Breaking Through (10 page)

“Keep an eye on you. Shorter walk for booty calls. A nicer breeze. Better view. Take your pick.”

“How do you know?” I ask, ignoring him. Haskal’s an ass, and I doubt he’d have any qualms about lying to get what he wants. Though, I don’t know how lying about this would benefit him. Unless it has something to do with whatever it is that will cost me.

“I saw him moving his shit in there last night,” he says.

I cross my arms. “Maybe he needs the extra space for storage.”

“Sure. That’s it. Extra storage for all the personal items we’re allowed.”

“He’s the captain. He can do whatever he wants. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“You don’t put things together very fast, do you?”

“Get to the point,” I say, annoyed.

“If I can hear you moaning out the captain’s name in your sleep, now he’ll be able to hear you too. And if he can hear
you
, you can hear everything on his side of the wall as well.”

“Yeah, unlike you, I respect people’s privacy. Riley’s business is his business.”

“Oh God, Nautia. Do I have to spell everything out for you? Does your early morning convo with Kray ring a bell? You need info on Barton? Or what Barton has access to?” Eyes wide, Haskal stares at me, waiting for me connect the dots.

Thin walls. Right.

Crap. Had Riley heard us, then too?

“You’re saying I can keep closer tabs on him,” I say.

He
tsks
. “Bingo. It also means you’ve got to be careful about what you say. Luckily, your boyfriend went for an early morning jog before Kray joined you.”

“How do you know that?”

“Insomniac. Anyway, number two—”

I hold up a hand to stop him. “I’m not interested in owing you, so you can skip number two.”

“No can do, sweetheart. You and Kray chose to lay it all out where I could overhear. I’m involved now, whether you like it or not.”

“You’re blackmailing us?”

“Not exactly.”

“Okay, so what then?”

Haskal smiles. “I’m offering you my help.”

Haskal’s gaze rests
on Nautia for a moment, and she stares intently back. He says something to her, then scoots his hand, palm down, across the table toward her tray. I don’t see whether or not her face displays irritation. What I do catch is her lifting her tray slightly and Haskal slipping something under it.

They are partners so I shouldn’t consider the exchange personal. But I do, and right then I decide I’m sitting in on Nautia and Haskal’s afternoon session even though I’m scheduled to work with Gibson today. Commander Sickles can take over easily enough.

Two black eyes and a swollen lower lip on Nautia’s pretty face are reminders that I let things go too far; I’ve hardly been able to look at her since the fight with Kray. He did what I asked, followed through despite being given orders that went against everything in his nature.

I hung on too. Now I regret it.

It’s disturbing, because I care about her too much. In the line of duty, that could mean the difference between life and death.

Directives say I have two options: step down from leading this mission, or cut Nautia loose. Deep down I know I won’t do either.

After their swap, Nautia goes back to ignoring Haskal, and Haskal goes back to making innuendos out of anything the rest of the table says and directs them at Nautia. Which pisses me off, but she seems to be holding it together.

When I’m finished with lunch, I set Gibson up with Sickles and head to Room 106, where Haskal and Nautia are supposed to be. They’re not here yet, so I scan over the equations on the whiteboards. The one I stop on is a formula. I read through, determining the error they caught is accurate. It’s circled multiple times in red, and the final incorrect answer has been underlined in the same color. Beside the wrong formula is the correct one, and I recognize the equation. It shows the amount of psi hydroplexasma can endure before it gives way to the macrometallium.

The North Koreans have it wrong. Their torpedo will collapse and deactivate at depths below ten thousand feet. Do they know that?

“We found it a couple of days ago,” Haskal says as he walks in and sees me studying the board. “I wonder if they’ve discovered their mistake yet.”

“How about the macrometallium? Are their equations for it accurate?” I ask.

Nautia stops at the door, her sea-green eyes locking onto mine for a moment before she drops her attention to the floor and enters. “Don’t know yet,” she answers. “That’s what we’re hoping to figure out today.”

I nod, and in my peripheral, I watch her round the table and sit on the chair farthest from me. “Okay. Looks like I joined the two of you on the right afternoon. Let’s get to work.”

