by Blaze Ward
Vo took a deep breathe peeked through the hole.
The girl. Alone.
Really, Vo? The Girl? Phoebe, man. Innocent until proven guilty, right?
Vo unlocked the door and opened it partway, leaning innocently against it in such a way that anchored it in place as surely as concrete.
“Hi,” he smiled down at her, feeling like one of the ogres on his shoulder. Left or right would depend on the rest of the conversation.
Combat–mode he couldn’t help, but he could at least be polite. He was way too keyed up to be especially warm and friendly right now.
Phoebe had a fragile smile pasted on her face.
“I wanted to apologize for last night,” she stammered up at him.
Vo couldn’t help himself. He leaned forward enough to look past her out the door before he stepped back. This was not a conversation to have with his neighbors around.
Not that they had been nosy, but still.
“Come in,” he said. “Just about to sit down to lunch. Can I make you something?”
He moved out of her way and she came past him.
He glanced once out the door again and then closed and locked it before turning his attention to the girl.
Vo enjoyed the way she climbed out of her jacket and handed it to him. She was a seriously distracting woman, regardless of everything else.
He hung her coat on a hook next to his jacket. Her perfume still reminded him of arboreal forests.
“Thank you, Vo,” she smiled carefully up at him. “I don’t think I could eat right now.”
It was probably the paranoia speaking, but he hadn’t told her where he lived. Even Finn didn’t know, unless the man had quietly followed him home after class sometime. And he didn’t have any reason to.
A week ago, Vo might not have noticed such a tail.
Today was an entirely different matter.
He pulled out the second chair to his tiny dining table and seated her correctly. At least the Fleet made Marines take classes in deportment.
“Some lemonade?” he asked as he moved into the tiny kitchen part and let his reflexes organize the soup, ladle in the drawer, bowls in the left–hand cupboard.
“Thank you, Vo,” Phoebe replied. “That would be lovely.”
Grab two mismatched plastic cups, reach into the well–stocked fridge for the lemonade jug, pour, set on the table. Grab the soup bowl and a spoon, bring the sandwich.
Take the other chair.
Smile at her and take a sip of soup.
Pawn to King’s Four, White.
The ancient board game of Chess wasn’t his thing. It was something the Dragoon had been trying to teach him. Jackson Tawfeek was all over it, might even be a grandmaster one of these days, but not Vo.
Vo was happy just to learn.
To be any good at the game, you had to get inside your opponent’s head and calculate several response ahead. Here, Vo thought he was making headway. As sneaky as the girl across from him might be, he was playing a much meaner game than he had yesterday.
Higher stakes. Rougher rules.
She seemed to have been prepared for that. Instead of dressing in something tight that showed her figure off in distracting ways, she was in a baggy sweater and loose pants.
Girlie, but today not a girl to write home about. If he were ever to write home about a girl. And it wouldn’t be this one, anyway.
Probably.
Vo took a bite of sandwich and chewed.
Normally, he inhaled something like this with no more thought than consuming the requisite amount of calories to keep in shape and not turn into a lardball.
Today, he chewed slowly, deliberately, staring at her as he did with a goofy grin.
She sipped her lemonade and stared back at him intently with a soft, slightly–uncertain smile.
Pawn to King’s Four, Black. A mirror move that gave nothing away.
Vo had more props, as well as home pitch advantage. He grabbed the spoon and took a sip from the soup. It wasn’t from true scratch, but it also wasn’t dumped out of a can and reheated. It just happened that he was frugal enough to make broth from chicken bones left over from other meals, plus whatever bag of frozen vegetables was on sale at the grocery.
And the soup was pretty good. Vo smiled at her and took another sip. He had never hunted elk. He had, however, been in the bush after more dangerous game than pretty girls.
If there was anything more dangerous.
Another bite of sandwich. Chew carefully and try not to spill anything down your front as you do.
Her patience ran out before his food did.
“I’m not going to outwait you, am I, Vo?” she finally asked.
“I can make you a sandwich if you’re hungry,” he volleyed back. It was a warm smile. Home pitch advantage meant he could be friendly. She hadn’t done or said anything yet to warrant him playing truly mean. Not that it would be a bright idea, right now, but you never knew with some people.
“Most men would be jealous, or angry, or defensive right now,” she plowed ahead, apparently working from a script in her head. She sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as him.
“Why?” he replied evenly, possibly even innocently.
The interrogator came to the fore and began to measure her eyes and hands. She was good, but would never be a professional gambler. Plus, he had a handle on her buttons if he needed to push.
“Last night,” she said with a vague hand wave, as if that explained it all.
Vo took another bite of his sandwich. Who knew that bologna and Swiss cheese with a little mustard would be such a useful defensive weapon?
Knight to Queen’s Bishop Three, White.
“You had unexpected company,” he said with as much innocence as he could muster into his words. “It seemed like a fortuitous time to depart.”
“Don’t you want to know what was going on?” she asked, prying at his defenses, trying to draw him into moving a bishop.
Pawn to Queen’s Three, Black.
Time to push a button.
