Page 11 of Duty Compromised
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.”
