Free Silver Tongued Devils by Dawn Montgomery

drew his firearm, it looked
like a nasty thing, old metal and gunpowder. They really were
living on the fringes out here. “Just move.”
    Brom’s hands went up. “You got
it.”
    They left the room with the guard
several paces behind them. “Where do we go?”
    “Straight ahead to the end of the
corridor, and then you take a left.”
    She nodded and flounced
ahead. They turned the corner and she ran into a broad chest. She
looked up and found jade green eyes assessing and immediately
dismissing her as insignificant. Who the
hell is this guy? Another person walked
with him but she dipped her head and let them pass with a quiet
apology. They turned the corner and she heard a scuffle.
    “You,” Brom’s growl came over her
earpiece. “You were the one.” He dropped into Arnek. “Go, Raesa.
Now.”
    Her heart thundered with fear but she
sprinted down the hall. The communications closet was tucked in a
room close to the wash rooms. She needed to send the command for
their ship to be released and then shatter the comm
crystal.
    Two shots fired behind her. “Brom.” She
hissed his name.
    “I’m fine. Go.”
    He didn’t sound fine, dammit. She
reached the comm room and ripped open the control panel with the
stiletto she’d put in her hair. In a heartbeat she bypassed the
security code and entered the room. Every second lost was precious.
Raesa set the stiletto next to the keyboard. She loosened her
fingers and let them fly on the central computer.
    Was Brom—
    She cut off that thought before it
crippled her. Her mind dove into her job. What felt like eternity
only took a few minutes, but she broke through. A bulletin alert
came on the screen. She and Na’varr were on the announcement. A
quick scan of the details jerked her to a complete stop. Prince
Naesha Varrian, public enemy number one of the Andovian
Republic.
    Na’varr was the man her father had
admired above all others. The pirate and the prince were the same
man. Fuck. She scanned further.
    Her part of the bulletin, however,
listed her as a kidnap victim.
    Kidnapped? She snorted. Obviously
kidnapping didn’t work so well when it came to her. She ignored the
rest of it and focused on her job.
    It was laughingly simple to send a
command order to release the Crimson Star. Once it went through,
she changed the main system password and locked out admin controls
for all users. That would mess them up for a while. Now the
communications crystal. She opened the maintenance program. She’d
had to tweak the crystals so often on stolen equipment that she
knew every weakness in the software.
    With a few tweaks she adjusted the
calibration to dangerous levels. In a few minutes it would shatter
and then they’d be good to go.
    The door opened and she spun around in
time to take a full-bodied tackle. She slammed down on the ground
and her breath crushed out of her.
    She noticed two things at once. Blood
poured from a wound on his forehead and she realized the man on top
of her wore the uniform of the Crimson Star. “The trai—”
    A knee to her side shot agony through
her body. “Shut your mouth, bitch.”
    She curled in on herself and focused on
breathing. His voice was familiar.
    He gripped her hair in his fist and
hauled her head back against his shoulder. “What the hell is it
with you and escaping? Twice now you’ve cost me a fortune.” The
barrel of a gun pressed under her chin.
    It was hot but not searing from the
guard’s previous shots.
    She racked her brain trying to figure
out where she had heard his voice before.
    “I found you on Sakura.” His hot breath
hit her cheek. “It took me almost a year to arrange for your old
man’s death. You were supposed to be my retirement
fund.”
    With dawning horror, she realized where
she knew him from. He was part of Crimson Star’s supply pick-up
crew. The guy had asked her a ton of questions about Sakura and her
father. Guilt and anger warred inside her.
    “Why would you do this?”
    “My mission was to