Page 87 of Duty Compromised
“The algorithm’s ready,” I said quietly when there was a pause in the conversation.
He looked down at me, and for a second, his professional mask slipped. Pride, relief, and something deeper flickered in those brown eyes. “Yeah?”
“Every parameter’s calibrated. It’ll work.”
His arm tightened around me. “Never doubted it for a second.”
“I’ve got something interesting,” Jace’s voice crackled through the speaker, interrupting the moment. “Been digging through the metadata on those piggybacked calls we found with George’s phone. I could see right away that it had been happening for more than just one day, but it ends up it’s been happening for a little over six months.”
Ethan whistled through his teeth. “That’s a long fucking time.”
“Oh, it gets so much better than that. Ends up the digital tailgating had a very specific start date, and that date was the day the FBI took possession of the Cascade Protocol from Vertex.”
Everyone went still.
“That’s not a coincidence,” Ty muttered. He looked down at me. “That wasn’t your work, right? Was there anything about the Cascade Protocol that would allow this sort of piggybacking?”
I shook my head. “No, not at all. The Cascade Protocol was designed for one purpose—to exploit lithium-ion battery vulnerabilities. But…” I paused, the implications crystallizing in my mind. “Someone could have modified it before we handed it over to the FBI. Hidden a secondary function inside the code.”
“What kind of secondary function?” Ethan asked.
“Think of it like a Trojan horse,” I said, my mind racing through the possibilities. “The FBI would have installed the Cascade Protocol on their servers to study it, maybe even integrated it into their systems for testing. But if someone embedded surveillance code within it—disguised as part of the normal protocol—then the moment the FBI uploaded it, they would have given that person a backdoor into their entire network.”
“Including George’s phone,” Ty said, understanding dawning in his eyes.
“Exactly. Once the modified Protocol was in the FBI system, it could spread to any connected device. George’s phone, other agents’ devices, classified servers—everything. And because it would appear to be part of the legitimate Cascade Protocol operations, their security systems wouldn’t flag it as suspicious.”
“Jesus,” Logan muttered. “So for six months, someone’s been watching everything the FBI does through their own security system?”
I nodded grimly. “And it would’ve had to be someone at Vertex who had access to the code before the transfer. Someone who knew exactly how the Protocol worked and how to hide malicious code inside it without triggering any of our internal security reviews.”
“So the mole isn’t inside the FBI after all,” Ty said, his voice hard. “It’s someone at Vertex who turned their own creation into a spy tool.”
My stomach turned. “Actually, I heard something. Through some Vertex message boards I was glancing at.” The lie came easily—I couldn’t tell them about talking directly to Darcy, couldn’t risk them asking what else we’d discussed. The last thing I needed was Ty’s entire team knowing about my emotional revelations. “Alex has been acting strange. Paranoid. Reviewing security footage obsessively, making encrypted calls at odd hours.”
“Alex Richards?” Ty’s voice had gone dangerously quiet. “Your boss?”
I nodded, dread pitting in my stomach. Alex was who had hired me, had given me a shot when I was so young and awkward. I couldn’t stand the thought of him being behind all this. Him being the one who’d tried to kill us.
But it made sense.
“He had access to everything. The original Cascade Protocol development, the transfer protocols, the FBI liaison information. If anyone could embed surveillance code without being detected, it would be him.”
“Son of a bitch,” Ty muttered. “He played the concerned boss perfectly. All that worry about Charlotte’s safety…”
“Was probably him trying to figure out if she suspected anything,” Ethan finished.
Ty was already pulling out his phone. “I’ll get George on it. Have him ready to move on Alex as soon as the sale goes down. We can’t spook him now, not when we’re this close.”
“Agreed,” Ethan said. “We take down the buyers, secure the protocol, and Alex gets arrested simultaneously. Clean sweep.”
I leaned into Ty’s solid warmth, feeling the last piece of the puzzle click into place. Alex. It had been Alex all along. The man who’d recruited me straight out of Stanford, who’d mentored me through my early years at Vertex, who’d acted so concerned about my safety—he’d been willing to let me die to protect his secret.
“Yes,” Ty said, his voice carrying absolute certainty. “Tomorrow night, this nightmare ends.”
His fingers found mine, interlacing with the same natural ease as breathing. Around us, the team continued their planning, voices overlapping as they refined details and contingencies. But for just a moment, standing in that crowded room surrounded by maps and weapons and the quiet intensity of dangerous men preparing for battle, I felt something I hadn’t experienced in days.
Hope.
