Damage Control (Valiant Knox) (12 page)

She seemed to sense the sudden shift in the air between them because her smile disappeared, and she started to move—closer or away, he wasn’t sure.
Goddamn it
. Maybe if she’d just stayed still another second, he could have got a handle on himself. But as it was, the warm, sweet scent of her hair or whatever it was that smelled like nutty vanilla, was all he got on his next breath in. And then his hands were on her hips, and he was pulling her up against him.

Her arms went around his shoulders, one of her hands landing on the back of his neck as he leaned in and closed his mouth over hers. Sensation tore through him, the flood of everything he’d been pushing away since the first moment he’d met her. The feel of her against him, the taste of her lips, it was like a dose of profound relief, even as an undeniable, heated exhilaration flashed through him.

But this hadn’t been his intention when he’d come here. And this couldn’t happen between them. With that thought, he managed to gain control of his common sense and break the kiss.

He took an unsteady breath as he released her and eased away. “That shouldn’t have happened.”

She nodded, though a little uncertainly. “No, you’re right. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that—”

She started to turn, but he caught her upper arm, stopping the movement.

“It was my fault. Don’t blame yourself. Let’s just keep it professional from now on, okay?”

“Of course.” Her cheeks were flushed, whether from the kiss or embarrassment, he couldn’t tell.

He took a couple of steps toward the door, since he swore he could still catch the scent of her. Or maybe some of it had rubbed off on him when he’d had her up against him. Either way, it was tempting him right back around to what they shouldn’t be doing.

“Meet me tonight, after everyone in your dorm has fallen asleep.” He went over and picked up her datapad. With a few quick taps, he’d entered the contact number for his personal comm. “Send me a message when you’re ready and I’ll come find you.”

She nodded, avoiding his gaze. “Okay. If you’re sure this is the path you want to take?”

“I’m sure I’ve got no other option,” he muttered in return, walking over to the door. “Get back to resting, and I’ll see you tonight.”

He sent her a short wave before walking out into the passageway. He strode through the dormitory in an unhurried, steady pace, and then got on to the transit. As the doors closed, he let his shoulders drop as he dragged a hand over his face.
Christ
. Had he really just kissed one of his recruits? In all the years he’d been serving on board the
Valiant Knox
, he’d never, ever had a slip up like that before.

He wanted to blame it on the stress of everything that had happened in the past week—the traitor in his ranks and getting shot at. But he got the feeling this particular type of insanity stemmed from the temptation of Mia and nothing more. He had to get a handle on this. Bad enough that he’d coerced her to work with him on illegally accessing the
Knox’s
systems to find the traitor in his ranks. Forming any kind of intimate relationship with her would be like committing career suicide. He might as well take the CAFF insignia pins off his shirt and vent them out the nearest hatch, because kissing a subordinate was pretty much doing the same thing.

He shook his head at himself and straightened his posture as the transit arrived on squadron level. That kiss hadn’t happened. It was as simple as that. He’d had one lapse in control. Considering his sterling fourteen years serving on the
Knox
, he was going to chalk it up to being overdue for some kind of small infraction and forget about it.

H
is comm chimed a little before twenty three hundred. Leigh set aside the reports he’d been writing on his datapad and leaned over to grab the device where he’d left it on the coffee table.

As expected, the message had come from Mia, letting him know that everyone in her dorm room had fallen asleep, and she was ready whenever he was. He sent back a reply to say he’d meet her in an hour at the dorm transit.

Truthfully, he was itching to go grab her right now and get to Kerrin’s apartment as soon as they could. And though it was late and most people would be in bed, aside from the skeleton crew who ran the night shift, there was still a chance they could run into someone. If they left it until closer to midnight, hopefully they’d minimize the possibility of getting caught.

It had occurred to him earlier today that Stanton had more than likely already removed any possible evidence from the apartment. But he needed to see for himself, needed to at least go through the motions so he could be satisfied that he’d covered every angle and done everything possible to find the traitor in his squad.

The following hour trickled by with frustrating slowness. He couldn’t concentrate on his reports anymore, knowing what he was about to go and do. He was nervous like a rookie facing his first battle, worried about getting both himself and Mia caught. Sneaking around and breaking into people’s apartments wasn’t in his skill set, and there was a very good chance this hunt for the mole could fail spectacularly before it had even begun. In the end, he took his datapad, left his apartment, and made his way up to the recruit dorms after only forty minutes, sending another message to Mia to let her know he was on his way.

When the doors opened on the dormitory level, Mia stood waiting. He waved her on, then tabbed the transit screen to close them in.

“Here.” He handed her his datapad. “The first thing you’ll have to do is find out which apartment Kerrin Hershel lives in.”

