Chapter 5
Vaughn’s room was exactly as immaculate as I thought it would be.
The bed was made so tightly, I couldn’t even slip a finger between the sheets.
There wasn’t a speck of dust visible.
He had no personal effects, other than his extra uniforms, hung and pressed neatly in a slim cabinet in the wall, or the standard-issue Starlane toiletries, arranged in an orderly fashion in a drawer in the bathroom.
My large pack was tucked into a corner, where Rion had likely placed it.
Truth be told, I didn’t have much either, and I had been trained, like Vaughn, it seemed, to leave little behind of yourself in spaces that were accessible to others.
But still, I could tell plenty about Vaughn with what wasn’t present.
Like me, he had no family. An article I’d read labeled him as an orphan, although I wasn’t sure if he’d been raised as such, or if he’d lost his family in adulthood, as I had.
His attention to detail, extreme cleanliness, and hyper-organization spoke to his military background, and I assumed, a need for order.
Understanding this about him, it was easy to see how me showing up and throwing his world into chaos was probably the absolute worst-case scenario for him.
But given that he was an experienced military leader, he also had to know how to adapt to change.
There were always variables in the field you had to account for and move around.
Maybe captaining this ship for the last eighteen months had made it easy for him to control most things.
But he couldn’t control me. And he certainly couldn’t control the Phoenix. So he was going to have to be flexible in his approach and execution.
Lucky for him, adaptability was my middle name, and if I could find a way to work with or around him, I could adjust where he was unable or unwilling. It was that very skill that had allowed me to succeed while working at IA, and why I’d become one of their most valuable field assets for a time.
I could feel myself getting back into the swing of things, loosening stiff joints and disused muscles from years out of the field.
While I had felt discombobulated upon running into Cassidy, the longer I was alone in Vaughn’s room with my thoughts, the more I felt like I was actually back in my element.
While I snooped and figured out where to put the few things I’d brought with me, I tried to run through likely outcomes for how to better partner with Vaughn, seeing as working together would be the most ideal situation.
I hoped that if I had the opportunity to at least tell him about my experience that he would be more open to collaborating voluntarily.
If he refused to give me a chance, given how gruff he’d already acted, considering both his military background and leadership status on the ship, I could easily pivot and play dead.
If he wanted a complacent little wife who would agree with him and stand down from contributing to the mission, then that’s what I’d do… outwardly.
Behind the scenes, I’d conduct my own investigation. I was well used to people, men in particular, underestimating me, so what was one more? I would take a lot of joy in proving him wrong, completing the mission on my own.
The choice would be his to make. Would he play nice or force me to show him up?
The only catch for either path was that I needed to learn more about Vaughn to discern the best way to coax him into trusting me.
My greatest strength as a covert operative was finding the best ways to get under people’s skin and manipulate them to do what I wanted them to do.
I wasn’t naive enough to think that Vaughn would be an easy mark, given his own experience in the field, but if he didn’t realize I was using his weaknesses against him, did it really matter if I was taking advantage of them to my benefit, especially if it meant the mission was completed quickly and without casualties?
I didn’t have much to unpack, and Vaughn barely used any of the ample storage space built into the relatively spacious captain’s quarters.
I tried to keep my things far from where he kept his, assuming that the more inconspicuous I was, the easier it would make things between us during the transition.
If nothing else, it would show him that I respected his space.
The jury was still out on whether I respected him, seeing as I’d barely talked to him for more than two minutes before he’d stormed off like a child.
The door snicked open and I froze, coming face to face with Vaughn once again.
Neither of us moved for a long moment, each observing the other and wondering who would break first. Just like with Darren, I knew it would be me, and all the better for Vaughn to believe that he had the upper hand.
“I’m sorry Darren left us both in the dark,” I offered, taking a step backward, wincing when my back met the wall. Nowhere to go.
Vaughn continued to silently stare.
And I continued playing the part of a desperate colleague…
okay, maybe it wasn’t such a stretch. “You understand there’s no way out of this.
The exception was approved, regardless of whatever paperwork Darren forged and favors he called in.
If we don’t at least try, it will look worse for both of us in the long run.
Do you really want to go out there and tell your crew this was some sort of mistake? ”
“After what you did in front of Officer Reese, you made that option impossible,” Vaughn growled, his tone laced with venom.
But was that a hint of pink across his cheeks?
Let’s find out, I thought.
I took a step toward Vaughn. “Listen, I’m not exactly happy about it either, but we have a common goal.
” Tentatively, I reached out and placed my hand on his arm, a pale, blank canvas over the dark scales starting from his wrist, trailing upwards and ending somewhere beneath his uniform.
“Surely we can find a way to work together.” My voice was soft as my gaze met his.
And for a moment, I had him.
His blush deepened before he realized his mistake and recoiled from my touch.
However, something inside him didn’t want to.
And I could use that something, but only if I needed to, as a last resort.
I wasn’t the kind of operative to seduce men for the sport of it, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been forced to, if for nothing else than for self-preservation, though I didn’t enjoy it.
At the very least, it confirmed my suspicions that Vaughn had enjoyed our first kiss. You can’t fake a physical response like that. And there was something so cute about this big, buff, rough-and-tumble military man being shy and embarrassed about enjoying a great kiss.
Maybe fostering a little crush would be a way to get him to open up and start to trust me.
That was all I needed—just a tiny crack to break the whole thing wide open.
Still, I was going to have a challenge with building trust, seeing as Vaughn was a man of few words and clearly would do everything in his power to stay away from me.
Getting revenge on the person and group responsible for killing my family would certainly be worth the trouble.
