Outrageous Fortune-Errant Freight Book One

Chapter 34

"You've met?" Rory asked, easing up to his elbows and looking from the tall woman to his captain and back.

"She works for Tariq," he explained.

"Worked for Tariq would be the operative term," Galileo said. "Now she works for me."

"Bet he offered her more money," Jagati stage-whispered to John, who sighed.

Ysabel favored her with a cool glance. "Mary persuaded me to consider new employment when I escorted Colin and her away from Tariq's home."

"And how much did your loyalty cost?" John asked her.

"More than I'd have earned with Tariq in—"

"Enough to do her job," Galileo interrupted, waving to Ysabel to continue.

With a shrug of acceptance she gestured to Rory who, grumbling, climbed to his feet and started for the starboard bulkhead. There, just opposite John and Jagati, someone not on John's crew had left another set of shackles hanging from another of the bulkhead D-rings.

"Where is Colin?" Galileo asked.

"Oh good, Colin's here, too," Jagati murmured.

"Above decks," Ysabel replied to Galileo's question. "He said he had an idea."

"That I did," Colin's voice called from the companionway, causing John and Jagati to angle in that direction.

"I don't pay you to have ideas," Galileo said.

"Technically, it ain't you doing the paying," Colin pointed out as he thudded down the ladder, "but not to worry, this stroke of genius is onna house."

Which was when everyone saw Colin had brought company.

Despite Galileo's assurances, Jinna appeared paler than her norm.

"Now everyone'll be on their best behavior, won't they?" Colin said, his fingers tightening over her slender wrist.

"Listen, buster," she said on a gasp while John, Jagati, and Eitan all lurched forward, chains rattling, curses forming.

Then Rory, making a sound unlike anything John had ever heard, slipped his hand free of the shackle Ysabel had yet to fasten and rammed his shoulder into her sternum. Before she could recover her breath, he'd stolen her sword and flung himself across the deck, sweeping the blade wildly to keep Galileo back as he raced towards Colin, who fumbled to draw his shooter.

"Don't!" John, Jagati, and a gasping Ysabel called out, momentarily united by the fear of sparks on an airship.

The combined caution was enough to make Colin hesitate and, for a moment, it looked to John as if Rory would succeed in his attack.

A thought that worried him almost as much as Colin's gun, because Rory was no killer.

But mere steps from his goal, the short sword pulling back to strike, Rory came to a juddering halt, as if he'd run into a wall. His fingers flew open, and the sword clattered to the deck. Then his body jerked, and his breath gasped out, and then again his entire frame wracked as if someone or something were striking him, over and over and over again.

Which was when John caught on—but only because he'd been present the first time he'd seen Rory flogged.

Instinct had him searching the room for the culprit, but of course there were no whips to be seen, nor any blood spreading under the muslin of Rory's shirt.

But there was Galileo, standing mid-deck, his eyes fixed on Rory.

Galileo, who, according to Eitan, possessed the ability to send a man back in time.