Page 98 of Duty Compromised
“You okay?” I asked her.
She nodded, then shook her head, then nodded again. “I don’t— I’m not?—”
“You’re okay,” I told her, pulling her close. “It’s over.”
“Ty!” Donovan’s voice. He emerged from the smoke, blood staining his head and gear, but moving. Alive.
“We need to get out,” he said. “Fire’s spreading fast.”
He was right. The flames had found something particularly flammable, racing up the walls. Burning debris fell around us, and the smoke was getting thicker.
Charlotte tried to stand, but her legs gave out. I scooped her up without hesitation.
“Everybody out! Now!” George shouted.
We burst out of the warehouse into morning sunlight that seemed impossibly bright. FBI vehicles and ambulances everywhere, agents and EMTs swarming the scene. Behind us, the warehouse groaned, then a section of roof collapsed inward with a sound like thunder.
I set Charlotte down carefully on a concrete barrier, keeping one arm around her as an EMT rushed over with a medical kit. She was shaking, her laptop still clutched against her chest like she couldn’t quite let go.
“You’re okay,” I told her, pulling her closer. “It’s over.”
Through the smoke pouring from the warehouse, I watched George’s team hauling Darcy toward an FBI vehicle, her perfect composure finally cracked. The sellers who’d survived were being loaded into other vehicles, some on stretchers.
Donovan appeared through the disorder, loopy but walking under his own power. Ethan emerged next, sporting what would be a spectacular black eye. Ben and Logan flanked the remaining suspects.
All alive. All accounted for.
Charlotte’s fingers found mine, gripping tight enough to hurt.
“That was brilliant,” I told her, my voice rough. “The Morse code, the way you modified the Protocol. You saved us all.”
She looked up at me, those green eyes bright with tears and exhaustion and something else—relief maybe, or just the adrenaline finally crashing. “I knew you would see it. Would figure out what I was signaling. Anybody else, I wouldn’t have trusted to be aware enough, but you…”
She’d trusted me. I didn’t have words for how much that meant.
I cupped her face gently, careful of her bruises. “You’re the most amazing person I’ve ever known.”
“Right back at you.”
I smiled. “One more very important question.”
She nodded solemnly. “What?”
“Do you own a bikini?”
Epilogue
Ty
One Year Later - Key West
I watched Charlotte from the deck of our bungalow, her legs tucked under her on the beach chair, completely absorbed in some thriller she’d picked up at the airport. The late-afternoon sun caught the auburn in her hair, turning it to copper and gold. She’d let it grow longer this past year, and the salt air had coaxed out waves I hadn’t known existed.
We’d been coming to Key West regularly for a year now, stealing weekends and weeks whenever our schedules allowed. With her running the new Ethical Technology division at Vertex and me juggling Citadel assignments, we’d learned to be deliberate about carving out time for just us.
No protocols, no threats, no equations that could weaponize the world. Just Ty and Charlotte, figuring out how to be normal. Or at least our version of it.
Last month, we’d finally bought this place—a little two-bedroom bungalow with an outdoor shower and a view of the water that Charlotte had calculated was “optimal for sunset viewing based on angular positioning.” I’d kissed her to shut her up about the math and signed the papers.