“Listen, I talked to Darren. I know I’m stuck with you, but I don’t have to like it.” He glared at me, beginning to pace across the room, getting as far from me as possible.
Oh, he really likes me, doesn’t he?
Well, if he was intent on taking the harder path, I knew what I had to do.
I sat down on the edge of the bed, demurely crossing one leg over the other as I leaned back on my palms. Letting him feel like he was in control of both the situation and of our physical distance would ease his nerves.
Sitting literally below him would subconsciously communicate submission, although I had no intention of doing anything of the sort…
unless he wanted to use that grumpy captain voice under more salacious circumstances…
“How would you like to proceed, Captain?” I watched him as he moved back and forth.
He narrowed his eyes at me, probably wondering if this was a ploy. He was smart enough to see right through me, so I had to make him feel like he was working for it.
“You will be standing down and letting me handle this mission on my own. You’re here as the chief engineer and nothing else.”
“I’m also your wife.” I gave him a coy smile, and maybe pushed my chest out just a bit, knowing that with our positions, he could easily see down my shirt, if he wanted to.
Vaughn took a beat to glare at me, but then continued pacing. “If you stay out of my way, I’ll give you a cut of the bounty.”
“How much?”
“Two percent.”
I scoffed.
“Three.”
“You assume I’m in it for the money.” Which meant that he clearly was.
He paused again to study me. “Then why?”
He took the bait.
This was a shitty thing to do, showing him false vulnerability and using my trauma against him, which never felt good, but he’d given me no other option.
“Meridian took everything from me. My entire family is gone because of them.”
Vaughn’s eyes softened. Only for a split second. Blink and you’d have missed it, but it had been there. The captain had a heart; no wonder his crew cared so much about him. “Elysian?” he guessed.
It was a fair assumption. So many had fallen to the hallucinogenic drug created and distributed by the Phoenix across the entire system.
But it was extremely addictive. Who wouldn’t want to get lost in their own version of heaven?
Except that the more you took it, the more you needed, and after a certain point, there was no coming back to reality.
“My brother,” I replied. “My twin.”
He didn’t try to hide his grimace at that.
“My parents fought against Meridian, and they were assassinated as a result.”
“Fuck.” He ran his hand over his jaw.
“You can keep the fucking bounty. All of it. Let me in.”
He resumed his pacing, but the cadence was slightly off from before. He was considering my request. “I don’t have time to babysit.”
“I’ve worked covert ops for six years and spent the last three tracking the Phoenix underground.
Darren pulled me for a reason.” The next bid was a gamble, but one I felt I should take.
“You need me. You’re too close to your crew.
One of them isn’t with you. Do you want the rest to get hurt if you can’t see beyond your loyalties? ”
He stopped again, right in front of me, looking down at me, like he was staring down the barrel of a gun. “Why’d you leave IA? They breed lifers.”
I hesitated; I hadn’t expected that. I didn’t want to answer with the truth or a lie. I didn’t want to talk about what had happened on Deimos. Ever. Instead, I chose to say nothing, snapping my mouth closed.
“You want to be partners, but trust is a two-way street.” He flicked his hand back and forth between us. “You’re trouble. You know that. I know that. And you’re asking me to get into bed with you, literally and figuratively, without knowing what your angle is.”
Fuck. He was good. Why did that make him so much hotter?
“I have nothing left to lose. I need this mission.” If he wanted honesty, there it was, plain and simple.
“Not good enough.”
“Let me be your spy. You can’t keep tabs on the entire crew by yourself. You need an outsider’s observations. I can be your boots on the ground.”
“And what makes you think they’ll trust you over me?”
I shook my head. “Of course they won’t, but I can observe them, seeing and hearing what they wouldn’t show in front of their captain. There’s camaraderie in lower ranks,” I argued.
“I’ll think about it.” He glanced down at his watch. “We need to go or we’ll be late for the pre-flight meeting.”
“Wait.” I got up from the bed, grabbing his arm without thinking. “We need to get our story straight.”
“What story?”
“How we met. How we fell in love.”
Vaughn groaned. “What were you thinking?” Curiously, he didn’t shake my hand from his arm this time, but I released him nonetheless.
“You have yearly leadership training with Starlane. Maybe we met there, had a whirlwind affair, and have been corresponding since then—has to be on an encrypted line, or there’d be a digital trail.
The long-distance relationship could help to explain any physical awkwardness.
” I’d been thinking of what holes needed to be filled since Darren had dropped the bomb on me the day before.
“Only one problem—Starlane exceptions are so rare, they’d never grant one to such an untested couple. It would be a huge risk of disruption. How are we supposed to explain how we lucked out?” He folded his arms over his broad chest.
“Because of you,” I replied.
He didn’t seem to understand.
“You really don’t have any idea how much of a coup it is that they have you on their books, do you?”
“My discharge pension only covered the down payment on the Radiant. They have a monopoly on all ship loans and most freight runs. There was nowhere else I could go.”
“That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be a PR nightmare for the press to catch wind that such a decorated military hero was denied an exception with the love of his life.”
Vaughn rolled his eyes at the sentiment. “Fine. Whatever.” He turned to make for the door.
“Wait, there’s one more thing.”
He stopped, but didn’t turn around.
“Can you at least pretend not to be physically repulsed by me in front of the crew? We don’t need to be heavy on the PDA, but you’re going to have to try to act like you’re a little comfortable with me, okay?”
He grunted what I thought was a tentative agreement, then said, “C’mon, Trouble, time to face the inquisition,” as he strode out the door.