Page 59 of Duty Compromised
The man I’d just fought would’ve been fine with killing me. Probably wouldn’t have hesitated to torture Charlotte to find out where the countermeasure drive was.
Nothing was safe anymore.
I had to get her out of here.
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.