She nodded, her expression far more somber now than it had been when he’d talked to her earlier this afternoon. Maybe the gravity of the situation had sunk in. Or maybe she was having second thoughts about helping him. Whatever the case, he needed her committed, needed to know he could rely on her.

“Look, Mia, I know that I all but strong-armed you into helping me today, but I want you to know that I wouldn’t have done that if I had any other choice. It’s okay to have cold feet or be nervous about what we’re doing, but I need to know you’re with me a hundred percent.”

She looked up from his datapad, seeming a bit more together now. “I’m not worried about what we’re doing. I spent half the afternoon thinking of all the ways a CSS mole—or several moles—could totally screw us. Most scenarios ended with the
Knox
exploding into a gigantic fireball. I’m not going to lie, it completely freaked me out. I am so with you on this.”

He hadn’t realized how tense he’d been about securing her agreement to work with him until he heard the words, causing a coil sitting in his guts to unwind. He hadn’t let himself think too closely about the fact that he’d coerced her into cooperating since he’d left her dorm that afternoon, but apparently the guilt for it had still been sitting heavy and thorny within him. But if she was here because she was just as concerned for the welfare of the
Knox
and everyone on board, then no matter what happened from here on out, he could trust that she would be doing everything in her power to keep their secret and protect the integrity of this little mission they’d embarked on.

His datapad chimed in her hands, and she glanced down at it again. “Kerrin Hershel lives in apartment one two seven on the beta housing level.”

Leaning past her, he punched the destination into the screen.

Neither of them said anything else as the transit took them down into the apartment levels of the ship, tension tightening through his shoulders the closer they got to their destination. When they arrived, he held up a hand to indicate she should wait and stuck his head out of the transit to check if anyone was in the corridor. Just as he’d hoped, it was empty.

“Come on, it’s clear.” He exited, Mia just behind him, and they hurried down the passageway until they found a door marked with one two seven.

As they stopped in front of it, Mia had already turned her attention to his datapad, biting her lower lip while she concentrated, a strand of her golden hair falling forward from the messy bun she had it shoved into.

Just when he’d started lecturing himself about not getting distracted by the way her teeth dragged over her full lower lip, the door clicked open, and Mia sent him a satisfied grin.

“I did that in half the time I thought it would take.”

“Let’s celebrate your breaking-and-entering skills later.” He set a hand on her upper back and ushered her inside, stealing one last glance up and down the passageway to make sure no one was watching them. It was only after the door closed behind them that it hit him.

“Goddamn it, I didn’t consider the security feed in the corridor.” There’d be footage of them entering this apartment. Shit, he was not cut out for this kind of sneaking around. Never mind Mia slipping up. At this rate he was the one who was going to get them into hot water.

“Oh, I can take care of those easily enough. I’ll just scrub them or replace the footage or something.” Mia walked farther into the apartment, casting a curious look around. The apartment was identical to every other apartment on the ship, but of course, Mia hadn’t seen any other living space except the dorms.

“You might want to do it sooner rather than later. Stanton could have people watching this place for all we know.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Stanton?”

“He’s a Command Intelligence agent, one of the senior ones.” Leigh went over to the hall table and yanked open the single drawer. Empty. Well, that probably wasn’t a good sign. Frustration started crawling up the back of his neck as he went over to a desk on the adjacent bulkhead.

Mia dropped onto the couch. “Okay, you look for whatever it is you came here for, and I’ll get to work on the cameras so there’s no trace of us even coming onto this level.”

Putting Stanton and his worries about getting caught out of his mind, he focused his effort on searching every square inch of the apartment. Unsurprisingly, the place had been cleaned out, no evidence that anyone had even lived here as recently as two days ago. The frustration at yet another failure to get any answers had set into his muscles with taut heat. He slammed the bathroom cabinet door, making it swing back out again. CI had been thorough, not leaving a single scrap of paper or personal item behind.

He’d already considered the possibility before they’d come up here. Still he was disappointed and irritated about the lack of any clues. He checked the time on his personal comm as he left the bedroom, finding it was just after oh one thirty. He headed back into the main room and went over to drop on the armchair adjacent to where Mia sat on the couch.

He dragged a hand though his hair as fatigue caught up to him all of a sudden.

“Find anything?” Mia lowered his datapad to her lap.

He shook his head. “What about you? Did you get the security feed sorted out?”

“We’re good to go. And I started a program that’s going to mine UEF personnel files and put together profiles on all the fighter pilots in your squadron. If anyone’s trying to hide anything, hopefully this program will find it.”

