Tristan
Tristan kept her appraised of his progress, telling her when he was uploading packets of code to the cloud folder he’d set up for the transfer. He’d sent the folder’s link to Sergey, too, and he watched Sergey download the files as he posted them.
And Sergey did download them. Every time Tristan uploaded a micro-slice of the program into the folder, Sergey was right on top of it, downloading the computer code right away.
The speed with which Sergey leaped on each file upload and greedily downloaded it suggested desperation.Huh.Someone must be looking over Sergey’s shoulder and demanding that he produce the Anonymity program.
It didn’t make Tristan feel any more sympathetic toward the asshole who’d taken Jian and Anjali hostage, but it was a piece of intelligence that might come in handy in the future.
Later, as the day turned into evening, Tristan turned to Colleen. “I’m uploading another section for you to debug. Three down, fifty-two to go.”
Colleen had paused from working on his recent material and was watching the spyware on his phone. “Anjali keeps telling them that she has class and they have to let her go. This is killing me.”
Tristan wrapped his arms around her again. “I promise I will get them out of there as soon as possible. We’re working, right? We’re making progress.”
He hoped Rogue Security was working as hard as he was on just his cover story.
She sniffled and nodded and went back to working on the bogus code he was producing.
He felt bad about lying to Colleen, but he didn’t want her anywhere near the danger when Rogue Security broke in to rescue Anjali and Jian.
The light in the room turned warmer.
Outside the hotel, the sun was setting over the golf course, filling the sky with fire.
Three and a half hours until midnight.
34
Drone
Colleen
At ten-thirty that night, while Colleen was staring at the lines and linesand linesof code on her computer screen that Tristan had written and then handed off to her to test and debug, the hotel room started spinning when she blinked. “Damn.”
“Yeah?” Tristan lifted his head from where he was sitting on the bed and typing. “What’s up? Jian and Anjali all right?”
“Yeah, as far as I know. I haven’t heard anything from your phone except the TV. I think Sergey is watching the Game Show Channel. I’m just getting tired. Do you always work with that drone music on?”
Dreamy waves of elongated tones emanated from Tristan’s computer’s speakers, veiling the room in drifting sound.
Tristan said, “It helps me concentrate.”
It wasn’t helping her concentrate any. As a matter of fact, her head wobbled on her tired neck every time she rested her eyes. “It’s kind of monotonous. You didn’t listen to it last week.”
“Yeah, just sometimes.”
She gestured at the dimmed lamps. “And the lights are so low.”
“Yeah. It helps with eyestrain if one’s screen is on dark mode.”
“Right.” She yawned. “It’s chilly in here. Did you turn up the AC?”
“A little.” He waved his hand at the laptop resting on his legs. “The CPU was getting hot. Why don’t you get under the blankets, princess?”
She flipped the white hotel sheets and duvet over her legs. “Okay. I guess I’m just getting tired.”
Tristan nodded sagely. “We’ve had a rough couple of days. I didn’t sleep well last night, either, due to the adrenaline of breaking into GameShack and then finding out your apartment had been invaded. Maybe you should lie down for a bit. Just to rest a little.”
