Chapter 18

“Lovely to meet you. The pleasure is all mine.”

“Don’t talk to the Motley. It doesn’t deserve your niceties,” Dante chided mockingly.

Tinsley giggled and then sighed.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the room full of crates. “I guess I was hoping we would find Maraliza. Or at least… you know… something that might help locate her.”

Dante nodded and pulled Tinsley into a hug. “I know. But this is confirmation that they’re in an illegal trade, and we heard them talking earlier about transporting girls. That means there has to be evidence of some sort of trafficking scheme here somewhere. Read further back in the log.”

Tinsley flipped back a few pages and shook her head. “It’s all in code. Most of it just says calcium sulfate hemihydrate over and over. What is that stuff, anyway?”

Dante shrugged his huge shoulders. “The Jorvlens use that term a lot. We looked it up once back at PAPS, and it’s an ingredient in chalk or something. Point is, that’s the code for Motley. It’s a white powder and it would go through minimal checks because it’s an inert substance.”

Tinsley looked at him, confused. “So?”

“It means they’re looking for something similar to compare their illegal cargo to so no one cares about it or will look into it too much.”

Tinsley nodded. “Right. Because who cares about chalk?”

“Exactly. So think about shipments of girls.” Tinsley made a face. “I know. But they’re not here, and we have to find something or the whole trip was a waste.”

“Okay, okay. So they would need food and water…”

“And temperature-controlled storage, so look for a trip that includes several stops for coolant and water.”

“All right, that takes care of this, those, and these… Here! What’s a hoicka bear?”

“A what?” Tinsley pointed out the entry to Dante. “Hoicka Bears—Opwidius—9.8 tons.”

“Oh, boy.” Dante breathed.

“What?”

“It makes sense that they would use an animal for the code because it would need food, water, and temperature regulation, but 9.8 tons? That’s… that’s a lot.” Dante pulled a pen out of his pocket and wrote some ballpark figures on the sheet. “That would be over two hundred people.”

Tinsley looked sick. “How would they fit that many on board a ship like this?” she asked.

Dante knew deep down that he didn’t want to know. “It’s not comfy. That’s for sure.” He wagged his head back and forth as if to shake the mental images free. “Okay, okay. Think. We need to know the destination of the shipment. Why aren’t the destinations listed here?”

Still a little green around the gills, Tinsley shifted focus as well. “These are just the quantities and origins for customs. They don’t need the destination on this sheet because you’re already there by the time anyone looks at it.”

“Okay, so where would the real log be?”

She gave a helpless shrug. “Probably on a computer on the bridge. But I don’t know how we would hack that.”

Dante smiled and lifted a keyring from his pocket that jangled with all manner of wiring, pocket drives, and squiggly pieces of metal. “Good thing I came prepared.”

Tinsley smiled for the first time since entering the stockroom. “Let me get some of this in case we don’t find what we’re looking for,” she suggested, snapping some pictures of the log on her wrist communicator.

They turned to go and look for the bridge—and ran smack into a Jorvlen guard. “Whudder you doin’ here?” he growled as he took Tinsley painfully by one arm. Her eyes widened and she stammered a reply.

Dante cut her off, stashing his ring of hacking devices and holding up his mop. “Heard there was a mess that needed cleaning.”

“We didn’t hire no cleaners for the stockroom!”

“Of course not. We’re a little lost. But tell me, how’s the chalk business?”

“The what?”

“Never mind. We’ll be going now.” Dante took Tinsley’s other hand and wrested her from the grip of the beefy Jorvlen. She grimaced and bit her lips, her eyes watering in an attempt to cover her pain.

“Wait…” The guard snarled, looming up behind them.

“Yes, sir?” Dante injected a good helping of syrupy politeness into his voice.

The guard held out Tinsley’s broom and pointed to his left with the other hand. “Mess hall’s thataway.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” Dante squeaked, allowing Tinsley barely enough time to snag the broom before he whisked her to safety around the corner.

“That was close,” Tinsley whispered when they were out of earshot.

“I thought you said everyone left!” Dante whispered back.

“I thought they did. Someone must have come back for something. Might have seen us on the cameras or whatever. Anyway, we’d better make it snappy!”

Running to the bridge, they located the main computer. Dante chose a device from his ring and inserted the drive into the motherboard, uploading a virus that would hack into the mainframe automatically.

“Where did you get something like that?” Tinsley asked.

“My sister-in-law, Willow, is a pirate. I think you’ll like her.”

Tinsley moved in to peruse the files, but a sound akin to shattering glass came from down the hall and she jumped.

“Maybe you should keep watch while I pull these,” she said, gulping air.

“Maybe I should,” Dante replied, moving toward the door with cat-like steps. After a few minutes of looking down an empty hallway, he couldn’t wait any longer. “Finding anything?” he whispered loudly.

“Yeah,” Tinsley said out loud. “I found the acquisition logs, but I don’t really understand them. It’s a conversation between the specialist and some traders, it looks like. Something, something, ‘Opwidian hoicka bears,’ blah, blah, ‘POS planet,’ more jargon and then, ‘no one will know the difference, too many trees.’”

Dante snorted. “POS. You know, piece of shit. No one’s going to look into it too much, so they picked an animal from there. That’s the file you want. It should go into destinations for the ‘bears.’ Download it and let’s go!”

Tinsley pulled the files onto her wrist communicator. “Got it.” She pulled the hacking drive out of the motherboard and followed Dante out. Just as they were rounding the corner into the crew’s quarters, they heard voices coming down the hallway.

“What do you mean, you sent the cleaning crew to the mess hall? I didn’t hire a cleaning crew!” said one loud, obviously perturbed voice.

“Uh-oh. In here!” Dante ducked into a bunk room and pulled Tinsley behind him. Dante heard the argumentative Jorvlens tromp past the door. “Okay, I think we have time to make a break for it. Tinsley?”

Dante’s compatriot clearly had other ideas. As soon as he had pulled her into the room, she had stepped up behind him, ostensibly to listen to the voices and judge for herself when they could leave. But her roving hands told him she didn’t plan on escaping quite yet.

Pressing herself against his back and wrapping her arms around his stomach, Tinsley stroked his chest and abs while brushing her nose up and down the nape of his neck. Chills skittered down his spine at the feeling of her breath, and he could feel himself harden as her hands approached his waistline.

“Tinsley,” he groaned. “Now’s not the time.”

“Agree to disagree,” she purred, planting a trail of kisses from his ear to his shoulder. She slipped a hand into his breeches and ran her fingertips down the length of his shaft, easing it out of his trousers. “I think now is the perfect time.”