“No need.” Vaughn kicks the door open, splintering the frame as the deadbolt tears through it. Then he grabs Mr. Larimore’s arm and hauls him into his own living room. “Where’s the crate?”
“I never said I have any crate,” Mr. Larimore insists. “You guys are just drawing a lot of wildly erroneous conclusions.”
“I will rip your tongue from your body if you tell me one more lie,” Vaughn growls.
“Let him go.” I lay one hand on Vaughn’s arm. “Please.”
He glances at me in surprise. “But he’s lying.”
“So what if he is? This place isn’t very big. We can search it much faster than we’d be able to get information out of him if you tear out his tongue.”
“Grace has a point,” Captain Sotelo says. “But Coleman’s way sounds more fun.”
He’s kidding. I think.
“Fine,” Vaughn concedes. “We’ll search the place. Because Grace insists. After all, ‘In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit.’”
“Gandhi?” Zamora guesses. “It’s always Gandhi, with you.”
“Anne Frank.” Vaughn shoves Mr. Larimore onto the center cushion of his own couch. “Don’t move.”
Captain Sotelo and Lieutenant Dreyer take the only bedroom, leaving Zamora the bathroom attached to it. Lawrence takes the kitchen, which is kind of pointless; it isn’t big enough to hide a crate any larger than a dinner plate. And Vaughn stays with me in the living room.
He starts in the coat closet, and when it appears to be devoid of any large crates, he begins shoving aside boxes and jackets, evidently in search of some kind of magical door that might lead to contraband storage.
Mr. Larimore props his feet on a coffee table draped with what appears to be an old bed sheet, as if he couldn’t care less that his apartment is being ransacked. He still staring at me. “How did you wind up with these assholes?”
Before I can answer, Vaughn pops out of the closet to snarl at him. “Do not speak to her. Don’t even look at her.”
“That’s not about you,” I assure our handcuffed host, who looks startled by the animalistic quality of Vaughn’s snarl. “He’s kind of…protective.” And possessive, but in a way that is somehow entirely different than how Silas intended to possess me. Because Vaughn’s possessiveness is…reciprocal. He believes I belong to him, but he also believes that he belongs to me. And I have to admit, there’s a certain erotic appeal in the thought that that entire mountain of a man—seriously, he’s muscle growing on top of more muscle—is mine to do with what I will.
“Who are you?” Mr. Larimore’s gaze narrows on me, as if he’s pretty sure he must know me, but he can’t quite place me.
“My name is Grace, and I’m eighteen Earth-standard years old,” I tell him. “I was born in a convent on the planet—” I bite off the rest of it with a shake of my head. “Well, I guess that isn’t really true. But true or not, it’s what I remember,” I explain, just as Vaughn pops out of the closet again, having ripped out part of the wall panel at the back.
He snarls as he advances on Mr. Larimore. “I told you not to talk to—”
“It’s okay.” I lay one palm over the oddly supple battle gear on Vaughn’s chest. When that fails to calm him, I step into his path and slide one hand behind his neck, tugging him down for a kiss. He groans when I bite on his lower lip, demanding entry, then he opens his mouth for me. Inviting me in.
And suddenly it’s like no one else is here. There is nothing in the universe, right now, but Vaughn and the taste of him on my tongue. I want to taste more of him. I want to bring him to climax with my mouth, like he does for me. Damn his objections. I want to—
“Get a room,” Mr. Larimore says, and I pull back from that kiss at the reminder that we are not, in fact, alone. That I can’t do anything about the ache building between my legs at the moment.
Something thunks to the floor, and I look down to see that Vaughn has dropped the chunk of wall panel. His hands curl into fists, and I can tell from the way his eyes are dilated that weapons are about to burst through the seams in his skin.
But Mr. Larimore doesn’t seem to understand how much danger he’s in. Because he’s never seen the beast. “Is she any good?” he asks, and his gaze flicks from Vaughn to me, where it slides invasively down from my face to linger on my breasts. “I mean, that’s what she’s programmed for, right? To be the perfect, innocent little cum receptacle?”
