Chapter 9
Charlotte
I needed to get out of here.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard, refusing to cooperate with even basic syntax. The semicolon belonged at the end of the line, not floating in the middle like digital debris. Three hours since lunch with Ty, and my productivity had flatlined.
Well, not entirely flatlined. I’d successfully catalogued every variation of his smile from memory, analyzed the exact angle of his head when he listened, and completely forgotten what function I was supposed to be debugging.
Perfect. Literally the lives of thousands were in my hands, and I was suffering from my first schoolgirl crush that was causing my focus to disappear just as I needed it most.
“Charlotte, did you get a chance to review my module testing results?”
Marcus materialized at the side of my cubicle, tablet clutched like a shield. I blinked at him, my brain still stuck on Ty’s brown eyes.
“The what?”
“The module results. You said you’d review them before integration?”
“Right. Yes. The test results…” I shuffled through the papers on my desk, knowing full well I hadn’t even opened that file. Marcus’s work was solid, but reviewing it meant another hour I didn’t have. “I’ll have those to you by end of day.”
If I could clone myself.
He walked away, shaking his head, and I pressed my palms against my eyes until stars burst behind the lids. This was exactly the problem. Every five minutes, someone needed something.
“Charlotte. Question.”
I gritted my teeth and wondered if I changed my name if that would help me to get more done. If people didn’t know my new name, they couldn’t keep stopping me to ask stuff.
Linda appeared beside me, her tablet displaying error logs from the testing suite. As one of our senior validation engineers, she’d been running the stabilizer modules through stress tests all week. “You okay? You look worse than yesterday.”
“Fine. I’m fine. Just…working.”
“The feedback loops in module seven keep throwing exceptions when I test against the new battery simulation models. Are you using the updated frequency parameters or the original ones?”
Updated. Original. The parameters blurred together in my mind, overlapping with the seventeen other critical decisions I’d made in the last hour. Each one potentially catastrophic if wrong. On a normal schedule, we were weeks away from completion.
But normal had evaporated the moment Ty explained the black-market threat. Days. We had days.
“The… I need to check. Which module?”
“Seven. The one that interfaces with the power regulation system.” Linda’s voice carried that careful patience people used when repeating themselves. “I sent you the specs yesterday.”
Yesterday. When I’d been debugging module four.
Or was it five? The validation metrics she was explaining now should have been critical, but my attention fractured across too many variables.
The countermeasure algorithm needed at least forty more hours of uninterrupted work.
Forty hours I didn’t have if people kept—
“Charlotte? Which parameters should I use?”
I forced myself to focus, pulling the relevant data forward through the mental fog. “Use the updated ones, but cap the frequency at 2.4 gigahertz. Anything higher causes resonance issues with the lithium substrate. The original parameters won’t account for the new thermal coefficients.”
Linda nodded, making notes. “That explains the exceptions. I’ll recalibrate.”
Great. One fire extinguished, only forty-seven more burning in the queue.
“You look ready to commit technological homicide.”
Darcy perched on the edge of my workstation, her dark hair pulled back in a messy bun that somehow looked intentional rather than desperate like mine would if I tried that.
As the lead systems architect on our team, she had the desk directly across from mine, close enough that we could argue about implementation details without raising our voices.
“I might be considering it.” I glanced at Ty again. Still there. Still impossibly distracting. “Actually, I might throw myself out the window instead.”
“That bad?”
“I snapped at Roger earlier. Roger! The man brings donuts every Friday, and I practically bit his head off for asking about the network diagnostics.”
Darcy scrunched up her face. “You do seem a little…tense.”
I lowered my voice. “Ty told me something at lunch. About the Cascade Protocol. The FBI found out the thieves are planning to sell it on the black market in barely more than a week.”
“What?” Darcy’s eyes widened. “Are you serious?”
“If I don’t get this stabilizer code finished before then…” I didn’t need to complete the thought. We both understood what the Cascade Protocol could do in the wrong hands. “But I can’t work here. Too many interruptions, too many people needing things, and Ty is—”
“Incredibly distracting with those shoulders and that whole mysterious protector vibe?”
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
“But you were thinking it.”
Guilty as charged, although I did not have time to deal with this right now.
“Charlotte, do you have time to—” I held out my hand to stop whoever was about to ask me…whatever they were about to ask me.
