Chapter 7
Ty
I knew exactly what I’d find walking into Vertex on a Monday morning, and the place didn’t let me down.
Scientists stumbling around with their third coffee like it was an IV drip, guards yawning through shift change, the low buzz of machines powering up like the building was stretching after a nap. Predictable.
I’d actually been looking forward to it. My weekend had been too damned quiet—just me, four walls, and way too much time failing to stop thinking about Dr. Charlotte Gifford.
Not that I’d admit that out loud. The ribbing I’d already taken from Ben on Friday was more than enough. She’d told me in no uncertain terms to keep my distance. Message received. Loud and clear.
The front desk guard barely glanced up when I badged into the building at seven sharp—not Raymond, thankfully. The older man’s hostility was getting old fast. The elevator ride to the third floor gave me time to reset my expression to professionally neutral.
But when the lab doors opened, the usual Monday morning quiet was replaced by something else entirely.
Charlotte was already there, welded to her workstation.
Her hair had escaped whatever she’d tried to do with it—wisps stuck to her face, the rest hanging limp around her shoulders.
Coffee stained the front of her pale blue blouse in at least three different places, creating an abstract map of caffeine accidents.
Even from my desk, I could see that dark circles shadowed her eyes, and her fingers flew across the keyboard with desperate energy, running on fumes and determination.
What the hell? It wasn’t that Charlotte was ever without coffee stains, but this was different.
Alex stood near her, arms crossed, drumming his fingers against his biceps. Relief flickered across his features when I entered. He rushed over to me at my desk.
“Thank God you’re here early.” His words came out hurried. “Charlotte came in yesterday afternoon. Been here all night.”
“Wait. What? All night?” Everything in me wanted to march over there and demand an explanation. “Why?”
“Corruption in the drive. The entire stabilizer project she’s been working on for the past week—gone. She’s having to start completely over.”
The muscles in my shoulders tensed. A week’s worth of work didn’t just disappear. “Gone? What happened. Was it foul play?”
Alex paced back and forth in front of my desk. “Could be a system error. These things happen with complex code. Quantum computing isn’t exactly stable technology on the best days.”
“But you don’t believe that.”
He hesitated, then shrugged. “Charlotte’s the best there is. She’s meticulous about backups, version control, all of it. For everything to corrupt simultaneously…” The implication hung between us.
“I need to talk to Wilmington. See if anything out of place happened here this weekend.”
Alex ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. Yeah.” More pacing. “We let him know there was a problem, but…”
He trailed off. Either he didn’t expect Raymond Wilmington to know anything or didn’t expect him to do anything. Either way, that was bullshit.
I found Raymond occupying his second-floor office like a fortress, feet propped on his desk, newspaper held up like a shield from the twenty-first century. The doorframe didn’t even merit his attention when I knocked.
“What do you want, Hughes?”
“Entry logs for the weekend. Everyone who badged in or out.”
Still hidden behind newsprint, Raymond shifted in his chair. “Why?”
“Because I’m asking nicely.”
The paper lowered slowly, revealing narrowed eyes. “You think someone messed with the lab? Alex told me there was some malfunction or something. It was probably a glitch. Those kids just didn’t save their homework.” Asshole laughed at his own joke.
“I think I’d like to see the logs.”
“That’s need-to-know information.” He folded the newspaper with deliberate precision, setting it aside like he was preparing for combat.
This fucking dunce. He was about to need to know how to surgically remove my boot from his ass.
The door clicked shut behind me as I stepped inside.
“Wilmington, we can do this easy or we can do it hard. Easy is you hand over the logs and we both do our jobs. Hard is I call George Mercer at the FBI, explain that you’re obstructing a security investigation, and let him explain to your boss why federal contractors are pulling your clearance and you’re out of a job. ”
His jaw worked side to side. “You don’t have that authority.”
“Why don’t we fuck around and find out, buddy.”
The air conditioning hummed. Someone laughed in the hallway. The standoff stretched until Raymond yanked open a desk drawer and shoved a tablet across the surface with enough force that it nearly went airborne.
The device landed in my palm before it could fall.
I walked to the other side of the room and leaned against the wall.
Data scrolled past, showing everyone who’d come into the building over the weekend—cleaning crew Saturday evening, right on schedule.
Three maintenance workers Sunday morning for HVAC repairs. Security guards rotating shifts.
