That’s all that Thorton kept thinking to himself, like a mantra, as he watched the blue-faced, black-eyed Dunshachey curl his purple lips into a grin as Thorton passed his comlink—and all the expensive rare-earth metals inside of it—over to him. The Dunshachey, Vua Laa, definitely thought he was getting the better end of the deal.Still, the Dunshachey race was the most trusted in the galaxy. Not because they were better than anyone else—they were rude, crude, noisy and nearly evil, but they couldn’t lie. Well, they could, but their quickly reddening skin afterwards would give them away.So when Thorton showed a picture of Penny taken on his tablet computer, and the Dunshachey assured him that he knew where she was as long as a comlink was involved in the bargain, Thorton grudgingly took the deal. “Tell me what I need to know, or I will strangle you.” Thorton was tired from searching the entire city and finding neither a freckled hide nor a red strand of hair, so he wasn’t making any clever threats, only true ones.