“Efficient.” And impressive. At this rate, he might be able to out the bastard traitor in his squad within a matter of days. For the first time since Yang had told him there might be a mole under his command, he felt like he’d gotten some footing back.

“I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you look really tired.” An edge of something too close to sympathy entered her expression as she stared at him.

His first impulse was an automatic urge to deny it, but he caught himself.

“It’s been a long couple of days.” The words came out slowly, because he wasn’t used to being so candid, especially with someone he was only just getting to know.

“I’ve only know about it for a few short hours, and it’s already doing my head in. I can’t imagine how much worse it must be for you, especially since you’re in charge of everyone.” She reached up and set her fingers on his shoulder, smoothing downward over his biceps in a comforting gesture, but then seemed to belatedly realize what she’d done and snatched her hand away again.

Instead of doing something totally moronic like revealing he enjoyed it when she touched him, he shifted, angling his body away from hers as she avoided his gaze.

“Yeah, it hasn’t exactly been a highlight of my career,” he muttered. Yet strangely enough, until a second ago, he’d felt more relaxed sitting and talking with her about it than he had in ages. Maybe it was simply because he’d been able to share the burden with someone. Or maybe it was the way she looked at him with those expressive, dark eyes.

Whatever the case, things were straying too far toward personal again, when he’d vowed this afternoon that after that slip up with the kiss, things between them would stay platonic and professional. Opening up to her about exactly how this situation weighed on him wasn’t exactly conducive to staying detached.

Voices echoed in the passageway and Mia straightened, casting a worried look toward the door. He shifted to the edge of the cushions, holding his breath until the conversation faded again, whoever had been out there moving on.

Maybe if they’d found something, it would have almost been worth getting caught. But since this had been a bust, he didn’t want to face Yang or Stanton for a gamble that had gotten him nowhere.

“Come on.” He stood up, sidestepping past the coffee table. “We better get out of here before our luck runs out.”

Chapter Twelve

M
ia stifled a yawn behind her hand, trying to get her brain to keep up with Captain Alphin’s lecture on survival skills. The daily, early morning, rigorous drills before the session definitely hadn’t helped her exhaustion levels. After she’d gotten back from the little midnight mission with Leigh the night before, she’d spent another few hours on his datapad, working a few kinks out of her program before she was completely happy with how it was running.

Using Leigh’s datapad was a little weird. Every time she logged onto the device and the screen background appeared—it showed a younger Leigh, Sub-Lieutenant Rayne, and two other men she didn’t recognize—she had a moment of total surrealism, feeling like she was invading his privacy somehow.

Although technically he had all but coerced her into helping him, she could honestly say that even if he hadn’t held her illegal activities over her, she still would have agreed to help him. Yet, she worried whether or not she could come through for him without getting them both caught…when she wasn’t distracted by the incredibly stupid mistake she’d made before he’d left her dorm room. God. She’d kissed him. Sure, he’d said that it had been his fault, but that was just him being all noble and responsible.

She had no idea what had possessed her in that moment. Actually, she totally knew and didn’t want to admit it. She’d been fighting it, denying it, ignoring it. And what had that gotten her? In that moment, when he’d stood there looking down on her, his gray-blue eyes sparking with humor, the forbidden thrill of flirting with him chasing through her, she’d gotten ambushed by all the ways she’d tried not to notice him, and all logic had abandoned her brain. Somehow, she’d ended up against him, and then she’d pulled him into that kiss.

But holy mother, what a kiss it had been. It had lasted no more than a second or two, but it had burned her from the inside out in a way she wouldn’t ever forget.

And it had mostly been fine. Despite a brief explosion of butterflies in her stomach, she’d thought she had herself well in hand until she’d walked onto the transit. Seeing him had triggered some kind of auto-response, causing a sensory recall of the moment she’d been up against him with his mouth on hers. Yeah, in that millisecond she’d been far from the logic of everything wrong with a relationship between them, instead swamped by exactly how exhilarating it had been and the deep gouging need for more.

How much of an idiot could she possibly be? Things were already dangerous and complicated. Adding any kind of personal feelings to the mix was just asking for things to get messy.

On top of it all, this morning’s drills had nearly killed her, and the following session had dragged as she’d fought the exhaustion from staying up so late the night before. She hadn’t been able to find anything, either. Maybe the answer was in the actual transit car the shooter had used to escape. In the end, she’d only gotten three hours sleep before getting up again to skip breakfast and drag herself straight to class.

Now that the lecture was finishing, she hoped to grab a quick lunch and a quick nap before the class went into the PT room for the afternoon’s drills and practical activities on survival. At some point she needed to tell Leigh her idea, but had no idea how she was supposed to arrange that. She supposed he would find time to see her when he could.

