Chapter 17
Charlotte
I fidgeted with the seat belt strap, twisting the fabric between my fingers until the rough edge bit into my skin.
Ty’s voice filled the truck—professional, controlled, though I could still see the blood running down his face from fighting the intruder in my house.
Blood still darkened his temple, his knuckles were split and swollen on the steering wheel, yet he spoke to George with measured calm, as if fighting off trained intruders was just another Tuesday.
“The situation’s escalated.” His phone was on speaker, propped in the cupholder between us. “Someone broke in to Charlotte’s house tonight. Specialized—not a random burglary. They were after the drive.”
George Mercer’s voice crackled through the speaker, tinny and distant. “Status?”
“One intruder, maybe more. The one I engaged escaped, but not before tearing her place apart. Charlotte can’t go back there. Not safe at the office either.”
My stomach twisted into knots that would make topology professors weep. The image of my violated home kept flashing behind my eyelids—books scattered like dead birds, furniture gutted, everything I’d built to create safety destroyed in minutes.
They’d torn it apart looking for something that was never there. Ty’s trap had worked in a way—someone had taken the bait when he’d loudly announced I should take the drive home. But the drive itself was still at the lab, locked in the secure storage where it belonged.
And now my lab—the only other place in the world where I’d ever felt like I belonged—was now equally contaminated by threat.
“I’ll get a safe house ready,” George said. “Should have something within the hour. Send you coordinates as soon as it’s secured.”
“Good. In the meantime, we need to retrieve Charlotte’s equipment from the lab. She needs her setup to finish the stabilizer code.”
“Want an FBI escort?”
Ty’s jaw tightened, the muscle jumping in a rhythm I’d started to recognize—calculation, risk assessment, decision. “No. Too visible. Whoever’s behind this has been one step ahead since the beginning. We go in quiet, get what we need, get out.”
“Your call. Just remember—getting that code finished is priority one. Everything else is secondary.”
“Understood.”
The call ended, leaving us in silence except for the engine’s hum and my own too-loud breathing.
Ty took another turn, sharp enough that I had to brace against the door.
Then another, seemingly random. His eyes constantly flicked to the mirrors—rearview, side, rearview again.
A pattern that should have been predictable but somehow wasn’t.
“You’re taking a deliberately nonoptimal route,” I observed, my brain latching on to the puzzle to avoid thinking about what had just happened at my house. “The pattern appears random, but there’s a logic to it—you’re maximizing entropy in the route selection to prevent prediction.”
His lips twitched, almost a smile. “Look at you, thinking tactically.”
“It’s just math.” But my voice shook, betraying the calm I was trying to project. “Everything’s just math if you break it down far enough.”
Every set of headlights made my shoulders tense. That sedan three cars back—had it been there at the last intersection? The SUV that just turned—was it maintaining a careful distance? My mind catalogued license plates automatically, searching for patterns that probably didn’t exist.
“Every car looks like a threat,” I whispered. Two days ago, that would’ve never occurred to me.
“Good. Paranoia keeps you alive. But you need to learn the difference between healthy caution and paralysis.” He checked the mirror again.
“That sedan? Soccer mom heading home from late practice—see the stick figure family on the back window? The SUV turned into a McDonald’s.
Real surveillance is subtle. It’s the car you don’t notice that’s the problem. ”
I studied his profile in the dashboard light. Eye swelling, bruises already forming, blood slowing but still running in a slow line from his temple to his jaw where the intruder’s fist had connected. His knuckles clenched on the steering wheel, raw and cracked. Favoring his left side.
“You need medical attention.” The words came out more forcefully than I intended. “You could have a concussion, broken ribs, internal bleeding—”
“Charlotte.” His hand found mine, warm and solid despite the dried blood on his knuckles, squeezing gently before returning to the wheel. “I’ve had worse. Right now, staying ahead of whoever’s after you matters more than some bruises.”
Some bruises. The man had emerged from my house bloodied and battered and called it some bruises.
“What happened in there?” I asked quietly.