Vaughn launches himself across the room faster than my eyes can track the motion. The snarl that grinds from his throat is deeper than anything I’ve ever heard from him. It carries the threat not just of true violence, but of a slow and agonizing death. And I’m already too late to get in front of him. To make a shield of my own body.
He shoves the coffee table aside and pulls Larimore off the couch by a handful of his shirt, and the spikes protruding from his knuckles shred the material. “You will not speak of Grace with such disrespect,” he growls. And when he pulls his free fist back, preparing to pulverize Mr. Larimore’s face with his knuckle spikes, I grab his arm, careful not to cut myself on the massive, serrated bone blade protruding from the underside of his arm.
“Wait!” I shout, but Vaughn’s arm is already in motion, and it drags me forward when I refuse to let go.
“Grace!” Vaughn drops Mr. Larimore on the couch and spins to catch me, because I’ve lost my balance. His spikes and blades recede in an instant, with a soft little sliding sound I barely register. “What the hell are you doing?” His huge right hand is behind my head, having caught my skull an instant before it would have smashed into the corner of the coffee table. He sets me on my feet, then he stares down at me, dumbfounded. “I was defending your honor! Why would you get in the way of that?”
“Because you could have accidentally killed him!”
“It wouldn’t have been an accident,” he growls softly.
Mr. Larimore tries to ease his way off the couch, and Vaughn spins just long enough to shove him back down onto the center cushion. “Don’t move,” he snarls. Then he turns back to me. “I would never be able to forgive myself if you were hurt,” he says, and I can see in his eyes that the beast is berating him, even as he speaks to me. “What were you thinking, Grace?”
“That he’s a human being, who’s never laid a hand on me. Or on anyone, that we know of. And that saying something disrespectful shouldn’t cost him his life.”
“Looking at you for too long should cost him his life,” Vaughn insists.
“That’s not…reasonable,” I finish.
“I don’t give a fuck about ‘reasonable!’” he snaps, and I can only stare, stunned, as he drops to his knees in front of me. His arms wrap around me and he presses the side of his face against my abdomen, clutching me so tightly that I can hardly breathe. “I only care about keeping you safe and happy, and instead, I nearly killed you. Forgive me, Grace.” His hands slide up my back, as if he needs to touch as much of me as possible.
“There’s nothing to forgive. I’m the idiot who grabbed your arm while it was in mid-swing.”
“Never do that again,” he growls against my stomach, his breath warm through the material of my new shirt. “Swear to me, Grace.” He stands and tilts my face up by my chin, until I’m looking up at him, and his bright gold eyes do not look pleased with me. “Swear you’ll never intentionally put yourself in harm’s way again.”
“Fine. I swear.” It’s not like I wanted to get hurt.
“She’s right about Larimore, you know,” Lawrence says, and I turn to see him watching us from the small kitchen. “You shouldn’t kill him. Though probably not for the reason she intended.” I frown at him, waiting for more information, and finally Lawrence rolls his eyes. “Am I the only one who actually heard what he said?”
“He insulted my mate,” Vaughn snarls.
“He said ‘that’s what she’s programmed for.’ Programmed being the operative word.”
And suddenly I understa
nd. “He knows what happened to me here. He knows about the memory implantation.” Which means Mr. Larimore might know who I was before.
I try to sink onto the couch next to the obviously terrified custodian, but Vaughn grabs my arm before I can put myself within the other man’s reach. So I settle for asking my questions from three feet away. With Vaughn there to kill him, should that suddenly seem necessary. “Tell us what you meant by that,” I demand, looking him in the eye. “I have a right to know what this place is. I have a right to know why I was here the first time. Do you know who I was before?”
“Before what?” His gaze still flicks nervously toward Vaughn every few seconds.
“Before they imprinted me with false memories!” I move toward Mr. Larimore again, convinced that if I could just sit with him—just appeal to him as a friend—he would tell me what I need to know. Because that’s the reasonable thing to do. It’s what I would do. But again, Vaughn holds me back.
“Answer her,” he growls.
“Can’t,” Mr. Larimore insists, and he truly does look mystified. “I have no idea what she’s asking.”
