I would have,” she admitted. “Okay. I admit it I had my heart set on it. But
sometimes, I think that Johanna’s only in this crazy lifestyle because I’m in it up to my head.”
“You wouldn’t be able to track down your father’s killer any other way,” Dylan reminded
her.
Samantha fell silent for a minute, considering what they’d both said. They were both
right, but she didn’t want to openly admit it. She couldn’t blame Quinn for her becoming a kick
ass bounty hunter. She would have had no other choice especially when her father had been so
brutally murdered. She was still trying to seek out her father’s killer, and she feared that it would
be a quest that would never be fulfilled.
“Quinn Mallory is a royal pain in my ass,” Johanna stated. Samantha turned her head and
found her sister standing in the doorway, with her arms crossed. “Lucy filled me in down in med
bay. I couldn’t do anything else for Veronica, so I thought I’d allow her and Ross to have a
private moment. She still isn’t conscious but I thought Ross just needed some privacy. You
know, Samantha, if we help Quinn he might be able to help us.”
“How? Quinn doesn’t do anything out of the goodness of his own heart. To him, money
makes the world go round.” She was tempted to spit on the floor, but she’d never participated in
such a disgusting act, and she wasn’t about to start now.
“We have to consider Rory. She is our niece after all.”
“WHAT? ” Dylan and Tyler said at the same time.
“Oh, didn’t we ever tell you?” Samantha asked, falling into a chair. “Quinn Mallory is
our father’s bastard son.”
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“But we thought that he was your cousin.” Dylan’s eyes were popping out of his head.
“Yes. Well, dear, that’s what we wanted you to think,” Johanna murmured.
Samantha sipped at her hot coffee and grimaced when she nearly burnt her tongue. “I
didn’t want anyone to know how closely Quinn was related to us. He’s a bloody greedy pig!
Johanna’s right. I hate to admit it, but we can’t very well allow Quinn’s daughter to be sold into
the slave trade. Can we send a message back to him?”
“Unfortunately, we only have what is in the distress call. Why don’t you ladies listen to
the rest of it before you jump to any conclusions?”
“Fine,” Samantha said, leaning forward so that she could see the view screen better.
Quinn’s movie star good looks filled the screen as visual was restored. “I’ll be heading
to New Monaco straight away. I should be there by the 24th of this month. Please, say that
you’ll help me. Either way, I’ll be out of communication range until I reach New Monaco.
Once there, I’ll meet you ladies at the Caterra Casino. I think I should be pretty safe there. The
Triad hates New Monaco, since Lord Devlin hates the Triad,” he paused, and darted a glance
behind him.
“He wants us to meet him on New Monaco? The man must be nuttier than a fruitcake! I
wouldn’t go back there for anyone in the world!” Her heart thundered against her ribcage. If she
returned to New Monaco she’d see Devlin again and her old feelings that she had smothered long
ago would continue to resurface. She’d be trying to tear Devlin’s clothes off before she could
stop herself. No, it was far too dangerous for her to be around him. He would unlock the love she
had for him—he would shatter her world, as she knew it. She was safer away from Devlin.
That’s why she’d always wanted to hate him. She could either love him or hate him, and
sometimes, she believed she did both. After her exploits with him on New Monaco and after
they’d left his planet, a hollowness had invaded her life. She had been happy with Tyler for a
time but he’d changed shortly after their vacation on Earth, and her thoughts had started to turn
once again to Devlin. When she was around Devlin she knew who she was, he looked at her with
annoyance, at times, but he accepted her for what she was as well. There was a brutal honesty
between them, one she found refreshing and in a strange way, highly desirable.
“I’ll be anticipating seeing the two of you again. Did I ever tell you, Samantha, that Rory
looks just like you did as a teen?”
Samantha scrunched her face up. That did it! There was no turning back now. She
wouldn’t for the life of her go back to New Monaco for all of the money in the world, but Rory
was family whether she liked it or not. And you just didn’t abandon an innocent family member
to the fate that she’d be facing.
“Johanna?” she asked softly.
“Yes?”
“How long will it take us to reach New Monaco?”
“We can be there by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Well. Guys, I guess we’re going after Quinn’s daughter. And somewhere in between
will have to get that antidote for Veronica. Are you three up to it?” she asked looking at each of
them.
“Not three. Four,” Ross said, from the doorway.
“Right, then. Let the games begin,” she said, as Tyler pulled them up out of New
Jamaica’s atmosphere and they streaked into hyperspace.