“Phoebe,” Vo replied calmly, as nonchalantly as he could modulate his voice. “It’s none of my business. I shouldn’t have been there that late, but you fell asleep and I didn’t want to wake you up.”
“You made me feel safe,” she said after a beat, very quietly.
Fragile was in her voice again.
Vo wondered how much of it was real, and how much was a role she was playing.
Push hard.
Midgame was always where Tawfeek suddenly expressed his genius on the board. Vo found chess too strictly limiting. There were only so many things you could do, and only so many ways to do them. Ops in the field were never that clean.
Maybe that was why he was a better marine than chess player.
Pawn to King’s Rook Four, White.
“I don’t belong there,” he said simply.
He was rewarded by a sudden blink and a slight flush to her skin. She leaned back and stared at the horizon, eyes flickering back and forth.
Internally, Vo smiled. The next words out of her mouth were likely to be a wonderful helping of lies, whatever she said. She was pretty fast in assembling her response, as far off track as he had driven her from her script.
But he was watching her like a hawk.
Externally, he took another innocent bite of his sandwich.
“Why not?” she finally said defensively, a beat too late to be an honest response.
Pawn to Queen’s Four, Black.
At least he didn’t feel like the greater of two evils for his thoughts about the girl anymore.
Knight to King’s Three, White.
“You’re money, Phoebe,” he added with a soft sneer, sounding as much as he could like the seventeen–year–old punk who ran away from the slums of Anameleck Prime to become a marine.
Once upon a lifetime ago.
“I’m a mutt from the streets with no money, no connections, and another couple of decades
on the line ahead of me before I can retire and make a go of the private sector. I am most definitely not your type, lady.”
Nine times in ten, he would get the lemonade in his face right now, followed by her stomping out the front door, slamming it hard in his face, and never talking to him again. That was the honest response to his tone and his words.
Life was not a romance novel, regardless of what his littlest sister might believe. Sonja read too much of that crap, anyway.
Maybe Phoebe did, too. She had completely lost the script in her head.
For once, both the consciences on his shoulders agreed, if for very different reasons.
“You were a perfect gentleman last night, Vo,” she flailed.
“And you knew that when you decided to get almost completely naked in front of me and let me have my way with you? Or when you went to take a bath and left me in the living room? Or feel asleep in my lap?”
Vo let the anger he had been tamping down rumble a little at this point. Not much, just enough to stir the cauldron some more. He wanted her to stay off balance.
“I already knew that…” she started to say.
“And why was Dr. Demir coming to your flat so late?”
Knock her mentally sideways. Hard. Like he had been taught.
“He wanted to find out about…”
She clammed up before the damning words were actually spoken, but they were there in her eyes, along with fear.
But she wasn’t afraid of him. No, not good old Vojciech Arlo, hero of the Republic of Aquitaine Navy.
At least, not enough.
He watched her set the cup down deliberately, when he could tell she really did want to throw it in his face, but not for the obvious reasons. She slid her chair back and stood quickly.
Vo moved quickly as well, standing and stepping back.
She made it to the door in five steps and started to pull it open.
He put all of his weight behind slamming it shut again. It made a rewarding thump that rattled the whole building.
Vo turned and looked down at her as she suddenly cowered in front of him. He barely restrained the snarl that wanted to come out and play right now. His breath was heavy with menace.
She actually started to shrink, sliding along the wall and back a little, finding a corner where the wall jutted out slightly.
He was back to being the greater of any two evils again, at least in his own head.
It took everything he had not to clench and unclench his fists as he watched her. This woman, this rich, little girl, with absolutely every advantage he had never had, she had wanted to play him. Play with him. Something.
He might finally be ready to be angry.
Probably the only honest response he had gotten from her so far was the relief that he hadn’t snuck quietly out while she was in her bath.
Hadn’t wriggled off the hook.
“Do you want to finally tell me the truth, Phoebe?” he ground out over clenched teeth.
“I can’t,” she whispered, trapped and on the verge of panic.
That sounded close to a truth. She was beginning to fear him almost as much as she did whoever else it was that had such a grip on her soul.
“Why not?” he continued, leaning in close and looking over her.
Push the button. Firmly but relentlessly. Height, mass, and the implied risk of brutality were useful tools for a big man, especially against a woman. Not one of his female marines, like First Rate Spacer Nadine Orly, but effective against a civilian like this pretty girl.
Orly would kick him in the balls right now. Phoebe didn’t think like that.
Her breath started to come in sharp, shallow gasps.
Adrenaline was an utter bitch. Part of marine basic was learning to master that sudden spike of power and fear. Some people froze, others puked. But the rest learned to cope, made it a tool.
Or, in his case, spent years under the watchful eye of Navin the Black honing it to a fine, killing edge.
Vo didn’t need her blood on the floor right now, physically or metaphorically.
“I’m waiting, Phoebe,” he snarled quietly. It was almost a growl.
She flinched.
“I can’t,” she repeated in a tiny whisper.
“Who are you afraid of, Phoebe?” he pressed.
