Diesel might well regret a lot of things, butnothelping Daphne Charlene by sticking his nose into Valene and Wyatt’s relationship was never going to be one of them.
Behind him, Axel said, “That woman is a menace.” Diesel hadn’t heard him approach. His brother was freakily silent.
Stifling the urge to jump in surprise, Diesel said, “Truth.”
“What did she want?”
“Foolish things I don’t want to be involved in or discuss.”
“Okay by me. Let’s go back down to your office.”
The two of them made their way to the basement level.
“What’s up?” Diesel asked.
“I have some news.”
“Good news?”
Axel shrugged. “Some of it, sort of, but also a bit of bad news.”
“Of course there’s bad news. There’s always bad news.” Diesel centered himself to bear up and hear really horrible news.
“I just got a message that our next luxury liner visit will be earlier by two days because of some celestial display that only happens once every ten years or something. The cruise director has arranged for a sighting of it to be a feature of the trip.”
“You’re saying that there will be only five days between the luxury liner’s visit and the gulag special run?”
Axel nodded.
“Is that the good news or the bad news?” One had to be clear with Axel. His concept of good and bad was sometimes skewed.
“The bad news. The good news is Indigo Smith’s appeal was denied over some sort of technicality, but what with moving all the prisoners back to the interstellar ship, it will only be here a couple of days earlier than scheduled.”
“So we’re back to a week between the two?”
“Yep.”
“Anything else I need to know?”
“Well, solar flares from Earth’s sun are up lately, but scientists don’t know why.”
“What does that have to do with this?”
“Nothing. Just making conversation.”
“Very funny.”
Axel laughed and punched him in the shoulder. “I live to please.”
Diesel delivered a shoulder punch of his own, then sobered. “I hate to say this, but I have a bad feeling about this whole out-of-schedule gulag run.”
“Because of the time between the two visits?”
Diesel shook his head. “No. Because of who will be aboard when it docks. I suggest you triple whatever security Cam suggests.”
“Already did.”
Diesel grunted. “I hope it’s enough.”
