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Blythe squeezed her eyes shut. Rann was somewhere in there. She should have made him come with them. Should have found him before the boarders did. Should have⁠—

A slow clap sounded from the far end of the passage.

She looked up.

A man stood just beyond the airlock doors, flanked by two armed men. She didn’t need an introduction to know this was Joe. The Joe. The one they were all running from.

He wasn’t especially big. That was almost worse. She’d expected a huge mountain of a man after the way everybody talked about him, somebody who could snap people in half with one hand.

Instead, he was… ordinary. Generically good-looking with a smile that reminded her of a used-shuttle salesman. The sort of man who could sit beside you in a bar and chat about the weather, and you wouldn’t have a clue he was responsible for making people disappear.

“Well,” Joe said. “You should have known better than to try and run.”

Layla made a low, furious sound, and Stevie tightened her grip before Blythe could launch herself at him and rip the bastard’s throat out.

Joe didn’t even look at Layla. His gaze stayed on Blythe. “You lot have caused me a great deal of inconvenience.”

“Fuck you,” she snarled, but his smile just widened.

“Still got some fight in you. Good. You’ll need that.” He turned to the man with the scar across his throat. “Sitrep.”

The man shifted his rifle against his chest. “Recovered all the women. No losses on our side.”

“And the ship?”

“Cleared it.” He hesitated.

Joe’s eyes narrowed. “But?”

“There was definitely someone else aboard.” The scarred man glanced toward the window. “A man. We found spare boots in one of the rooms. Way too big for any of the bitches.”

Joe looked through the window at the drifting trader. Then he grinned. “Destroy it.”

“No!” she screamed, surging forward.

The guards caught her before she got two steps. One arm locked around her middle while another clamped a hand over her mouth, but she bit down hard enough to taste blood.

The first torpedo hit the trader near the rear engines. The explosion blossomed bright against the dark, ripping open the stern in a white-orange flare. The ship spun hard, pieces of plating tumbling away from it.

The second torpedo slammed into the center mass and the ship came apart and she screamed again.

Rann flattened himself against the cockpit ceiling, every muscle locked tight as the bulkhead door opened beneath him and two males stepped inside.

Their boots clattered against the deck. One of them swore as he knocked a shoulder against the pilot’s chair, the other casting a bored glance around the tiny room like he’d done this a thousand times before.

Rann held his breath.

All either of them had to do was look up and he was sunk. Well, shot.

He had a hand braced against a ceiling conduit, his feet wedged on either side of the overhead housing, and his shoulders were burning from holding himself in place. The cockpit had barely fit him sitting down. It sure as draanth didn’t fit him folded against the ceiling like a goddamned spider.

One of them stopped directly beneath him.

Rann loosened his grip a fraction.

All he had to do was drop, drive his elbow into the male’s neck, and take the rifle. He could put the second one down before he got a shot off.

Easy.