She could beat him to the control room.
His hatchback passed her in the wide parking lot outside the West Experimental Hall. She left her bicycle unlocked and badged through the entrance first. He caught the closing door with his utility boot and followed. But though he could’ve easily drawn level with her—was he a runner?—Ethan shadowed her to the experimental hutch, where Viktor Hasselblad, a hutch engineer, and the daytime operator were waiting. He didn’t even attempt to scan his badge over the electronic reader for entry. He didn’t try to push past her to open the door, either.
When her identification card released the lock, Erin stared at the green indicator light for a moment. Ethan waited. She readjusted her lanyard and rolled her sleeves back over her wrists, then stole a brief glance at him. Arms crossed, he was focused on the scanner with lowered eyes and a tight mouth, spots of color high on his cheeks from the July sun or his unspoken irritation.
Why not just tell her that he was annoyed?
Healwaystold her.
And what had she done, anyhow? Scratching his neck had been an accident, the marks were already gone, and she’d apologized, but still—
The door blinked a warning as its lock prepared to re-engage.
Damn.
She yanked down on the handle, flicked back her helmet-flattened braid, and marched inside to greet the three engineers seated along the control room’s wall of monitors. She’d do this consultation by herself if she had to. She didn’t need assistance from—newly, bizarrely—standoffish Ethan Meyer. If he wasn’t going to talk? She was completely capable.
“I’m here. Dr. Monaghan—”
“—and Dr. Meyer,” with a click of hinges.
She gritted her teeth, refusing to turn. “Right.”
“Quantum gravity,” from Hasselblad, nodding.
“The government contract.” The operator scanned his notes.
Not Martina.
“The project has experimental components and a hutch layout to review.” She looked straight ahead while she fished for the documents in her backpack.
“Let’s see.”
Would it be better or worse if Martina had been their assigned operator today?
Keen-eyed Dr. Perez would’ve noticed the change between them.
Ethan’s change.
As she struggled with her backpack, he passed over his own copy of their diagrams for modifying the layout of the machinery in the hutch to accommodate a quantum gravity laboratory setup of lasers, optics, electromagnets, and detectors. His fleece brushed her elbow. No static, but he twitched—and the tiny movement jittered through the whole right side of her body like the lone hot wire of a single-pole breaker, because:
Control room, fleece—
She bit her tongue to keep still.
“Making accommodations for a vacuum chamber is possible. Storing the liquid helium—also yes, if we move the laser enclosure.” Happily ignorant of Erin’s turmoil, the hutch engineer tapped her chin. “Our current data detectors can be repurposed. There’s not much room for cables, though.”
“Rack them along the wall adjoining the Coherent X-ray Imagining hutch,” was Ethan’s suggestion.
Eleven whole words.
Damn him.
“I disagree,” she countered, maybe too loudly. “Placing them there will block the laser window into the vacuum chamber. Run them under the electromagnetic trap.”
By changing their plans on the fly in front of the engineers and violating the truce of self-preservation, she’d left him with no choice but to engage.
“The trap will interfere with the cables’ casing.”