And, sure enough, Charlotte, badging in Sunday at 12:47 p.m.
I read on. “Says here Dr. Gifford isn’t authorized for weekend access without prior approval.”
Raymond rocked back until his chair creaked. “Yeah. Something about overall morale and stuff. But she does whatever she wants. Girl genius gets special treatment.”
“Nobody stopped her?”
“Not our job to babysit the scientists. She wants to work herself to death, that’s her business.”
I turned to the security camera feeds on the tablet. It didn’t show anything that wasn’t consistent with the log—the cleaning crew moving through their routine, HVAC guys doing their job. Nothing obviously out of place. Even Charlotte entering Sunday afternoon seemed focused but normal.
But something felt off.
I needed to do a walk-through of the building, check things out for myself. Raymond was demanding more info as I handed him back the tablet, but I ignored him.
I headed downstairs. The entry points seemed secure, doors and windows intact. Raymond trailed behind, each footstep deliberately heavy. “What exactly are we looking for, Hughes?”
We weren’t looking for fucking anything. I was trying to figure out why my Tyler-senses were tingling.
The weekend cleaning crew had left their usual traces—gleaming floors, reorganized break room, that particular industrial disinfectant scent. The HVAC work checked out, service orders filed properly.
Everything appeared pristine. Nobody had broken in, tunneled in. Nothing was out of place.
Raymond planted himself like a roadblock when we circled back to the main entrance, arms crossed. “Satisfied? Look, these systems glitch all the time. Had a server crash just last month that wiped out half the accounting database. Nobody’s fault, just technology being technology.”
Maybe. But I doubted it. I set the tablet on his desk like I was returning a library book I hadn’t wanted to check out in the first place, then took the stairs before he could deliver another TED Talk on Why Security Guards Know Everything.
Back in the lab, I stopped to watch Charlotte for a moment. She always worked hard, but this was something different. Her fingers never stopped moving across the keyboard in some sort of desperate rhythm. Tension fairly radiated through her body.
Alex came up to me. He was still tense too, but nothing at all like Charlotte’s unnatural frantic energy. “Did you find anything of importance with Raymond?”
I shook my head, still studying Charlotte. “Entry logs appear normal. Nothing seems out of place. It’s not definitive, but it doesn’t look like there was any unauthorized access this weekend.”
Alex mussed his hair into a style I’d call accidental mad scientist. “Maybe it was some sort of system error, like we talked about. It is possible. “
Raymond had said the same. I wasn’t willing to take it at face value. I needed to talk to Charlotte, find out what she’d seen when she first realized there was a problem.
I crossed the lab toward her, exaggerating each step like I was auditioning for Riverdance. Subtlety wasn’t my strong suit, but startling her? Even worse idea. She finally registered my approach, and something flickered behind the exhaustion in her eyes.
Her hand shot up like she was calling time-out. “Don’t. Whatever you’re about to say, don’t. I don’t have time for security theater right now.”
Force-protection checklist died on my tongue. Fine. Start simpler. “When was the last time you ate?”
Her brow furrowed, irritation folding into confusion. “I… What?”
I dragged a chair over, dropping into it until we were eye level. “Food. Actual food. When’s the last time?”
“That’s not— I don’t—” Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, frozen. “I’m busy.”
“You’re exhausted.” I kept my tone easy, like we were discussing the weather, not the fact that she looked ready to collapse. “You’ve been here all night, haven’t you?”
Her shoulders squared, like defiance could replace energy. “I’m fine.”
“You’ve got coffee stains on your shirt. Three of them.”
She exploded. “I always have coffee on my shirt! Every damned day!”
Her voice cracked through the room, dragging every head our way. She realized it a beat too late, color rushing up her neck.
“Hey.” I dropped my voice low, steady. “It’s okay.”
“Nothing is okay!” She spoke even louder. The room hushed, dozens of eyes pinning her in place. She shook, breath going shallow, quick.
I tried again, calm. “All right. That’s fair. But we’ll get you what you need—”
Her trembling hand shot for her mug, clipped it wrong, and the thing went flying. It slammed onto the desk, splattering coffee in a wild arc—across papers, monitors, her sleeve. I grabbed it before the rest could cascade, but the damage was done.
She froze, staring at the spreading stain like it was acid eating through everything she’d built. Her breathing hitched, shallow and ragged.