We hit the books first, Haskal double-checking facts on a Navy laptop I issued to him. Despite his mediocre security clearance, he seems to have made good work with it, coming up with stuff I haven’t seen before.

“According to this, the North Koreans have only tested the missiles above a thousand feet, so they may not know their formula is incorrect. At least not until they test at deeper depths and the thing suddenly appears on their radar. Even then, who knows how long it will take them to pinpoint the problem. This buys us some time, but not much,” Haskal says.

“Where’d you find that information?” I ask, tipping my chin up.

Haskal shrugs. “You gotta know where to look.” He swings the screen toward me. He’s on a military site, in files I didn’t know existed. Admiral Melene gave me access to everything he had on this case. These must be new entries.

“When was it last updated?”

Haskal scans the information. “Shit,” he says. “Eighteen months ago. I bet they know by now.”

“Eighteen months ago?” I repeat.

That can’t be right. I brushed up on all files less than six weeks ago.

“That’s what it says.”

“Hey, I think I found something,” Nautia interrupts and tosses an open book in our direction. “Page three fifty-six. Third sentence in the last paragraph.”

I draw a finger down to the location. “‘Alloys made with four or more metals, one of them being titanium, can easily become unstable under pressure exceeding eight thousand psi.’” I glance up at her. “That’s macrometallium.”

“Yeah. And at ten thousand feet under water? That exceeds eight thousand psi.”

“So not only will the hydroplexasma disintegrate—”

“So might the core,” she finishes.

“They have two fucked-up formulas,” Haskal says. “How the hell did that happen? I thought we, as in the United States military, gave them the macrometallium.”

“We did,” I say. “To my knowledge, it was stable.”

Nautia slides the book back in front of her. “Still might be. This says it
may
become unstable. Maybe the outer coating of hydroplexasma makes the core more stable or offsets the ions or something. I’ll keep reading.”

“Or maybe we gave them an unstable alloy on purpose,” Haskal says. “They only thought we gave them the good stuff.”

I rub my chin with my fist. “That could start a war.”

Haskal huffs. “Right, and us coming in and taking their shit won’t?”

“We haven’t been ordered to
take
anything,” I clarify. “Our mission is to gather intel only. And if we can, grab a chunk of hydroplexasma for testing.”

“Yeah. That would be taking their shit.”

For the remainder of the afternoon, Nautia keeps her nose in the book. She barely acknowledges me or Haskal, and Haskal is all business too. I wonder if it’s because of my presence, or if he’s just like that—downtime is downtime, work is work.

Nautia doesn’t seem bothered by him after their interaction during lunch. Whatever he gave her isn’t my concern, even though it bothers the piss out of me.

By the end of the session, we’ve come up with no other answers.

“I’ll need daily reports,” I say, referring to their progress.

“Yes, sir. Are we dismissed?” Haskal asks.

“You’re dismissed.”

For the first time since lunch, Haskal’s gaze roams over Nautia before he walks out. She still doesn’t pay attention to him. Her face remains buried in the book she tossed our way earlier.

I hang back for a minute, watching her, wanting to stay. She has her dark hair swept up into a messy knot on her head again, revealing smooth pink skin behind her ear. A finger rolls over her swollen lip before she clicks the nail on her teeth. Her lost-in-thought motion pulls me out of the present, off this ship and into some café off the coast. To a place where I can talk to her about stuff that doesn’t pertain to the mission or her abilities or anything else professional. Ask what she does in her spare time, while we sip on coffee. Find out what kind of music she listens to. If she likes Italian food.

But the rock of the ship brings me back and reminds me of my responsibilities. Downtime can come later, after we have some hydroplexasma from the North Koreans.

“Tonight’s session will be on the deck again,” I say and leave without looking back.

When I reach the top deck, Nautia’s already there, peering over the railing at the small waves lapping in on themselves. Evening wind catches her hair and whips it across her face. Out here, it’s like she’s one with her surroundings—the ocean, the air, the sky. They’re under her command, yet also a part of her. She’s in her element.

Silently, I watch her for another moment before I approach her. I mimic her stance, leaning over the railing. I’ll never tire of the fresh ocean air. There’s nothing like it.

