Ten minutes later and Kaira was again torn between staying and leaving. Baxter was in the room, talking quietly to one of the others. He finished then walked over to Kaira, crouching next to her chair to bring his face level with hers.
“Kaira,” he said. “I know this is taking longer than you want but believe me, Jess will help you. Just like he helped me!”
“He helped you?”
Baxter smiled.
“Well, more my niece. She’s only seventeen and she got involved with a particularly unsavoury character. We tried to warn her but she wouldn’t hear it. Next thing we knew, she’d run off with him on a ship. Except it was less run away and more been kidn*pped in the end.
“She managed to get a signal out telling us what had happened and how scared she was. But he found out and sent another messa