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Chapter Four
Samantha couldn’t seem to get the image of Devlin out of her mind. No matter how
much she paced the deck he kept popping back into her head. Sighing heavily, she sank back
into her chair. Johanna had gone back down to med bay to check on Veronica, and Tyler was
piloting.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked. His voice was raspy, and his eyes were filled
with an extraordinary amount of curiosity. Dylan was off in the corner, fixing something that
had gone on the fritz.
“Not right now,” she muttered. Normally, she would not have pushed him away, but
Quinn had done some pretty despicable things to the family, and she found it very hard to
consider ever forgiving him.
They lapsed into silence for exactly five minutes. Just as her thoughts began to wander
back to happy days spent with Quinn, Tyler’s voice broke her reverie.
“Do you want to speak about it, now?”
“You know, Tyler, you are incorrigible.” Yeah, he used to be incorrigible, lately; she’d
found him extremely annoying.
“I thought that was why you loved me so damn much.” He gave her what was supposed
to be a passionate gaze, but it fell flat. Her heart panged. Why had the dynamic between them
changed so much? Had she done something or had almost being hanged transformed him this
much?
“Perhaps,” she smiled softly again averting his gaze and yearning for the old times spent
between them. She couldn’t dwell on the past; she had to deal with her particularly pesky
present.
“Well, I need to be, in order to keep up with you,” Tyler mused.
Dylan coughed from the corner, obviously trying to alert them to the fact that he was still
in their company. Then a loud hiss was heard from him, when he whacked his head.
“Ouch! Oh, shit.” He fell silent. Then to Samantha’s chagrin he continued to talk.
“Actually, I’m sort of interested in learning more about Quinn myself.”
“In that case, Dylan, you’d better go and ask Johanna. This storybook is closed.” She
clamped her mouth shut, and clenched her hands into fists. She groaned. Having both of them
staring at her gave her the willies. “He broke my mother’s heart when he betrayed us. I don’t
think I need to say anything more than that. Sufficed it to say…he’s an asshole of the highest
caliber.”
“Yeah. But what I’m really interested in knowing is whether or not we can trust this
dude,” Dylan wondered aloud.
“Well… I’d trust Quinn about as far as I can throw him. Does that tell you anything? He
isn’t like the rest of us Mallory’s. He’s in a class of his own.” She stared at Dylan then at Tyler,
and finally shut her eyes so she could see someone entirely different. Devlin. She dragged in a
sharp breath. He was intoxicating. His strength, his masculinity, his charm.... She grit her teeth
and brought herself out of her Devlin haze. “But Quinn is devoted to Rory. He loves her more
than his own life, I’d reckon. She’s his only weakness. Trust me when I say that.”
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“So, we trust him. That is until we get his daughter back for him,” Tyler asked. “After
which, he becomes a loose cannon.”
“You would be right in that assumption, Tyler. Anyway, I want to find Rory as quickly
as possible. I certainly wouldn’t want to spend anymore time with Quinn than is actually
necessary,” Samantha said, sighing.
“Surely you must still love him. After all he is your brother!” Dylan was now standing
beside them. She stared out the view screen at the streaming stars.
“I don’t want to see him killed. If that’s what you mean. But I think I care more for
Veronica than I do for my so called brother.” Tyler’s hand brushed against hers, she fought the
inclination to pull away. She bit her lip. Thinking about Quinn gave her a nasty case of
heartburn.
She knew that she was being awfully bitter. But she couldn’t quite get past the
horrendous things that Quinn had done in the past. He had made her mother cry, and that was
definitely something that she’d never forget. Plus, he’d taken Rory away from them. In the
years since she had last seen her niece, Rory had probably grown into a whole other person. But
as long as she didn’t take after her father, Samantha would love her to bits. “We have to save
Rory. That’s all that counts. No matter what…we find her and bring her home.”
Tyler nodded his head. “Of course. The Republican Slave Trade should have been
stopped a long time ago. Earth should have taken a stand against them. As a result The
Republican Slave Trade has gained to much territory in the galaxy and they’ve amassed too
much power.” Why did he sound like an automated android when he’d said that? Shrug it off;
you’re going to drive yourself nuts!
“Yes. Earth and its colonies should have done a lot of things, but they haven’t. So it’s up
to us to take justice into our own hands.”
Lucy materialized in front of them, and nodded toward the view screen. “I’ve detected
another incoming transmission.”
“Is it another one from Quinn?” Samantha leveled her gaze at Lucy.
