Chapter 4
Charlotte
“I didn’t mean—” Bull in a china shop. I couldn’t believe I’d said that with him there.
Why didn’t I check to see if anyone else was in the office before I started talking?
Mortification didn’t begin to cover this error of such epic proportions.
If my face got any hotter, I was going to have to shut down and do a total reset.
“It’s just that people unfamiliar with our protocols tend to inadvertently disrupt critical processes, and the lab requires specific procedures that outsiders frequently overlook, which creates inefficiencies that surge through our entire workflow—”
“Charlotte.” That drawl wrapped around my name like smoke, and his smile hadn’t wavered once. “I get it. You don’t want me here.”
“That’s not—” I stopped, reorganized my thoughts, tried again. “The research we conduct requires extreme precision. Even minor disruptions can set us back weeks.”
“And I’m a major disruption.” He leaned against Alex’s bookshelf like he’d been cast for the role of Human Obstacle.
The morning sun through the blinds picked up the gold in his eyes—that damned gold, like my nervous system needed further destabilization.
I looked away before I did something humiliating. Like sigh.
“You said it, not me.” My voice was supposed to land authoritative. It tripped and fell closer to squeaky.
“Actually, you said it first. Bull in a china shop, remember?”
Oh, I remembered. My fingers found the edge of my tablet, tapping a rhythm that only existed to keep me from melting into a pool of humiliation. Or combusting. “I was making a generalized observation about the integration challenges inherent in—”
“You were calling me a disaster waiting to happen.” He delivered it like we were coconspirators in a joke rather than my insulting him to his face.
And why—why did he look pleased about that?
“Refreshing, actually. Most people wait at least a day before they tell me I’m going to ruin everything in my path. ”
“I prefer efficiency in all things, including interpersonal communications.”
“That explains the complete lack of small talk.” He shifted his weight with natural ease, and I hated that my eyes tracked the motion. My attention snapped back to the safety of pixels.
“Small talk serves no quantifiable purpose in a professional environment.”
“What about making people comfortable?”
“Comfort is subjective. Impossible to optimize for.”
“You always talk like you’re writing a research paper?”
The retort slipped out before my brain could catch it. “You always ask this many questions?”
Too late to shove it back in. Brilliant. Now, I was not only flustered, I was flustered and snippy.
But he just laughed, low and rich, and the sound did something complicated to my nervous system. “Only when I’m trying to figure someone out.”
“I’m not a puzzle for you to solve.” I lifted my chin, spine stiffening like posture alone could make me intimidating. Maybe if I borrowed some of Alex’s authority and duct-taped it to my personality. “I’m a researcher with a job to do.”
“Didn’t say you were a puzzle.” His smile tipped lazy, but his eyes didn’t. “I said I was trying to figure you out. Different thing.”
My heart tripped, promptly ignored my request for composure, and went sprinting in circles like a hamster on espresso. I opened my mouth, no idea what would come out—
Thankfully, Alex cleared his throat. “If you two are done with…whatever this is, George Mercer is calling in thirty seconds.”
I’d never been so grateful for an interruption.
I slid into one of the chairs facing Alex’s desk, pulling up the relevant files on my tablet.
Ty took the chair next to mine, and I became hyperaware of every molecule of air between us.
His presence filled the space like an electromagnetic field, disrupting all my carefully calibrated equilibrium.
The wall monitor flickered to life, and George Mercer’s face appeared. The FBI seal behind him looked imposing as always, but something in his expression made my stomach drop.
“Alex, Charlotte.” George’s voice carried weight that confirmed my worst fears. “Thank you for making time on short notice. Ty.”
“Your message mentioned a security issue.” Alex had shifted to pure business mode. “Regarding the Cascade Protocol?”
George’s jaw tightened. “I’m afraid the situation is more serious than we initially assessed. Due to some…internal issues…the technology you turned over six months ago may no longer be secure.”
The words hit me like liquid nitrogen. I sat forward, my knuckles white around the tablet. “Define no longer secure.”
“We have reason to believe it may have been compromised.”
“Compromised.” I tasted the word’s bitterness. “You mean stolen. Someone stole the Cascade Protocol from the FBI.”
“Possibly.”
