Chapter 26
I’d been so close to giving in to Lark.
Truth be told, I hadn’t needed to notify her in person that we were preparing to dock. I wanted to see her. I needed to make sure she was okay.
But then I heard them talking.
I witnessed what they’d done.
And then I saw red.
I knew I should have stayed and at least heard her out, but I was gutted. And it went so much deeper than that. The last time I’d felt that kind of betrayal was when I’d received the order to leave the civilians and evacuate Enceladus.
I’d refused the order. My unit had supported my position. And we’d saved those innocent lives, but at the cost of my team. It wasn’t that the two events compared in scope, but I’d felt the same pain lancing through my heart when I heard Cassidy proposition Lark, and witnessed them kissing.
I knew she wasn’t ready for more than a fling, but I didn’t think she’d be unfaithful. And now I knew why she hadn’t been able to commit, because she was torn between the two of us.
The panic attack came on almost immediately upon making it to the bridge. I sucked in deep, strangled breaths, trying to overcome the false smell of smoke and terrified cries of my comrades. I couldn’t let this win. I had a job to do.
Jordan looked back at me, her brow knit in concern as I waved her off. But being the amazing first officer she was, she took the lead on the docking procedure without asking permission, while I stood by and tried not to suffocate.
The second the ship was cleared, I booked it out into the port as fast as I could. The crowd wasn’t much better than my own mind turning on me, but I just needed distance from Lark and Cassidy.
Navigating the bustling marketplace was exactly the distraction I needed.
I grabbed a real coffee, some calming tea that I’d run out of and forgotten to replenish before leaving Phobos for the run, and a hot and fresh pastry, which was always such a luxury compared to the processed food generator output.
Although my panic attack had abated, my chest still felt hollow with grief, my heart aching for Lark and the loss of what could have been between us. There was nothing I could do to make the numbness subside, except to ride it out, and hope that it took weeks, rather than months or years.
It baffled me that in such a short time, this woman had affected me so greatly. But Lark had wormed her way into my heart, only to break it. I’d let my guard down around her, and it had been nice to work with someone who wanted to know me on a deeper level.
I’d known there was something between her and Cassidy. The way his hungry gaze followed her was easy to see, but I’d trusted her when she’d said there was nothing between them.
Idly, I wondered if my suspicions of him being the mole in the crew were simply because subconsciously I knew we were in competition for her affections and it had been jealousy that had made me look his way.
I didn’t even hear what she’d said when she followed me into the hallway.
My hearing was always the first to go when I was having a panic attack.
I tried to ignore the part of me that wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt—the part that wondered if I was missing something, or if there was more to the story than it initially appeared.
But I had heard them talking before. Cassidy’s intentions had been quite clear, and she’d only shoved him away when she saw me standing in the doorway.
Occam’s razor suggested that the simplest explanation was usually the most likely to be correct, so there was no point in pretending like there was a chance she still wanted me and that the whole thing had been a misunderstanding.
There was no misunderstanding that kiss.
I needed to cut my losses before things got worse.
But the day wasn’t over, and the universe appeared to be completely against me…
I snuck back onto the Radiant, wanting another few moments to myself before the questions and pitying looks eventually came.
I slumped into the captain’s chair on the bridge, pulling up the camera feeds to watch Jordan and Ethan overseeing the last of the payload drop and refueling. It appeared as though they were wrapping things up, so it would only be a matter of time before I lost my solitude.
I didn’t know if I’d be able to stand being stuck on the ship with the pair of them for another two months, but there was nothing I could do. We were on track with the schedule, but only by a hair. Any delays, regardless of how minor, could throw us off track.
Which meant I needed a full crew, including an engineer and communications officer, so I’d have to suck it up.
At the very least, there were extra bunks on board, as the ship was equipped to accommodate more personnel, and if needed, I was sure that Jordan would agree to switch shifts back to her original schedule so I could avoid Lark as much as possible.
I couldn’t think about seeing Lark. It was all too fresh. I knew she’d try to apologize and explain why it was him instead of me, and I couldn’t bear it.
As for Cassidy, if he had any sense left in him, he’d resign when we returned to Phobos, so I didn’t have to make up a bullshit excuse as to why Starlane needed to reassign him.
It was a shame. He was good at his job, he didn’t complain, and the rest of the crew liked him.
But I didn’t think I could ever look at the man again and not see him all over Lark.
“Captain!” Natalie barreled onto the bridge in a panic.
“What happened?” I asked, dread sitting low in my stomach. Natalie was excitable, but not one to overreact.
