“Does that mean something?”
“What land is up in the clouds?”
“Is this a riddle? I love riddles.”
“High lands. Hyland.”
“Spoilsport. I would totally have got there.”
“The frame—there’s a secure cloud storage site called Gold Linings. Maybe Hyland has an account with them, with this username and password.”
“Excellent. So we go to the site, log in, get these documents and problem solved.”
“Not from across the Atlantic. It’ll register as a suspicious log-in, send his people an alert, raise flags. We’d be locked out before we got anywhere. This site—it has top-shelf IDP. Every anomalous behavior detection you can think of—geographical, device, multifactor authentication...”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
A car pulled up next to them. Jamie wiped his window. A red SUV. Kids in the back.
“We’d better not stick around here, in case that cop comes back,” Samira said.
“This Gold Linings,” he said, as they reassumed their seats up front. “Is there any way through the security?”
“I worked on the development team,” she said, clipping in as he started the engine and blasted the air con onto the windshield. “I can get around their device detection by spoofing the device headers.”
“O-kay.”
“It means I can mask the fact that we’re logging on with an unrecognized device. But their geographical detection is infallible. Strong enough to keep even me out—and they’ll have updated the security since I worked on it.”
“Is there no way around it? Can you make it look like—I don’t know—the log-in is coming from DC, or wherever he is?”
“Wherever he is,”she repeated, slowly. “Oh my God. Hyland’s coming here—to the UK, anyway. To Edinburgh, for a NATO meeting. Well, to catch me, probably, but that’s his excuse. It was in the newspaper this morning.”
As the windows cleared, Jamie reversed out and swung the car around. “I don’t want you going anywhere near him.”
“Neither do I. But we won’t have to—well, nottoonear. We’ll just need to try this log-in in Edinburgh after he arrives. As long as we’re in the same city it shouldn’t raise suspicions—unless the password is wrong.”
She exited the house and dynamited it, with Hyland inside.
“Bet you enjoyed that.”
“I did.” She restored the field with its flowers. “I can’t imagine anyone else would be able to crack all that but I’m not taking the chance, especially with someone lurking in the game. You see? That’s about thinking through every possibility and not just relying on instinct.”
“Which is all well and good when you have time for it, but not so much when people are shooting at you. And anyway, I would say thisisyou listening to your instinct.”
She made a point of scoffing as she tapped and swiped. “And, in another feat offorethought, I’ll set up an alert so it notifies me if Charlotte goes online.” She gulped down a wave of car sickness, and forced herself to focus ahead, along a street of redbrick terraced houses. “So I guess we need to head north.”
Jamie chewed his lower lip. “Are you sure it’s a risk you want to take?”
“Says the man in the stolen government car with a cache of illegal drugs and a gun I’m guessing he doesn’t have a license for.”
“Not illegal drugs. Prescription drugs.”
“That aren’t prescribed to you.”
“Point is, how do we get all the way to Scotland without being caught? You’re a wanted woman and, as you so helpfully remind me, we’re in a stolen car. There’ll be hundreds of traffic cameras between here and Edinburgh. Look, there’s one right there.” He gestured at a yellow box on a pole. “As soon as this car’s reported stolen we’ll get a squad of police cars on our tail, and who knows who else?”
“But you said yourself it’s not likely to be reported stolen until tomorrow.” She sat straighter. “Or maybe could we take a train?”
