Three sharp raps on the door and Agent Carter's face appears in the small frosted window to the hall.

Phillips keeps talking. "Oh, and whatever you do, Stark, don't involve-"

"Call you back later, Colonel." Howard has stopped listening. He juggles the phone away from his face and back into the cradle on the wall.
"C'mon in, Agent Carter, I was just thinking about you."

Peggy favors him with a very faint and unenthusiastic, crimson-lipped smile. "I shall endeavor to take that as a compliment." she replies evenly, pushing her way into the room. She's carefully holding the door out of her way with one hip, hands full of paperwork. He'd play the gentleman and hold it for her, but she's liable to turn one of those pretty little hands of hers into a fist if he does. Carter's not big on displays of chivalry around here, and -especially- not from him.
She briskly lays the folders out across the only free table in the room, all business, as usual. "Latest reports from field testing. They need your approval, ideally within the hour."

"Sure thing, be right on 'em." Howard agrees, twirling his pliers idly in his hands for a few moments before tugging the thick glass lenses of his goggles up over his forehead and resting them in slicked-back hair. For lack of anything more productive to do, he fiddles with them. "So... I just heard the bad news."

Peggy's eyes narrow slightly as she straightens up.
"What bad news?"

"What bad news-?" Howard stares at her, incredulous. "What bad- Barnes is dead!" He realizes as he says it that may not have been a good way to break this information. He wasn't lying when he said he was awful at this kind of thing. Howard Stark has always been a pro with machines, but people… people are complicated. There's a reason he's about to hand this baby off to a professional.
Carter's face has gone white.
"Nobody... had told you yet… huh?"

"No… No they did not." Her voice is thinner than usual, but steady as ever. Carter is a hard-edged woman, he'll give her that. "When?"

"Yesterday. Something went wrong on the mission, I don't have details. But… he's definitely dead."

Peggy seems to absorb this a moment, before her dark eyes turn hard and sharp. "And where is Captain Rogers, at present?"

"Colonel didn't say." Howard didn't ask, either. Most likely, given Rogers, nobody really knows. "They'll have landed by now, but that's pretty much all I've got." He shrugs. "If it was me, I'd be face down in the biggest bottle of gin I could find..."

"Yes," Peggy says coolly; and there's no malice in her tone, so he takes no offense, "I imagine you would be." She turns on her heel and heads for the door again. "Excuse me, I have urgent matters to attend to."

"Of course." Howard nods. She's almost out the door before he thinks to add, "Good luck, Carter."

Carter glances back, studyingly, as if reevaluating whatever opinion she had previously held of him. Her smile nearly feels genuine, faint and flat as it is.

"Thank you." she says at length, before vanishing behind the swing of the door. Howard honestly isn't sure what part she's thanking him for... but he'll take it.