“Lark and Chadwick are MIA. I can’t get a read on either of their comms, and we’ve only got ten minutes before we’re scheduled to begin departure procedures,” she said in a rush without pausing to take a breath.
Their comms being off was almost unheard of. Alarm bells immediately sounded in my mind. Something was very wrong. However furious I was with Lark, I couldn’t just turn off caring about her. I didn’t want her to be hurt or lost.
But then I realized something. “They both should have stayed on the ship.”
Natalie shook her head frantically. “Ethan said Lark left right after we landed, trying to find you, and Chadwick slipped out without telling anyone.”
Fuck, I have an awful feeling about this.
“Can we trace the path their comms took?”
“Cassidy can,” she replied.
“Fuck.”
Natalie’s head cocked at the expletive.
“Cassidy!” I barked through my comm. “Report to the bridge immediately.”
“Copy,” his alarmed voice came through the speaker.
He should be afraid.
A minute later, he came dashing into the room, but was surprised to find Natalie there, wringing her hands.
Just as swiftly as she’d explained the situation to me, she repeated it to Cassidy, while I glared at him, holding back all the things I wanted to say because finding Lark was more important than telling him how I really felt about him.
When she was finished, he pulled up a map on his comm where two diverging lines were displayed.
“These are the paths their comms took; Lark’s in red, Chadwick’s in blue.
It looks like hers went out quickly, maybe fifteen minutes after she left the ship.
She went to the marketplace first, then quickly rerouted to the docks, but was heading away from our slip when her comm signal went out,” Cassidy provided.
“Do you know where she was going?” Natalie asked.
“No clue.” My eyes scanned over the map, but none of it made sense.
“Chadwick’s stopped transmitting a few minutes ago, but his last location was clear on the opposite end of the port,” Cassidy offered.
“Natalie, call the port authority and see if they can locate their devices at their last known positions. They could have been stolen and the beacons turned off, but it’s odd that it’s both of them, and like I said, they weren’t even supposed to leave the ship.”
“Yes, sir.” Natalie moved to her station to my left to follow my instructions.
“Captain, about before—” Cassidy began.
“Not the time!” I barked.
Natalie craned her head around, suddenly very interested in what was happening between Cassidy and me while she waited to get someone from the port on the line.
Noticing we had an audience, he lowered his voice when he spoke again. “I just need you to know she didn’t do anything wrong. I kissed her. She made it clear she was with you, and I did it anyway. I’m sorry.”
My jaw clenched at the information.
He visibly gulped. “I can get off the ship and find a way back to Phobos,” Cassidy offered.
My fury was unfathomable, but I needed to quell it to work through this emergency. She was gone, and both of us had a hand in setting the wheels into motion. I’d deal with all of it later. I just needed to find her and make sure she was alright.
Keeping my voice low and calm, I leaned in, wrapping my fingers around the lapel of Cassidy’s uniform to make sure he had nowhere to go until he’d heard what I had to say. “I can’t afford to let you leave the ship while we’re on this run, but when it’s done, you’ll find a new assignment.”
Cassidy’s face had gone pale. He nodded emphatically in agreement.
But I wasn’t done.
“And if I ever see you near my wife again, I’ll throw you out the airlock without a second thought. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir,” he whispered, his eyes wide with fear.
I released his jumpsuit and took a step back. “Report back to your station.”
Without confirmation, he turned and fled.
Natalie watched him go before turning to me, a single eyebrow raised.
Ignoring her, I pulled up a private window and activated a separate tracking beacon that the crew didn’t know about. When each of them joined, they had been given a pin noting their ship and rank, and embedded in the metal of each of their pins was a tracker that only I had access to.
I’d learned the trick while working black ops and thought it might be a handy tool to have, and I had a friend who owed me a favor and didn’t ask a lot of questions when I’d requested a dozen or so of them before the maiden voyage of the Radiant.
“No,” I gasped when I saw the signal’s location.
Lark wasn’t even at the port; she was on a vessel heading in the opposite direction of our flight path.
Without another moment to spare, I got on the ship-wide comm frequency. “Prepare for launch, immediately.”
“Captain, Chadwick’s still in the port somewhere,” Natalie cried.
His pin tracker was indeed in the port, but she was so much more important. “He’ll figure out a way home,” I replied coldly.
Jordan’s voice came over my comm. “Sir, is everything alright? We just finished refueling, but we weren’t expecting to leave so soon.”
“Armstrong, report to the bridge. There’s been a change in our route.”
“What about the schedule?” she asked, clearly bewildered by the new instructions.
“Fuck the schedule,” I told her, my tone short. “We’re heading out on a rescue mission.”
The comm was silent for a moment before Jordan replied, “On my way, sir.”