“The memories!” I cry, as frustration gets the better of me. I am so close to answers I can practically taste them. “The scientists who worked here, they put false memories in my head. Do you know about that?”
He nods slowly. “I only know what I overheard, but I know that memory implantation was part of it, yes.”
“I am who I am because of those false memories,” I explain, sucking in a deep breath as I grasp for patience. He isn’t a scientist, so maybe he really doesn’t understand everything that happened here. “But I had to be someone else before that, right? Do you know who I was before those memories? Did I have another name? Did I have a family? Did they make me forget my parents?”
“Are those memories still here?” Vaughn demands. “Did they record them somewhere? Can we give them back to her?”
Mr. Larimore gapes at him. “I don’t know what you’re all talking about. Honest to god. She wasn’t anything before they put those memories in her.”
A dangerous snarl scrapes up from Vaughn’s throat, and his hands curl into fists again. “If you insult her one more time, I will rip out your tongue, and you can tap out what you want to say on a tablet for the rest of your life. Which isn’t guaranteed to be very long, at this point.”
“That wasn’t an insult, I swear.” Mr. Larimore is trembling now. “It’s just a fact. Before the memories, she was just…empty.” He shrugs. “Are you the guy who bought her?”
Vaughn growls again, and—
“Um, guys?” Dreyer says, and I turn to see her standing in the bedroom doorway with Captain Sotelo and Zamora staring at us over her shoulders. “Is that what we’re looking for?” She points, and I follow her aim to see that when Vaughn shoved the coffee table out of his way, he displaced the sheet covering it, exposing one of the corners.
Mr. Larimore’s coffee table is actually a riveted metal crate.
“Fucking hell,” Lawrence mumbles as he rounds the kitchen counter into the living room. He shoves the used glass and an empty plate off of the “coffee table” onto the floor, then he pulls the sheet from the crate with the flourish of a magician performing a trick. “It was here the whole damn time.”
I suck in a startled breath. I know that crate. “That’s Meshach’s,” I mumble.
“I know.” Vaughn’s arm settles around my waist, pulling me close. “This is what we’re here for. That thing’s going to buy us a ship big enough for us to have our own quarters. Far-ranging enough to get us across the fucking galaxy from Meshach. And unregistered, to keep us undetected until we can establish a new identity.”
He sounds pleased. But that’s because he doesn’t understand yet.
“No, I mean I know that crate.” I twist out of his embrace to look up at him. “I saw one just like it once.”
“Where?” Unease echoes in Dreyer’s voice as she finally steps into the living room. Captain Sotelo and Zamora follow her in, and suddenly the small room feels claustrophobically crowded.
“On Gebose. The day I arrived. I woke up in a cryopod, and as Damaris was pulling me out of it, I saw the crate it was shipped in. The crate I was shipped in, opened and cast aside. Vaughn, my cryopod was delivered to Meshach in a crate just like this. There’s someone in that box!”
“Oh, no, Grace.” Vaughn takes my hand. “It’s just one of the weird interactive pods from that destroyed lab. I think it’s programming equipment, for memory manipulation. This crate might actually be identical to the one you were shipped in, but that’s just a coincidence. Because both crates came from here.”
“No.” I shake my head too hard, and my own hair whips me in the face. “I saw the security feed from that room. Those weren’t programming equipment. They were cryopods. I was in one of those pods.”
Dreyer clears her throat. “I believe you, Grace. But is it possible that you’re conflating two memories? If UA put you in one of those pods for memory implantation, could you be confusing a vague memory they tried to strip from you with the trauma of waking up in a similar pod?”
“I…” I frown, trying to think that through. My memory is less than reliable, thanks to whatever they did to me here.
“Grace, the pods in that lab are fitted with weird hoses and drainage systems.” Vaughn squeezes my hand, clearly trying to calm me. “That’s equipment that has no place in a modern stasis pod. So even—”
“Open it,” I demand softly, and he frowns. “We’ll know for sure then.”
“We can’t open the crate without voiding our contract with Meshach.”
