“That’s excellent news.” Hawk nodded with a smile.
“I assume you’ve swept the room?” she asked.
“Yeah. I found an HJ-697 device mounted on the fire sprinkler,” he said.
“Amateurs,” she scoffed. “The battery life on those is pretty short, and the reception is crappy.”
“Which tells me it hasn’t been up there very long.” Hawk propped his hip on the edge of the desk. “I’m going to send it to the lab so they can work their magic on it.”
“Good plan.” Sammy clicked a few keys. “Okay, Charlotte, let’s do this.”
“My laptop is connected to the internal system and turned on. What’s next?” She really didn’t want to screw this up.
“Go ahead and log in the same way you always do,” Sammy said. “I’ll walk you through how to give me access to your laptop.”
“You can do that?” She logged into the system like she’d done thousands of times before, but this time …this timeit felt different. More ominous.
“Easy peasy.” Sammy chuckled.
“Okay, I’m logged in.” Charlotte’s heart slammed against her chest, but she was determined to get through this. “What’s next?”
“Open your Internet browser and go to this website.” She rattled off a series of letters, numbers, and characters. “Let me know when you get there.”
Thank goodness, Hawk jotted them down on the back side of his earlier note.
Charlotte looked from his note to the computer and carefully typed it exactly as written. A screen popped up with two rectangular boxes in the center.
“Okay, I’m looking at a blue screen with two white boxes.”
“Excellent.” Sammy continued, “In the top box, go ahead and type in your login ID. Your password will go in the bottom box.”
Charlotte’s fingers shook as she typed.
Hawk stood behind her, set his hands on her shoulders, and his touch calmed her nerves.
She lifted her chin and smiled up at him, blew out a breath, and managed to input the needed information.
“Okay, it’s done,” Charlotte said. “There is a prompt asking me to give you permission to access my computer.”
“Perfect. Go ahead and click ‘yes.’” Sammy was friendly and efficient with her instructions.
Charlotte dragged her cursor over to the “yes” box and clicked on it. The screen blinked once, but nothing else happened.
“Okay, I’m in.” Computer keys clicked very quickly in the background. “I’m using an encrypted IP address, so they won’t be able to trace this back to me. When I’m done, they’ll never even know I was there. And they won’t know that you allowed access to anyone.”
They listened to a few minutes of fast typing from Sammy’s end before they heard a low whistle.
“HRA has been getting billions from the US government.” More clicking. “Downloading these files is going to take a little time.”
“How much time are we talking about, Sammy? I’d like to get Charlotte out of here as soon as possible.” Hawk must’ve read her mind, because she was anxious to leave, too.
“Don’t worry, it should only take me a few minutes to download the relevant files from the system. Guys, hang on a sec.” Her voice was muffled, like she was holding her hand over her mouthpiece, and it sounded like she was talking to someone. “Sorry ’bout that. Hawk, Luna’s getting ready to send you and Cole that information you asked for.”
“Great, thank her for me, will ya?” Hawk gave Charlotte’s shoulders a reassuring squeeze, then moved over to stand by the door. Legs wide, arms down with one hand over the other in front of him, he looked like a badass sentry.
She jumped when someone knocked on the door, then jiggled the knob.
“Sammy, hang on a second.” Hawk waited until Charlotte lowered her laptop screen enough it couldn’t be seen, then opened the door.
