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his side. She swallowed.

In a flash, Charlotte was gone. The scene before her eyes transformed into a living

nightmare. For some inexplicable reason, the scent of jasmine lingered in the air.

Tyler stood next to The Matriarch. Rory stood next to a young man that Samantha didn’t

know.

Looking to her side, she saw Devlin standing stoically next to her. Her heart hammered

in her chest.

“My Apprentice has convinced me to spare you. You will leave The Triad in peace, and I

will reciprocate. You will also leave without your niece. Do not fear. Aurora will be treated

like a queen.”

“No, way in hell. I’m not leaving here without the ones I love.”

“If you leave now…they will both live long and happy lives.”

Samantha didn’t follow what The Matriarch was saying. Then, in the blink of an eye, The

Matriarch morphed into her father’s killer. The white haired Asian man, smiled. Her stomach

turned. He raised his hands, and a gun appeared in his right hand. “You made the wrong

choice.” Before she could react, the white haired man conjured another gun out of thin air to fill

his left hand. A scream tore out of her, when he turned and filled Devlin with bullets while at the

same time firing a hail of bullets into Rory. Blood splattered everywhere. Samantha couldn’t

move. She was frozen with fear. She had lost. She had failed both Devlin and Rory. They were

dead. From the shadows, Tyler emerged.

“Tyler.” She reached for her pistol and drew it, but he’d already discharged his. The

white haired man laughed. Death claimed her.

“NO!” Samantha screamed. She sat up in bed with the sheets tangled around her. She

had fallen into a cold sweat. Her breathing was labored. Devlin shot into the room like a bat out

of hell. Had he been waiting outside of her bedroom in order to charge in when he heard

something startling?

“Are you okay?” he asked, his eyes widening with fear.

She sat up in bed. He gravitated toward her. She didn’t tell him to back off. She was

just too deeply in shock. The nightmare lingered with her. She tried to shake it off to no avail.

It had felt so real. S he could still smell jasmine. Tears clustered in her eyes. Right now, she

needed to see Tyler, she needed to know where he was and she had to find out why he had

murdered her in her nightmare. She’d never show her vulnerability to anyone else, but no matter

what people believed of her, she was still human. She did feel. Reaching for her night coat, she

wrapped it around her body. Turning around, she jumped when she came face to face with Lucy.

“How the hell did you get in here?”

MAXIMUM VELOCITY Marly Mathews 133

“I guess my daughter patched her through,” Devlin said looking disgusted.

“It’s about time.” Lucy grumbled, “It took me forever to get Winter’s people to give me

clearance to show myself on this ship!”

“How long were you trying for?” Samantha asked weakly.

“I’ve been going through the wringer with them all night. But I only came into the

bedroom when I heard your scream. You look a bit shaken…are you alright?”

“Do you care?”

“Sort of.” Suddenly, Lucy looked uncomfortable.

Devlin sat in a chair by the bed and went suspiciously silent.

“Why are you here? You don’t happen to know where Tyler trotted off to, do you? We

had one hell of a fight but I didn’t think he’d take off like this even though we are pretty much

finished as a couple. He has Dylan and Charlotte....” she groaned, rubbing at her temple.

“Enough of that, do you know where he is?”

Lucy kicked the ground. “I might.”

“Lucy, you look guilty. Spit it out!”

“Okay.”

Samantha pulled her covers up to her neck. Devlin could not seem to stop staring at her.

She stuck her tongue out at him. Instead of seeming offended, he actually smiled.

As for Lucy, she was going along with her too smoothly. Lucy never did anything the

easy way…especially if Samantha was the one doing the line of questioning. Samantha snagged

her bottom lip with her teeth. She looked toward her nightstand and gasped. Her eyes focused in

on Tyler’s wedding band. “Did you have that transported over here, Lucy?”

“Yes, I did,” she smiled brightly. “I found it in your quarters that you share with Tyler

and I thought you would like to know that Tyler had taken it off. Guess he thinks you two are

done. Pity.”

