Page 65 of Duty Compromised
“No buts. Lock the doors. Keep the keys ready.” He nodded to them in the ignition and briefly reached over to squeeze my hand, transferring warmth I didn’t realize I needed. “If anything happens, if anyone approaches, you drive. Don’t wait for me. Don’t hesitate. Just go.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Charlotte.” His brown eyes held mine, deadly serious despite the blood still caked at his temple. “Promise me. Your safety matters more than mine. You have to get the stabilizer code finished. Thousands of lives are at stake.”
I nodded, the lie sitting heavy in my throat. He climbed out of the truck, and the dome light clicked off, abandoning me to darkness.
“Be careful,” I whispered into the empty cab, though he was already too far away to hear.
The office door swallowed him, and I was alone.
I locked the doors, the click explosively loud in the silence. My fingers dug into my palms hard enough to leave mooned impressions. Through the office window, I could see Ty’s silhouette talking to someone behind the counter, his body language deceptively relaxed—but I knew better now. I could see the tension in his shoulders, the way he kept his back to the wall, how he positioned himself to watch both the clerk and the door.
The neon sign flashed at me in waves—pink, orange, pink again—turning my skin into something alien. Every shadow between the parked cars could hide a threat. Every sound made my heart stutter. A plastic bag skittered across the parking lot, and I nearly screamed.
This was my fault. All of it. Ty’s blood, his pain, this seedy motel in the middle of nowhere. If I’d been less stubborn, less convinced of my own safety in my sterile lab world?—
The office door opened. Ty emerged, room key dangling from his fingers. Even from here, I could see the effort each step required.
He’d helped me. Cared for me. Fought for me. And now he kept walking through obvious hurt because I needed protection from the monster I’d helped create.
I sat in that truck, waiting for what came next, and had never felt more alone or more responsible for another person’s suffering in my entire life.
Chapter 19
Ty
The motel office reeked of decades-old cigarette smoke and something fungal growing in the walls. The clerk, mid-forties with a stained Metallica shirt stretched over his gut, barely glanced up from whatever video was playing on his phone.
“Need a room,” I said, sliding cash across the counter. Always cash at places like this. No credit cards, no paper trail, no questions.
“How many guests?”
“Just me.”
He didn’t care enough to verify, just grabbed a key attached to a plastic diamond with “17” scratched into the yellowed surface. “Checkout’s at eleven. Ice machine’s broken. Don’t use the pool—it hasn’t been drained in…a while.”
“Thanks.”
I checked door numbers as I walked back to my truck. Room seventeen sat at the far end of the building where my truck was already parked. Perfect. Edge of the lot suited my purposes—better sight lines to spot anyone approaching, fewer neighbors to notice us, plus had a sliding glass door. Probably installed in the seventies when this place had dreams of being respectable. Now it was just another security risk that happened to work in our favor.
I walked back to the truck, scouting the area as I went. Through the window, Charlotte hadn’t moved. She sat rigid, staring at nothing, her brilliant mind probably trying to process the violence we’d just escaped.
Her gaze had gone somewhere distant, that thousand-yard stare I’d seen in combat zones when someone’s mind retreated to protect itself from the present.
I lightly tapped on her window, not wanting to scare her. Her eyes flared wide in surprise as she refocused on me and unlocked her door. “Hey,” I said softly, opening her door. “You ready to go in? I got us a room.”
She blinked slowly, focusing on me like she was surfacing from deep water. “You sure we’re okay to stay here?”
“Just for a few hours. Until the safe house is ready.”
I helped her out, her legs unsteady enough that I kept my hand on her elbow, grabbing my bag from behind the seat. I always kept this bag ready. Military habits that seemed paranoid in civilian life until moments like this, when paranoia became preparation.
The room inside was about what I’d expected. Two beds with quilts featuring a geometric pattern that probably looked modern during the Carter administration. Walls the color of old bones. A television bolted to a dresser that belonged in a museum.
Charlotte stood in the center of it all, looking lost in a way that had nothing to do with the shabby surroundings.
I set the bag on the dresser, unzipping it with controlled movements, pulling out a few of the items. “First aid kit, emergency rations, water bottles.” I held up a phone in a box. “Burner phone. Neither of ours is safe to use anymore.”