Her name being called pulled her attention up from the admittedly poor notes she’d taken over the morning.

“Recruit Wolfe, since you spent half of the morning yawning through my lecture, you can stay behind and explain to me exactly which parts of survival training you found so boring.” Leigh’s voice had an aggravated edge to it, and though she assumed he was actually keeping her behind to ask her if she’d found anything, she could almost believe from his harsh tone that she really was in trouble.

“Sir, yes, sir,” she replied as Kayla sent her a sympathetic glance.

She walked to the front of the room and stood by the lectern as the other recruits filed out, while Leigh stood nearby looking pissed. Her heart skipped a nervous beat. Maybe he really was angry that she’d constantly yawned all morning. But she’d done her best to conceal it.

Once the last recruit left, he walked over and swiped a hand over the door control to close it. When he turned back to her, he no longer looked angry, and she breathed a silent sigh of relief.

He walked back toward her. “From how tired you look, I’m assuming you were up late last night working on the project instead of getting that sleep I ordered?”

She nodded. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t going to put so many hours in, but I guess once I got going, time kind of slipped away from me.”

“Then am I right in assuming you found something?”

A small kernel of excitement lit up within, the same one she’d gotten last night that had kept her working so late. “I tried to pick up the shooter’s trail, but the utility levels are like a maze. The security camera coverage is pretty poor. There wasn’t much chance I was going to find him, which is exactly why he picked there to disappear. So I focused on finding whoever helped him by messing with the transit IDs and cameras.”

“And?” Leigh leaned against the lectern, staring at her expectantly.

“Well, I didn’t find who it was, but I was thinking maybe if you checked out the transit car the shooter got into, you could see if it had been tampered with at the source.”

“Less than twenty-four-hours in and you’ve already got us a lead.” He seemed more than a little impressed as he stared at her. “We’ve got an hour until the afternoon session starts. Let’s go track down that transit and see what we can find.”

He pushed off from the lectern and started to step past her. “Wait, you’re going right now? And you want me to come?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “You’re all in, aren’t you? And since we’re looking for one specific transit car, I’m thinking I’m going to need your skills.”

The kernel of excitement turned into a full surge of anticipation. Really, this wasn’t meant to be fun, it was serious and dangerous, but the idea of sneaking around the ship with Leigh was apparently enough to quell any anxiety she might have felt.

“Okay, let me duck up to my dorm room to get your datapad.”

“I’ll meet you at the transit near the gym in ten minutes. Now wipe that smile off your face and start looking like you’re about to cry because I just reamed you for yawning through my class this morning.”

She tried to settle her face into a more serious expression, but failed miserably.

Leigh shook his head at her, but a grin kicked up one side of his lips. “You are terrible at this. Remind me to give you a few lessons in keeping things under wraps later.”

Him smiling at her like that definitely wasn’t helping her put on a sad face, because she felt nothing but buoyant at the sight of his amusement over her apparent lack of acting skills.

“Off you go, we’re on the clock.”

“Okay, okay.” She turned away from him, and as she approached the door, she took a settling breath, making a more concerted effort to appear miserable. Luckily, she didn’t see any of the other recruits as she navigated the squadron level and went down to the dorms. She grabbed the datapad and made it back to the designated meeting spot well before ten minutes were up, but found Leigh already waiting for her.

“So how do we find one specific transit car?” he asked as she stopped in front of him.

“Well, for a start, we’re better off not doing it here where anyone can see us. I think we should backtrack. If we head down to the utility level where the shooter got off, I can start there.”

He pressed the button for the transit and the door opened right away.

“By the way,” he said as they stepped on to the car and he put in the lower utility level as the destination. “If anyone asks, I kept you in the ready room by yourself to complete a report on survival skills as punishment for your lack of attention while I went and had lunch. We didn’t spend more than two minutes together.”

“Got it.” She moved to the rear of the transit and leaned against the back wall. It would take a few minutes to get to the bottom of the ship.

Leigh came over and leaned next to her, kicking one boot over the other in a pose that was about as relaxed as she’d ever seen him.

“So aeronautical engineering, huh? What’s the lure?” His shoulder brushed hers as he glanced down at her.

“I like knowing how things work, down to the last detail. I like to take them apart and put them back together. I love the idea of finding new ways to make things work better. What about you? What’s the lure of being a fighter pilot? It’s pretty dangerous. Besides being on the front lines, the fighter squadrons have the highest mortality rate.”