Her world tilted in on its axis. S he let out a shaky breath and rolled toward Tyler’s side

of the bed. She reached out for the gold ring. This made it real. There was no going back now.

Their life together was over, had it really been genuine to begin with? Images of she and Tyler

together happy, sad and angry flooded her mind. Her heart ached. Her fingers enclosed around

the thick wedding band. As she touched it, she was stricken with a vision of Tyler.

“He’s also left you a message, Samantha. Would you like me to play it for you?”

Yes, please,” she murmured.

‘This ought to be good,” Devlin said smirking.

Tyler’s miniature image appeared before her.

“Hello, Samantha. By now, you’ve probably realized that I’m no longer aboard the

Excalibur.
I’m sorry. I know you’ll be angry at first, and then your anger will turn to all out fury, but you have to trust me. I did what had to be done in order to save us all. I’m going to

help Charlotte watch over Rory. Call this a game of tag, and now you’re it. I can’t tell you

anymore. No matter what happens in the next few days, you have to remember that you mean

absolutely nothing to me. Don’t cry over me. As far as I am concerned we are done. I would

rather have Charlotte over you any day of the week.” Tyler stopped talking as he slipped off his

wedding band. “I am returning to the fold of the Triad and I hope that you won’t hate me for that.

If you do, I don’t care,” he said coldly. Numbness went through her entire body. She didn’t

really hear the rest of his message. Rage filled her coupled with misery.

Tyler’s holographic image disappeared. Stunned, Samantha could only clutch Tyler’s

wedding band and stare off into space. Boy, had she ever made the wrong choice. Her tear filled

MAXIMUM VELOCITY Marly Mathews 134

eyes went to Devlin. He looked like he was ready to throttle the life out of Tyler. Her heart

continued to race.

“Asshole,” she muttered beneath her breath.

Devlin cocked his head to the side. “Well, I can see how Tyler can be so stupid. I told

you he wasn’t worth your trouble.”

“Lucy, how did Tyler transport over to The Triad Ships?”

Lucy sat down on the end of her bed. “He had a personal transporter. Those things cost a

hell of a lot of money. I don’t know where he got it from, but he pulled it out of his personal

footlocker.”

“Shit,” Samantha muttered, feeling the band go hot under her sweaty hands. “Take this

and shove it somewhere would you, Dev?”

She pushed Tyler’s wedding band into his hands. Devlin looked at it like it was poisoned

and gave it to Lucy. “Transport this into space, Lucy.”

Shocked, Lucy took the wedding band and made it disappear.

“Once a thief, always a thief, Samantha. I am sorry he showed his true colors to you like

this. It is unfortunate that I was right all along. You should have let him swing in the breeze.”

Devlin pierced her with his intense blue gaze. She shrugged her shoulders feeling distinctly

unsettled.

“Lucy, tell Charlotte, Johanna and Dylan to meet me on the
Excalibur
in five minutes.”

“They are already on their way to the bridge,” Lucy declared.

“Good.” Samantha heaved out a breath. She stood up in her bra and panties and started

to put on her clothes. Devlin seemed a bit too interested in her but she didn’t have time to feel

aroused or to care that he was staring at her almost standing in the nip.

None of this made any sense. “Lucy, I need you to be straight with me. Did you listen in

on the conversation that Charlotte and I had with Quinn last night?”

Lucy let out a low whistle. “I might have done.”

“Were you alone?” She stood up from pulling on her boots and walked to the door.

“Samantha, I’ll see you later,” Devlin called as she left his quarters and headed at top

speed for the
Excalibur
. Lucy followed her while she jogged through the ship.

“Lucy, if you don’t cough it up, Dylan will be more than willing to reprogram you.”

“I was afraid you’d point that out. Tyler made me promise to keep this to myself.”

“Lucy. Get it out of your system now or mark my words Dylan will be reprogramming

your system before you can say pixel.”