“How?” The question came out as sharp as fractured glass. “We provided quantum encryption specifications. The storage protocols I designed were—”
“The breach wasn’t technical.” His admission made everything infinitely worse. “The agent handling your case…Agent David Reeves…he died last week.”
“Died.” Alex’s voice had gone dangerously quiet.
“Initially ruled a suicide. We were reorganizing his caseload when we discovered irregularities.”
“What kinds of irregularities?” In my world, irregularities were rarely a good thing.
George’s jaw tightened further. “It looked like Agent Reeves used his access card to download his entire caseload to an external drive the night he died. But upon further inspection, that transfer ended up being an hour after his time of death.”
Ty crossed his arms over his chest. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but dead men don’t tend to transfer files.”
George nodded. “That’s right. We’re now treating his death as a murder, not a suicide. Someone killed him to get the info on the cyber cases he was working on.”
“You’re telling me,” I said slowly, each word precise, “that the FBI lost control of technology capable of turning three billion devices into weapons because someone murdered your agent, and you didn’t even realize it was a homicide for a week?”
“The situation is being investigated—”
“Investigated?” I stood without planning to, the chair rolling backward.
“This is exactly why I insisted on FBI involvement. The Cascade Protocol was too dangerous for private sector containment. I convinced my team—convinced Alex—that you would handle it. Half my researchers thought I was paranoid for even suggesting we turn it over, but I pushed because I believed in federal security protocols.”
“Charlotte.” Alex’s warning barely registered.
“Six months ago, I walked into your offices with technology that could destabilize global infrastructure.” My voice sounded steadier than my pulse.
“I handed over documentation detailing how to override battery management systems in any modern smartphone. I explained—at length—how a frequency attack could turn lithium-ion batteries into remote-controlled incendiary devices.”
Ty’s chair creaked as he leaned forward. “Incendiary devices, as in bombs?” His brows lifted. “Okay, maybe let’s rewind for those of us who just got read in. What exactly does this Cascade Protocol do?”
Grateful for the redirect, I sat back down and flipped my tablet to the schematic view and cast it to the wall.
Technical explanation. Safe ground. “It started as a diagnostic tool. We were contracted to develop parameters for stress-testing lithium-ion batteries—find weak points before the products shipped.”
“Sounds harmless enough,” Ty said, eyes tracking the diagrams like he was genuinely trying to follow. Unexpected.
“That’s what we thought.” I tapped to bring up another schematic. “But the testing revealed a flaw. By combining specific electromagnetic pulse sequences with targeted code injection, we discovered we could bypass the safeguards in a battery management system chip.”
Ty’s gaze flicked from the screen to me. “And the battery management system does…what exactly?”
“It regulates charging. Keeps phones from overheating. Balances the cells.” I traced the attack vector on the diagram with my fingers. “In other words, the chip is the reason your phone doesn’t regularly catch fire in your pocket.”
“And you found a way to shut it off.”
“Yes. Remotely.” My throat tightened, but I kept going.
“The initial breach piggybacks through the cellular network. A quantum-encrypted signal penetrates the baseband processor—the chip that handles communication. Once inside, the code disables thermal protection and forces the battery into rapid charge-discharge cycles.”
“That’s a bunch of big-ass words.” Ty’s voice was quieter now. “What exactly does it do?”
“It creates an uncontrolled chemical reaction in the lithium cells.” I forced myself to meet his eyes. “In practical terms, it means we can make any smartphone battery explode on command.”
Silence settled, heavy enough to warp the air.
Ty sat back slowly, his expression shifting from disbelief to grim understanding. “Every smartphone.”
“Actually, any device with a lithium-ion battery and cellular connectivity. Phones, tablets, certain laptops, smartwatches—”
“Three billion devices, give or take.” His expression had gone deadly serious. “You created a way to weaponize three billion devices.”
“Which is why I immediately brought it to the FBI.” I turned back to George’s image. “I thought federal custody would ensure it never saw deployment. Clearly, I miscalculated.”
George straightened his tie, a nervous gesture that didn’t inspire confidence.
“This is why we need your help now. We need you to create a stabilizer code—a countermeasure that could neutralize the Cascade Protocol if it’s deployed.
Which, right now, we don’t believe is a factor.
There are a number of cases linked to our lost agent, and this is only one of them. ”
“Pretty fucking big one of them,” Ty muttered.
“Yes, that’s true,” George admitted.