“Bullshit,” I spit, as angry tears fill my eyes. I’ve never voiced that particular expletive before, but it feels appropriate as it bursts from my tongue. “Meshach wants whatever is in this crate badly enough to send you halfway across the galaxy. To hire you in secret and pay you with an entire long-range ship. He’s not going to suddenly not want his cargo just because you broke the seal on the packaging. There could be another woman in there. Someone else he bought. Someone else he paid Universal Authority to strip of her own identity and ship to him, probably as a concubine for his younger son. And if that’s what’s happening here, we cannot give him this crate. Even if that means you don’t get your damn ship.”
Silence echoes across the small room, and I can feel all eyes on me. This attention feels different than any I’ve borne before.
I’ve just asked them to give up the one thing in the universe that can untether them from short-range travel and shield them from UA’s pursuit. That will give them freedom and allow them to pursue their vendetta against the people who experimented on them for two years. They have every reason in the world to tell me to go fuck myself.
“She’s right.” Vaughn squeezes my hand again. “We have to know for sure. Fucking open it.”
I exhale in relief as their attention shifts to him, but the tension in the room doesn’t immediately fade. “We should vote,” Sotelo says at last.
“No.” My boldness shocks me, even as the objection falls from my lips. “I understand that you each want a part in making this decision, because it will affect all of you. But before you vote, you should at least know what you’re deciding. So open it first. If there’s a woman in that box, you can vote on whether or not to give her to Meshach. To pay for your freedom by stealing hers. But you should at least have the courage to look her in the face before you fuck her over.”
“Goddamn.” Lawrence whistles as he smiles at Vaughn. “Your girl’s got some serious balls.”
Vaughn’s proud smile lights a fire in my heart, and warmth rushes through me. “‘Though she be but little, she is fierce,’” he growls affectionately.
“Shakespeare,” Zamora declares. “I know I’m right about that one.”
Vaughn nods. “A Midsomer Night’s Dream.”
“A week ago, it wouldn’t have occurred to me that a woman should have any say in her future,” I admit. “
In whether or not she wants to be a concubine to a man she’s never even met. I thought I was sinning when I fled Gebose. But you all showed me how wrong it is, what Meshach did to me. And if it was wrong when he did it to me, it’ll be wrong when you do it to her.”
Dreyer nods. “Open the crate.”
“Tools?” Sotelo turns to Mr. Larimore. “Do you have anything in the apartment that will help us unseal this thing?”
“No need,” he says with a shrug. “I unsealed it more than a week ago, so it’s just closed now. Press that button on the end and step back.”
“You—?” Vaughn growls at him.
“Step back.” Sotelo waves everyone away from the crate, while he stands at the far end of it. He presses the button, and the top of the metal box splits open along the long axis, then the top half folds open to expose the seven-foot-long pod inside it.
Gasps echo all around me as the taller soldiers gape at what lies inside the pod, but I have to step forward to see.
“Oh my god.” My hand clamps over my mouth as I stare down through the clear top shell of the pod at…myself.
22
VAUGHN
STUNNED, I stare at the woman in the pod. It’s Grace, even though that isn’t possible, because Grace is standing right next to me, rendered speechless with shock.
They’re identical, this woman and my Grace. Every part of them is the same, from the deep cupid’s bow of her upper lip to the graceful up-tilt at the end of her nose. The same thick, dark hair crowns identical, smooth brows. I can’t see the woman’s eyes, because they’re closed, but I believe with every cell in my body that if she were to open them, I’d see a set of deep brown irises, echoing into eternity with a sharp intelligence and an oddly ageless wisdom. And probably with the same fear and confusion keeping my Grace’s eyes wide.
Then there’s the rest of her. The woman in the pod is completely nude, and her body looks as much like Grace as her face does.
Snarling in sudden indignation, I bend and snatch up the sheet that once disguised this crate as a coffee table. In one sharp motion, I snap the material over the pod, and it floats down to cover the lower two-thirds of the transparent top shell, shielding this poor doppelganger’s nudity from just beneath her shoulders.
Vendetta (Project Vetus Book 2) Page 27