Page 20 of Broken Trust
He stood outside the door of the bedroom where the ladies settled Elin. His hand hovered over the wood as he tried to figure out why he could storm a fucking compound full of armed enemies but was afraid to knock on his ex’s door.
Was she even his ex if there was no official breakup?
When his feet carried him to her door, he told himself he was just checking in, making sure she was getting much-needed rest instead of torturing herself over every line of code.
But the silence on the other side of that door pressed against his ribs until he felt like the air itself was holding its breath along with him.
He knocked once. No answer.
The uneasy beat stretched on, then he pushed the door open.
A single sweep of the room revealed it was empty.
The bed was still made, the sheets tight enough to bounce a coin off. The only sign she’d been here at all was her bag dropped at the foot of the bed and a dent on the side of the mattress where she may have sat for a brief time.As he backed out of the room and navigated several corridors, he realized the countdown clocks in every single one no longer tracked the minutes until the power grid went down. Elin had stopped it in plenty of time.
She must be staying the night before leaving in the morning, and that started a new countdown inside him—until the time she left.
Of course he found her in the lab. Reflections from the screens flickered across her skin. She sat straight-backed and at attention. He knew she was deep in the trenches by the way she’d knotted her hair up in a messy twist and jammed a pencil through it to anchor it in place. Her fingers moved over the keyboard in a blur.
When she focused, the rest of the world was irrelevant. But focused on what task?
“Have you slept at all?” he asked from the doorway, his voice rougher than he intended.
She didn’t give away that she heard him, and her reply didn’t come immediately. Her fingers flicked across the keys before she said, “I had a few hours’ sleep. I’m fine.”
He took a step into the space, taking it slow so she didn’t shut down on him, slam the door of the fortress she’d built around herself when he walked away from her.
Who could blame her? If someone told him she died, he’d be destroyed.
“Surely you can break for a little more sleep.”
“I found something I can’t ignore.”
He stepped closer, drawn into her orbit, the hum of the equipment swallowing the sound of his boots. “Define something.”
“Locations,” she said quietly without glancing his way. “The places that Cipher’s going to detonate the bombs.”
That made him freeze. “Say that again?”
She finally looked at him. The pale light snagged on the shadows under her eyes. “Sophie cracked a cryptogram thatcontained coordinates for twelve locations. She said that means there are twelve handlers, each one sitting on a bomb.”
He nodded.
“You knew?”
“Yes. I just didn’t know they asked you to stay and find the locations.” In three strides, he crossed the space between them. The closer he got, the more he saw how bad it really was—empty coffee cups, energy drink cans and a lone protein bar, half-eaten and forgotten.
She’d been at this too long.
“Where is Sophie? And Dante?”
“They went to grab some sleep. I told them I’d keep at it.”
“Elin.”
He felt her throw up a wall at the tenderness in his tone.
“It’s Sophie’s code and my algorithm.” She gestured to the screens. “Each dot represents a handler.”
