"Rhade says there were signs of a struggle." Doyle, Trance, Harper, and Dylan sat around the conference table as Rommie gave them the news. "He's tracked her as far as a cave roughly ten meters into the woods behind the bar where she was last seen. Somewhere between there and here, she and her captor… knocked around a bit."

"So what you're saying," Harper replied, "is that there may not have been any struggle at all. I mean, Beka did a whole lot of 'bumping around' with this guy and she was no captive."

"Harper, you're getting all blotchy again." Doyle put a hand to his forehead to check his temperature.

"I told her he was bad news!"

Trance forced a lock of gold hair away from her face. "Beka is a grown woman, Harper. She can make her own decisions."

"Well, she always makes the wrong ones, even when I tell her they're the wrong ones. There's something you guys don't know."

"Tell me now," Rommie demanded.

"I saw Alex taking a vial of something outta med deck. I told her, but she wouldn't believe me."

"She's lonely," Trance explained. "She didn't want to believe you."

"Yeah, well, she should. I care about her and that guy's bad news. She shouldn't be with him."

Dylan put a hand on the engineer's shoulder. "We're gonna find her, Harper."

--------

The noises Rhade heard as he approached the cave were familiar to him, but they gave him a queasiness that twisted in his gut. He'd seen in his lifetime to recognized when joy was being derived by some one's pain- from the sounds of it, some one's extreme pain.

It took him all of five minutes to neutralize the men guarding the entrance. They had less training that a backwoods militia. He was cautious, but quick, moving toward the shouts and laughs he heard from inside.

Beka was kneeling on the ground with her eyes closed. There was a man next to her with a hand on her shoulder to keep her from standing. The bald one stood behind her with a gun to her head. Blood was pouring down her face from somewhere- Rhade couldn't tell, and her hands and feet were so bloody he couldn't tell how they were injured.

The bald man spoke. "Maybe we should kill her now. I don't think she's gonna last."

"Alex wouldn't want that," the man next to her said.

"Where is he, anyway?"

"Figuring out how to contact the Andromeda without getting traced. Then we'll finish it."

"Can't we just kill her and send him her fingers? It's a classic."

Tears streamed down Beka's cheeks, but hadn't opened her eyes, yet. When she finally did, they immediately found Rhade. 'My God,' she thought as he swept forward, 'he's been here the whole time. He's finally going to kill me.' She closed her eyes again and waited.

The men stepped aside as Rhade passed, swinging his blades up and into the flesh of the first two, then dispatching a the rest with his forcelance. When his blades were dripping with blood and skin and a blast had grazed his bicep, he finally stood before her.

Beka had been waiting for days. That's what her brain was telling her. She breathed in and out, trying to find the calm she'd heard people talk about having right before they thought they were going to die. It wasn't there.

When she opened her eyes again, he was standing in front of her, holding his force lance. "Please," she whispered, "not another day. I can't stand another day."

Rhade holstered his lance, knelt down, and gently coaxed her into his arms. She pliable; she probably would've let him do anything, which was a thought that scared him. He spoke into his com to let Dylan know she'd been found, then lifted her from the ground and slowly up from the cave.