He shifted his gaze to focus on the transit doors. “I wasn’t meant to be a fighter pilot, according to the computer psyche-eval, anyway. It pegged me for a leadership track, which would have put me behind a desk for most of my career. Maybe I could have done some good in that sort of role. But I wanted to wake up every day knowing I was making a difference right in that moment by simply being where I was, not pushing papers and playing politics.”

She studied his profile, surprised at this revelation. He was such a great fighter pilot, had literally become a legend of the UEF, she couldn’t believe he’d ever been assigned to anything else.

“So how did you end up on the
Knox
? I didn’t think there was any way to circumvent the computer eval.”

“So few people are singled out as leaders at such a young age, it doesn’t come without its perks. I told them I’d happily take a brass role, but I wanted actual experience behind me, not just what I gleaned from reading reports. They were more than happy to put me anywhere I wanted to go, and joining the FP squadron on the
Knox
seemed like the hardest and fastest way I was going to learn the real cost of this war.”

If she hadn’t been impressed with him before now, that little revelation would have sealed the deal. He could have gone off to a UEF ivory-tower office somewhere far from the front lines, had a cushy future of money, privilege, and women, yet instead he’d chosen to put his life on the line. Not just once, but day after day.

“No wonder everyone around here thinks you’re such a hero.”

He finally looked back at her, shadows in his eyes. “No one except Commander Yang knows where the computer eval assigned me. And I’m no hero. If you knew how many good men had died on my watch—” He released a harsh breath, shaking his head. “I’m not a hero, Mia. Hell, if it was humanly possible to do any more I would, because every single one of those pilots I lost burned a place into my soul.”

He pressed a hand against his mouth as if to stop himself from saying anything else as he avoided her gaze.

Her heart ached for him, for the things he clearly struggled with but hid from the world. Why had he revealed this to her, especially if Commander Yang was the only other person who knew about his true posting? But she pushed the questions aside and shifted to face him, her heart skipping a beat when she set her hand on his shoulder.

“You didn’t get those men killed, Leigh; the war did. And maybe if you weren’t the CAFF, the number of people dead would be twice as many. I’m sure you’ve saved far more.”

His chest expanded as he took in a deep breath. “You know, I’m not sure if I can be friends with someone who is so blatantly optimistic and sensible. It’s kind of scary.”

“Friends? Is that what this is? See, I thought it was some weird situation where my CO was blackmailing me into doing all sorts of dreadful things.” Her hand tightened a little on his shoulder. It was the only way she could stop herself from sliding it up to his neck, to getting closer to him and repeating the same mistake she’d made last night. Apparently the temptation of him when they were alone really damaged her common sense.

He braced one of his hands on the wall just above her head and leaned the slightest bit closer to her. “So you’re innocent in all this? Is that what you’ll tell them if we get caught?”

“Yeah, I’m totally going to throw you in front of the ship to save myself.” She let herself slip just a little closer, the warmth of his body and light woodsy scent of him rippling through her in tingling waves.

“Well, then, I’m glad we know where we stand with each other,” he murmured. He tilted his head, the movement nearly indiscernible; she would have missed it if she hadn’t been watching him so closely. His gesture promised what she’d been yearning for and her breath caught, the buzz within her intensifying in anticipation of his lips touching hers.

A chime sounded above them and Leigh glanced away as the transit doors opened. He cleared his throat and shifted back from her, leaving a swirl of cool air where his body had been.

The deflating disappointment was almost enough to make her groan. Instead, she tightened her grip on the datapad and reminded herself why she and Leigh were alone in the first place. And it certainly wasn’t to have some heart-to-heart or any other kinds of personal interactions.

“Come on. Let’s see what we can find,” he said as he headed out of the transit.

She nodded, since her vocal chords had apparently forgotten how to work, and followed him out into the passageway.

As expected, the lighting was set down low to auxiliary only, while a quick scan on the datapad revealed there wasn’t a single other soul on this level.

“Okay, we’re all alone down here, so we don’t need to worry about bumping into anyone.” Turning to the screen inset in the bulkhead next to the transit doors, she set about linking into the system.

“We might not need to worry about bumping into anyone, but what about the security feeds?” Leigh asked from right behind her, the sound of his voice so close, startling her, since she’d been focused on getting the datapad to connect with the transit station.

“I put the feed for the utility level on a loop. If anyone checks, it’ll show the same empty corridor from ten minutes ago. I also used a similar transit ID scramble like the traitor did to cover any evidence that we even came down here.”

“Smart,” he murmured, which sent a small swell of warmth through her. Clearly, she enjoyed his approval more than she probably had any right to. Giving herself a mental slap and a stern reminder on why she was here, she returned her concentration to the datapad, taking a few long minutes to slip seamlessly into the system, connecting with this transit-porter so that no one in the command center would pick up the activity.