Page 96 of Duty Compromised
I watched Charlotte’s eyes dart around the warehouse, and I could practically see her brain working. Taking in variables—distance to exits, number of weapons, positions of every person in the room. Her green eyes were bright with concentration, that beautiful mind running through scenarios faster than any computer.
She met my eyes, and something shifted. The terror that had been riding her hard since she’d been dragged in began sliding away, replaced by the focused intensity I’d seen when she was deep in her work. Whatever solution she’d come up with, she was committing to it.
She nodded at the sellers, then looked at me, then Ethan, then back to the sellers.
“Five minutes,” she said clearly. “I can make the Cascade Protocol functional again in five minutes. Then you can use it on whatever law enforcement shows up. Your own personal mini-bombs. Every agent who responds will be carrying their own death in their pocket.”
Charlotte turned to Darcy. “The info you’ve stolen from the FBI should give you the cell phone numbers you need. Get them ready.”
Darcy’s smile could have frozen helium. “You’re right. I have every field agent assigned to this case. We can take them all out at once. They’ll never know it was coming. Might end up taking some other agents out accidentally, but…oh well.”
Charlotte nodded and pulled her laptop from the bag one of the goons had been carrying. She opened it and started typing.
I wanted to scream at her not to do it. Ethan and I were willing to die to stop the Cascade Protocol from getting into the wrong hands. Every FBI agent on this case had accepted that risk when they signed up. Dozens of lives against the hundreds or thousands the Cascade Protocol could kill.
The math was brutal but clear. Charlotte had to know that.
But she wasn’t looking at me. She was hunched over her laptop in that way she got when she was really focused, shoulders curved in, the rest of the world forgotten. Her fingers flew across the keyboard with the speed of someone who thought in code.
Then I noticed something odd.
She was typing with one hand, her right, while her left hand tapped against the side of the computer. At first, I thought it was just nervous energy, the same way she fidgeted and talked to herself when she was thinking. But there was a pattern to it. Deliberate. Rhythmic.
I’d never seen her do that before. Charlotte had her quirks when she worked, but this was different.
She glanced over at me, just for a second, and her left hand kept tapping.
Long-short-long-long. Long-long-long.
Holy shit. She was using Morse code.
My chest went tight. SOS? No, she kept going.
Long-short-long-long. Long-long-long.
Y. O.
Short-short-long. Long-short-long-short.
U. R.
I kept my face neutral, years of training the only thing keeping me from reacting as I translated the rest.
P-H-O-N-E B-O-M-B
Your. Phone. Bomb.
Understanding hit like a physical blow. She wasn’t giving them what they wanted. She wasn’t reactivating the full Cascade Protocol. She was making it specific to one phone—mine. Creating our one chance at an element of surprise.
I caught Ethan’s eye and glanced down at my hand, then started tapping my own fingers against my thigh. His eyes narrowed slightly—message received. He’d figure it out or he wouldn’t, but either way, I had to be ready.
Charlotte kept typing, lost in her work to anyone watching. But I saw the way her shoulders tensed, the white-knuckle grip she had on the laptop. This brilliant, brave woman was trying to save us all with nothing but her brain and sheer determination.
Two minutes passed. Three. The sellers grew restless, weapons shifting, fingers dancing near triggers. Four minutes.
“Done,” Charlotte said, her voice small. She turned the laptop toward Darcy. “Enter the phone numbers.”
Darcy’s fingers danced across the keyboard, entering number after number with the efficiency of someone who’d memorized them all. “There. Every FBI agent on this case, and maybe a few extra for good measure. Sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye to George Mercer.”