“You have nightmares.” I don’t ask, because she’s already told me, and this is what I planned on discussing. Current psychology journals indicate she needs to talk about them, get them out in the open instead of bottling them up inside. Keeping her fears blocked within her mind will only strengthen the wall she built.

“We’re talking tonight for training, aren’t we?” she says as if she’d forgotten.

“That’s what we decided this morning.”

Below us, a pod of dolphins jump out of the water and dive back in on their way east. In silence, Nautia follows them with her gaze until they’re just small dots on the horizon. Then she faces me.

“What do you want to know about them?” she asks, referring to the nightmares.

“What happens. Who’s there. What they’re doing. Why you wake up screaming.” After the words are out, I realize the sound of my voice is more hushed than I intended. Less like her superior, and more like someone who cares about her.

She takes a deep breath and stares back over the water. “Okay, I’ll divulge my secrets, but on one condition. I need to know I can trust you, so can I ask you something in return?”

“All right,” I answer, thinking her question has to do with her brother. I’ve already told her everything I can. The rest is presumption, and she has enough on her mind. “What do you want to know?”

“This morning when you paired Kray and me to fight, Kray later told me you were testing us. You wanted to see if he’d follow orders when it came to me and if I could control my emotions during combat.”

I nod, realizing where this is going—exactly where it shouldn’t.

She continues, “But Kray said there was a test in it for you too. Something you blocked him from knowing. What was it? What was in it for you?”

I take in the blue-and-purple rings around both of her eyes. The small cut on her forehead. The gash along her lower lip. I stare a second too long at her mouth, and now all I can think about is how badly I want to kiss her.

I know what I’m about to do is stupid, but I’m going to be honest with her, and wherever that takes us, I’m ready. I want to unravel all of the mysteries of this woman in front of me. I want her to trust me.

I sweep the hair off her shoulder. Run my fingers through the silky strands as I do. I cup the back of her neck, making her unable to look anywhere but at me. Gently, I circle the pads of my fingers around the bruises on her face before I trail down to her lips. I slide my thumb over her lower one. She winces as I graze over the cut.

“Sorry,” I murmur, both for hurting her and for what I’m about to say. “I paired the two of you up on purpose. Partly for you, partly for Kray, but mostly it was for me. I had to know if I could put the mission, my soldiers, in front of my growing feelings for you. If I could allow someone or something to hurt you without interfering for the sake of our directive. And if I could watch you lose control, knowing what might happen, knowing I could stop it, and still not do a thing about it.”

In everything I say, she doesn’t look away. She doesn’t even try.

“That lightning bolt could have killed Kray,” she says with a softness I’ve never heard from her before. A softness I immediately fall in love with, because she’s vulnerable.

“I took a stupid chance. I assumed since you care about Kray, you’d be more apt at controlling your power. Had I paired you with Haskal or Gibson, and given them the same orders I gave Kray, you might have killed them.”

Blue-green irises search my face, and I stare back into them. She’s quiet, probably wishing she had Kray around to confirm my words.

“You have feelings for me?” she asks. Did she hear anything I said after that?

I bring her closer to me, close enough to feel the warmth of her skin on mine, the ends of her windblown hair tickling my face. I glide two fingers down her cheek until I reach her chin. Then I tip it up.

“Against my better judgment,” I answer, leaning down but not touching her, even though I’m dying to kiss that beautiful mouth that has teased me all day. “I should stay focused on the mission, on training, on my subordinates, but all I do is think is about you. How I can break through your barriers, and”—I lower my voice—“if you’d ever let me get close enough do to this.”

I kiss her, slow and cautious, not wanting her to whip up a typhoon. I suck on her lower lip, hold her against me, and she responds, her tongue grazing across mine. A moan slips from her, and I throw slow and cautious to the wind. I clutch her tighter. Kiss her harder. Soon, I kiss her like I’ll never get another chance. Her arms wrap around me, her fingers digging into my back, and it’s good. So good.

Until rain pours down on us from clear skies.

Nautia lifts her face to the lone dark cloud above us as she bites on the lip I regrettably let go of. “Sorry,” she says. Then she flips her palms up and closes her eyes.