“No. Deal with it yourself, or it has to wait.”
“Oh, okay.” I still didn’t turn around to see who it was.
I looked over to find Darcy staring at me with one eyebrow raised nearly to her hairline. “You’re a mess.”
“I need to work from home.” It was the only solution. “If I can get out of here with my laptop and the project files, work through the night, call in sick tomorrow, use the weekend… I might be able to finish the countermeasure enough that the rest of the team has what they need.”
“Charlotte, you can’t take classified materials home. You could lose your job.”
“People could lose their lives if I don’t finish this code.”
Darcy chewed her bottom lip, calculating risks like she calculated system loads. Which made sense—she’d been helping me architect the entire stabilizer framework from the beginning. She understood exactly how critical this was. “What do you need?”
“The backup drive with the current code base, my laptop obviously, the encryption key generator…” I rattled off several more items while Darcy nodded. “And I need to get out without anyone following me.”
“This is a terrible idea.”
“Probably. Will you help me anyway?”
She sighed. “Of course I will. But if you get fired, you better not dime a sister out.”
I wasn’t sure what those actual words meant, but I was pretty sure it meant she didn’t want to get fired with me.
“How’s everything going?”
Ty’s voice sent involuntary electricity through my nervous system. I spun in my chair too fast, sending my mouse skittering across the floor.
“Great! Everything’s great. Just…working. On work things.”
Smooth, Charlotte. Really selling the normal behavior.
He bent to retrieve the mouse, and I absolutely did not notice how his shirt pulled taut across his shoulders. When he straightened, he stood closer than before, close enough that I could count individual eyelashes if I were that type of person. Which I wasn’t.
“You sure you’re okay? You seem a little jumpy.”
“Caffeine. Too much caffeine.” I grabbed my empty coffee mug as evidence, accidentally sending half my papers sliding to the floor. “Actually, I should probably eat something. Blood sugar, like you’re always telling me.”
We both crouched to gather the papers, our fingers brushing as we reached for the same sheet. The contact sent sparks racing up my arm, and I jerked back hard enough to nearly lose my balance.
“Sorry, I—”
“No, it’s—”
We spoke simultaneously, then both stopped. The silence stretched taut between us, charged with unspoken possibility.
“I should go…organize these,” I said, clutching the papers against my chest like armor. “In the break room. That’s where I’ll be. Organizing. Working. Until it’s time to go home.”
I grimaced. Could I sound any less intelligent?
Before he could respond, I grabbed my lunch box and the countermeasure drive and damned near everything else on my desk and shoved it into my computer bag. My brain refused to track what went where. I could organize later. I just needed to take the stuff and get out.
“I’ll come with you,” Ty offered.
“No!” The word came out sharp enough to cut glass. Several heads swiveled our direction. “I mean, no need. I’m just going to be boring in the break room. Organizing. Very boring organizing.”
His eyes narrowed slightly, that investigator’s instinct probably pinging like sonar. But Darcy, blessed Darcy, chose that moment to appear at his elbow.
“Ty! Can I get your help over at your desk? I need to talk to you for a minute. Let’s let Charlotte work before she bites our heads off for distracting her.”
I didn’t wait to hear his response. Grabbing my computer bag and lunch box, I speed-walked toward the break room, attempting casual and achieving something probably a lot closer to fugitive.
I stayed in the break room for two minutes. I counted the seconds off against the door, my heart drumming a techno beat against my ribs. This was insane. I wrote code, not performed covert operations.
I eased the door open. Down the hall, Ty stood with his back to me, Darcy gesturing animatedly as she monopolized his attention. Perfect.
Moving with all the stealth my sensible flats could manage, I headed for the exit. Twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten.
“Charlotte? Everything all right?”
I nearly left my skeleton behind. Raymond Wilmington, head of security, stood by the main entrance, his thick eyebrows drawn together in concern.
“Fine! Yes. Everything’s fine.”
His gaze dropped to my bags. “Heading out early?”
“Dentist appointment.” The lie emerged bulky but feasible. “Routine cleaning. You know. Dental hygiene is important.”
“Indeed it is.” His hand drifted toward his security badge, the one that granted him authority to search any bags leaving the building. “You seem a bit flustered.”
“Running late. Traffic. You know how it is.”