Use the target’s name. Repeat it. It becomes an icepick stabbing them in the brain, every time they hear it. Wear them down like water dropping on rocks.
Slowly. Implacably.
“They’ll…”
She shut herself down again. She wouldn’t give them up. Not yet.
But he was close to breaking through.
“Phoebe,” he said calmly, letting the menace drain out and replacing it with some modicum of reassurance. “I can protect you from Demir.”
“No,” she whispered. “Nobody could protect me from him. Nobody can save me.”
The pain was back in her eyes. The fragility. The impossible depths of darkness.
Success, if you wanted to call it that.
Vo had seen the signs before. The girl was in shock. Serious psychological trauma. World–ending stuff. The brain goes into either hyperdrive or shuts down completely.
He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, curled it around her shoulder blade, tugged against her rigid posture. Pushing someone that hard, that far, in an interrogation was second nature now.
That’s when the truth usually came out.
“I’m a marine, Phoebe,” he said, trying to pour strength into her from the touch. “The Republic of Aquitaine Navy. The good guys.”
“Oh, Vo,” she said, relaxing and finally leaning into him.
He felt her arms wrap around his waist as she tried to press herself flat against his stomach. He let his long arms encompass her.
After a moment, she leaned back and looked up at him. He could see tears wanting to fall, but holding at the corners of her eyes.
“Do you think it’s possible?” she asked.
“I’m sorry about everything, Phoebe,” he replied quietly. “But I needed to get through to you.”
“Thank you.”
She leaned forward again, turning her head to the side, as if listening to his heart rate. It wouldn’t be normal right now.
“Who do you know who can help?” she continued.
Something was still off in her voice. Interrogator caught it, pointed it out.
Every interrogation was different, but every one ended up on the same spectrum, that same line from right to left. And she wasn’t on it. Or rather, she was clear out on the right end of the scale, looking down off a cliff.
Out where normal people never landed. Out with the card sharps and the grifters. Out in a place where they used to call them psychopaths. Human on the outside, but lacking the full range of natural emotions inside. Badly wired, they had to mimic how they saw other humans act.
And there was always a lag, a subtle moment when that kind of person had to figure out what the normal response would be, the human response, calculate it, and then enact it.
Most people would never catch them. You had to be keyed up, paranoid, and watching. Or in this case, have her pressed up against you where you could feel the play of her muscles in her back as she thought and moved.
Hopefully, his own heart hadn’t just given him away. He could always tell her it was the emotion of the moment, of being able to help a pretty girl.
It would make a useful lie.
“I’m not sure,” he replied, letting his own emotions jangle his tones. “But I’m sure I’ll be able to think of something. Pretty girls should always be rescued from dragons, as my auntie used to say.”
“Oh, Vo,” she repeated, almost breathless. “I knew I could count on you. So now what?”
Quicksand had that same queasy feel to it. Sand sitting on water, floating like a solid, until you put any weight on it and sank. Thrashing just sucked you deeper.
“I need to think,” he said, honestly enough. “You
go home. Tomorrow after class, we’ll go somewhere and talk.”
“Thank you, Vo,” she hugged him tightly, pressing her breasts flat against his stomach muscles again.
Phoebe let go quickly and turned, almost inside his arms. Vo managed to withdraw his hands before he ended up cupping her breasts, as much as he wanted to.
She glanced over her shoulder at him with a grin and a wink, and pulled her jacket off the hook.
Vo watched as she made a scene of turning to face him and climbing back into her coat, stretching like a cat as she did.
He stood perfectly still, a mouse with an owl somewhere overhead.
She stepped close and gestured. Vo leaned down far enough for a quick, warm kiss on the lips.
“See you tomorrow, handsome,” she said, reaching for the door, opening it, and disappearing as it closed.
Most of the marines he had ever known would be blind with lust right now. She seemed to be counting on that.
Vo could think of sixteen times he had been present in a serious interrogation or studied it afterwards for class. The nasty ones, when it was necessary to push someone to the breaking point using the whole range of emotional and psychological tools. Average recovery time, according to experience and literature, fifteen to twenty minutes. Even adrenaline took a while to break down.
Not thirty seconds.
Everything, even the hug, had been a lie.
For a moment, the left–hand ogre almost won the argument.
Make the call, feed her to the ravenous beast that was Republic Intelligence, get on with his life.
The right–hand ogre kicked him in the ear.
“By the book, punk,” he could hear Navin the Black growl at him. “It exists for a reason. Use it. Understand it. Master it. Then we’ll talk.”
Vo stared at Phoebe, walking away, through the closed door.
He was finally angry.
Ξ
Vo’s soup had turned to ashes in his mouth. Or perhaps cardboard. Morning oatmeal with nothing on top except rage.
He finished it anyway and automatically cleaned everything into the sink, including her half–glass of lemonade. That got poured away.
He had exactly one day to endgame this. He wasn’t nearly good enough to pull off any sort of con against a professional like Phoebe for long. She was too much like his ex–brother–in–law, Karol, Zorana’s very–short–term first husband that nobody in the family had much liked, or missed.
