Star Raiders by Elysa Hendricks Page B

with hard work, and her womanly mistakes had destroyed it. That womanishness now meant something different to him.
    Oh, on more than one occasion he’d come close to getting his revenge. Last year he’d had her in his grasp, but she’d managed to slip through his fingers. Again.
    He rubbed the jagged scar on his cheek. Others wondered, though none dared ask, why he didn’t have it removed. He kept it to remind him of whom it was he chased and how dangerous she could be. Only after she paid for his pain and humiliation with her own would he visit the surgeon and have the scar eradicated.
    This time, he’d set his trap with a sweet bait he’d known she couldn’t resist.
    The bait was taken, the trap sprung. Now he just had to reel in his catch.
    Greyson paced the corridor outside the Independence med bay. Memories of what had gone on in that room only hours earlier fought with the image of Shyanne lying pale and stil on the examination bed.
    The door opened and Eldin came out.
    Greyson started to go in. “How is she?”
    Eldin blocked him from entering. “She’l be fine. I’ve given her something to make sure she rests. She’l be asleep for some time.”
    “I won’t disturb her.” Greyson tried to move around the older man, who laughed.
    “Oh, you’l disturb her al right.” The old man’s humor faded and he pinned Greyson with a hard stare. “Leave her be.”
    Greyson’s shoulders sagged. Eldin was right. He had no rights where Shyanne was concerned. Eldin and her crew were her family, not him. He’d given up that chance long ago.
    “How often does she pul this kind of stunt?” he asked. His own inability to rescue the children frustrated him, while Shyanne’s clever plan had saved them al , but it also had almost gotten her kil ed.
    Eldin shrugged. “As often as necessary. It’s made her unpopular in a lot of places.” He patted Greyson on the back. “Fortunately, they didn’t recognize her on Verus. You never know when someone wil . Word gets around. Things would have gone down differently if they had. Usual y she just raids slave ships and auctions, but when that’s not possible she’l do this sort of operation.”
    “The crew backs her up on this? Don’t they object to her spending their cash?”
    “Most of us know firsthand what it means to be a slave. Shy’s father rescued us, so now we’re returning the favor.”
    “What wil happen to the girls?”
    “We’l see if we can locate any family for them, but with the way things have been going lately, that’s not likely.” Eldin shot Greyson a sly look. “I have it on good authority the pirates who likely col ected this group haven’t been leaving anyone alive.”
    Greyson’s first instinct was to end his mission and take the girls back to Earth, but if he did, Shyanne and her crew would end up in prison and things would only get worse. “Kedar rarely operated in C.O.I.L. space. He kept to the outer worlds.
    That’s why it took so long for ASP to track him down and arrest him. Why has Shyanne been smuggling so close in?”
    The angry look on Eldin’s normal y genial face told Greyson he’d touched a nerve. The man looked ready to punch him. Had he pushed too far?
    “The only reason Kedar surrendered,” the old man hissed, “was to keep ASP
    from shooting up innocent students in an attempt to capture him. Deceit and betrayal brought him down.”
    “Granted,” Greyson admitted. He liked to think the ASP operatives would have shown restraint, but the risk to the student population had been real. Ten years ago, Wil iams, the current director, had been the agent in charge of the operation.
    His ambition, then as now, made him blind to al but the obvious. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”
    Some of the fire went out of Eldin’s eyes and the old man sighed. “Because of Simon Dempster. Ever since Shy was a child, he’s hated her. Last year, during one of her runs, he caught her. We barely got her back in one piece.”