What if that was all he had to offer?
She rejected that notion entirely. He wasn’t shallow. Not even close.
She just wasn’t the person he wanted to share his pain and heartache with. Maybe he didn’t want to share it with anyone at all. She wasn’t sure she could handle that situation.
Wasn’t it better than being alone?
“Maddie, I was looking for you.”
Nolan stood outside her office, leaning on her assistant’s desk. Jenna had left at lunch for a doctor’s appointment, so they were alone in the little space that served as her assistant’s office.
She forced a smile on her face. There was a fine tension she felt every time she thought about Nolan now. Deke had convinced her to worry, and now she wasn’t sure she had the acting chops to pull off being comfortable around the man. “Hey. I was in the lab. I’m working on the audio problem from my end. I think that’s the real trouble they’re having. I’ve got some code I need to fix on my end and then I think the integration should be much more clean.”
He seemed to study her for a moment, and then his lips quirked up, though now she found his smile creepy rather than comforting. “Excellent. I’ve been worried. I know it’s small in the big scheme of things, but the voice component will be a big deal to the public.” He went quiet again, his gaze seeming to pin her. “You know you’re about to be very famous.”
“Not really. No one knows the scientists behind a project. I’ll just be a member of the team.”
“I seriously doubt that. I’ve been talking to our publicity department, and they think you would be an excellent face for the development team. They love the idea of having a woman in front of the cameras. They even think it might be smart if you handled some of the interviews I would normally do.”
He didn’t like that idea. It was there in the narrowing of his eyes, the slight distaste in his tone as he said the words. She shook her head. “I’m not good on camera. I’m sure you can handle everything we need. I’m content to stay in the background.”
“I’m not sure you’ll be able to.” He seemed to shake something off and refocused. “Hey, I was talking to someone in HR and she said you were having trouble with employee absences? Is something going on that I should know about?”
She’d thought she’d gotten away with this. Her gut twisted and she was probably getting another spanking because she would bet that someone on the team was currently watching her and would tell Deke, who would want to know what this conversation had been about.
“Naman mentioned he’d had some problems in the last couple of weeks.” She hoped she sounded breezy and unworried. “I wanted to check it out. It looks like some kind of bug was going around, but it seems to be better now.”
Now that they’d paused working on audio tests while she figured out the integration. Was she about to unleash something terrible on the people she worked with?
She’d talked to a couple of the people who’d been out, and they’d described their symptoms. Some were still dealing with vertigo and random bouts of migraine headaches. They’d been exposed to what she suspected was some form of high-frequency sound wave for mere moments and in a random fashion. What if the sound waves had been directed into their bodies? Clarke could do that. Clarke’s systems were built so the AI could pinpoint locations down to a centimeter. It was precisely how Clarke would be able to send the drones to retrieve materials they needed to fix the satellite. It wouldn’t take much to use the same system to direct sound waves, pinpointing them to a place on the planet’s surface.
Or more likely, to something in the atmosphere. Like a plane. All they would need would be the flight plan and then Clarke could direct the sound waves directly at the aircraft, which could be carrying a bunch of families to Disney World. Or the president. Or any number of world leaders.
“Are you all right?” Nolan’s question brought her out of her doomsday scenarios.
“Of course.” She wanted out of this office. She wanted Deke to be here, and they would get in the car and drive until she didn’t remember LA anymore. They could go home and pretend the last twenty years hadn’t happened. She could teach math to a bunch of kids who didn’t want to learn math. He could get a job running security for the local grocery store where the worst he would have to worry about was someone trying to steal a couple of beers. They could raise kids and go to family barbecues and allow all of his nieces and nephews to entertain them. They could have a life.