Page 51 of Enthraller
Wren froze for a moment, then lifted her shoulders. “Even if I have to do it one by one.”
As she spoke, the internal airlock door opened and Hatch and Ed came through, helmets already off. Hatch let out a whoop at the sight of the cake, and was out of his suit faster than Ed.
Ed glanced at the cake, lifted his gaze to hers, and gave a nod, as if the beautifully decorated cake confirmed something for him.
The look he sent her was thoughtful.
It made her want to back out of the room, to find some privacy, but she forced herself to give him a nod of acknowledgement. Of what, she wasn’t quite sure.
Probably that she knew he knew what had happened to her on Ytla had come roaring back today in Freighter Two. He musthave sensed how hard the women’s trauma had hit her, even though what had happened to her was not even close to what she suspected had been done to them.
She had friends in Nanganya who she considered close, but, like the Freighter Two women, if she went missing, it would be a long time before someone asked after her. She hadn’t minded the long work trips, the difficulty in settling down, because it was so like how she’d grown up, but she realized she didn’t have what her parents had had. Each other.
She looked over at Ed. He was still watching her, and she wondered what it would be like to have a life with him.
Good, her nanos said.We think, good.
She thought they were probably right.
It was Bailey’s turn to come with them to conduct the search, and as soon as Ed was out of his suit and had gotten dressed, they left Hatch happily eating cake as they headed for the runner.
“Which one of the two freighters is more likely to be the one we’re looking for? Is one more obvious than the other?” Bailey asked.
Ed was leaning back in his seat, sipping water and taking bites of a piece of cake Wren had cut for him to eat on the way over. He hummed a no, his mouth full.
She thought he looked thinner. She knew walking out on the line was hard, but she was seeing with her own eyes just how hard.
“I didn’t have a bad vibe about Freighter Two until I saw the two prisoners chained to the wall,” he said. “I just chose it because it was the farthest to the left and I thought we’d work left to right.”
“You want to keep to that method, then?” Bailey waved a hand at the freighters.
“Might as well. Whatever they’re hiding, given the fact that they tried to leave the line, let’s just assume it’s bad,” Ed said.
Wren hoped it wasn’t going to be as bad as Freighter Two. She tried to suppress a shiver. If all it was was extra cargo or drugs, even weapons, she’d be happy.
She’d managed to keep memories of her time on Ytla at bay for a while, but this morning had brought them all rushing back.
“Did they find out where the women were from?” she asked Bailey.
“They were from Lassa.” Bailey glanced at her from her place at the runner’s controls. “Since Lassa was taken back under Verdant String control, as a vassal planet to Bodivas, some of the population who were forced to work there have stayed on, free to set up businesses or do what they want. But some were so traumatized, they just wanted to leave. It sounds like the captain of Freighter Two offered the women work on his ship, with a promise to let them off at whichever planet they chose, and then drugged them. When they woke up, they were in that room you found.”
“And because they’re Lassian, they probably didn’t have family checking up on them. It’s possible no one knew they were missing.” Wren knew about that all too well. She had no family—her parents had died in a bombing on Faldine—and the long trips she took for work meant her friends were used to her being away for months at a time. When she’d gone missing on Ytla, only Nanganya SF had known she was gone.
She shivered.
The now-deposed leaders of Lassa, the former breakaway planet, had gone through their people with horrifying regularity, leaving many survivors alone, with no family ties. Wren tapped a fist on her knee. The captain had chosen his victims carefully. Had chosen not to set up a home base for the same reason.
“He organized everything in his life to make him able to do what he did,” she said. “His whole business setup was designed to allow him to indulge his fantasy life.”
“He’s done it before,” Ed said with a nod. “No question. They need to see if there’ve been any bodies found along his route that could be his former victims.”
Wren shivered. She remembered jerking awake at every noise in the small shack the Har Met Vent had locked her in. She had been imprisoned in that room, but not shackled.
They hadn’t thought it necessary, as they didn’t think she could get far, even if she managed to escape and run. As it was, she’d only gotten out because the storm that had swept over them had ripped the flimsy roof off her prison, and she had managed to climb out.
She looked up, saw Ed watching her.
Her nanos soothed her, but she had made a deal with them early on not to soothe her too much. She had a feeling that suppressing the feelings of fear and helplessness she felt when thinking of her time in captivity would only make it harder in the long run.