“Okay, okay. I did arrange for Tyler to eavesdrop on you, Charlotte and Quinn. He said

he was worried about you. He told me The Triad had the capability of making our lives very

miserable. I thought I was doing the right thing. You are always so reckless and hotheaded…I

thought Tyler would be able to make sure you didn’t do anything stupid. Instead, Tyler did the

ultimate act of stupidity. I don’t actually know if we can trust him, you know? He’s changed so

much, I don’t know what to make of him anymore.”

“You’re damn right, he has changed, or maybe he just fell back into his old habits,” she

mused. Samantha bit her lip. Tyler might be trying to push her away. She couldn’t figure his

reasoning. She doubted it though. The whole situation made her sick to her stomach. Her

marriage with Tyler had hit the point of no return. They were speeding toward the point of not

even being able to be cordial to each other. “Fine. We need to tell Winter to follow the ship that

has Tyler onboard.”

“Slight problem.” Lucy shifted her weight to her other foot. “I don’t know which ship

MAXIMUM VELOCITY Marly Mathews 135

Tyler transported to. He blocked my sensors with the sight-to-sight transporter.”

“Oh, that’s not what I wanted to hear.”

“That’s what happened.”

Samantha climbed the ramp and walked onboard the
Excalibur
. She headed straight for

the bridge. Samantha looked up when the sound of people entering the bridge filled her ears.

“Samantha?” Charlotte called out.

“Lucy, you’d better stick around. I’m not done with you yet.”

Lucy sighed. “Okay.”

Samantha sat in the Captain’s chair and propped her feet up on the armrest. Her head

hurt, her eyes stung and she couldn’t get Devlin out of her mind—or out of her heart.

She didn’t know why Tyler had transported over to the Triad ship, or why he had turned

on them so foully. She did know that he had always been attracted to Charlotte; she’d just

underestimated the heat of his attraction. She’d be kicking some good old-fashioned Triad ass in

about two hours, since they’d be reaching Ferdinand’s old haunts in that amount of time.

Samantha gasped when Devlin came onto the bridge with the rest of the gang.

“What the hell is going on? Are you stalking me?” she asked almost playfully.

Devlin gave her a smug smile. “My, don’t you look rumpled.”

“Blow it out your ass, Dev,” she tried to hide her small smile.

“Actually, you are lucky that I’m here and not my darling daughter. Winter was spitting

freaking nails when she found out that your AI lowered the shield on the
Snow Queen
for a split

second. And to think she was so nice to Lucy only minutes ago.” He winked at her but didn’t let

it slip that she’d been sleeping in his quarters. “Winter wanted to have your AI reprogrammed

for her deviant behavior but I convinced Winter to allow me to come and suss out the situation.”

“Well, we do have a situation.”

Charlotte looked uneasy. Samantha wanted to have one hell of a fight with her but right

now they had to think of a way to deal with Tyler’s betrayal.

“I’m sure that Charlotte might already have a sneaky suspicion of what just went down

here in the middle of the night. To make a long and complicated story short, Tyler was the one

that had the shields lowered so that he could transport over to one of the Triad ships.”

“What?” Dylan and Johanna said in unison. Dylan looked as white as a mime’s face. He

fell into the nearest chair. “How the hell did Tyler pull that stunt off? The
Excalibur
doesn’t

have a transporter.”

“Oh, he got over that little hurdle by pulling out his own site-to-site transporter system.”

Samantha wanted to scream.

“Holy crap. Well, you have to give Tyler credit for having all of his bases covered.”

Dylan raked his hands through his hair.

“Give him credit for being an asshole more like! I had him pegged from the get go and

now he’s shown his beastly ways, I could say I told you so!” Devlin stated.

“Why are you here? No one cares what you think about Tyler, you think the worst of

him, something that you reinforced when you almost sent him to the gallows six months ago!”

Dylan shot back.

“Tyler will hang for what he has done at some point. A monster like him can’t be

allowed to saunter around the galaxies unchecked,” Devlin said calmly.