“There was still someone inside. Professional, trained. Turns out he was not here about your car’s extended warranty.
We fought, but I had to let him escape through the back rather than chase him and leave you unprotected.
” His jaw tightened. “Could have been others waiting outside as backup. These people rarely work alone.”
“So they’re still out there.”
I took Ty’s silence as agreement.
“What’s the plan? When we get to the lab?”
“If we had more time, I’d run surveillance for a few days, identify patterns, set up a honeypot to draw out the mole.
” He checked the mirror again, then suddenly accelerated through a yellow light.
“But we’re down to five days until the auction.
No time for subtlety. What do you need from the lab to finish the stabilizer? ”
“Everything important is in my primary workspace,” I said, mentally cataloguing what I’d need. “The main tower with the custom GPU array, the quantum encryption drives with the stabilizer code, my modified oscilloscope for testing the frequency modulation—”
“Can you work with less?”
I calculated quickly, running through the minimum viable configuration. “Unfortunately, no. I need everything to finish the code and make sure it works properly. And the testing equipment. Without that, I can’t verify the stabilizer will actually counter the Cascade Protocol. We’d be flying blind.”
“Fair enough. Let’s get in, grab all you need, and get out as quickly as we can. We want to avoid any surprises, if at all possible.”
“If we split up when we get inside, we should be able to get it all.”
“We’ll make it work. Whatever you need. We just need to pack it as small as possible, make it manageable if we need to run.”
I didn’t even want to ask why we would be running.
The Vertex building materialized out of the darkness ahead, its glass facade reflecting the streetlights in fractured patterns.
The parking lot was nearly empty—just the two security vehicles that were always there and a maintenance van that I recognized from countless late nights.
Ty pulled into a spot near the side entrance, backing in with skilled precision.
“Quick exit position,” he explained, though I’d already deduced that. Everything he did had purpose, intention, preparation for contingencies I couldn’t even imagine.
We walked toward the entrance, and my skin prickled with the sensation of being observed.
Every window above us could conceal watching eyes.
Every shadow between the landscaping lights could hide someone waiting.
The intruder who’d escaped—was he here? Had he called for backup?
My rational mind calculated probabilities, while my body prepared to run.
My keycard trembled as I held it to the reader. The light flashed green with a cheerful beep that seemed too loud in the quiet night.
The exterior door opened with its familiar mechanical click.
We stepped into the dim hallway, emergency lighting painting everything in harsh contrasts.
Our footsteps echoed despite my attempts to walk quietly—Ty moved silently beside me, though I could see him favoring his left side where the intruder had landed those brutal hits.
“You’re hurt worse than you’re letting on,” I whispered.
“I’m functional. That’s what matters.” But I caught the slight hitch in his breathing, the way he kept his left arm tucked protectively against his ribs.
I led him to the second checkpoint, already pulling out my card. I swiped. The reader beeped—sharp, negative, wrong.
“Try again,” Ty said, but his posture had already shifted, coiling like a spring under pressure despite his injuries.
I swiped the card a second time. The reader gave the same angry beep, and the little LCD screen displayed the same message: ACCESS RESTRICTED - AFTER HOURS ENTRY DENIED.
“They’ve locked me out.” The betrayal stung more than it should have. After everything I’d sacrificed for Vertex, after years of eighteen-hour days and breakthrough innovations, they’d revoked my access like I was some kind of security risk. “How could they—”
Ty tried his card with the same result. “Wilmington.” The name came out like profanity. “That paranoid bastard probably did this the moment you took the drive home last time. Covering his ass, making sure any breach couldn’t be traced back to his security protocols.”
My mind was already racing ahead, finding solutions. “There’s a way around this.” I pulled out my phone, fingers already flying across the screen. “I helped design this security system. Built it from scratch, actually, when Vertex was still using magnetic strips and PIN codes like it was 1995.”
“You can hack your own building?”
“It’s not hacking when you wrote the code.” I was already deep in the system architecture, navigating layers of security I’d implemented over the years. “It’s more like…using the service entrance instead of the front door.”