“There is nothing else.” She laid her fingertips on the keyboard and raised them again like it was boiling hot. “I’ll type with one finger.”
She struck the keys slowly, the rhythmic tapping like a slow ticking clock. He instinctively regulated his breathing, as if one wheeze too many would blow her typing off course. She pressed Enter, her throat moving as she swallowed. A circular loading icon appeared on the screen, turning. His arm throbbed.
“This connection is twentieth-century slow,” she whispered.
“It’s nearly over, Samira.”
“What if it’s not the information we need? What if he’s moved it or deleted it? What if it was all a trap to begin w—?”
“We’ll find out soon enough. Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it, okay?”
The screen blinked, and filled with file names. She turned to meet his gaze and inhaled, like she was sucking confidence from him.
“We’re in.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JAMIEHELDHISbreath as Samira scrolled down an endless page of folders and files.
“What is all that stuff?” he said.
“Briefing documents, meeting agendas, draft legislation, contacts, itineraries—including the one for this trip... Thousands of documents—tens of thousands. And it all looks totally inane and legit.” She brought a hand up and planted her chin on her knuckles. “I have no idea what I’m looking for. I don’t know what Charlotte was pointing me to. God, we need Tess.”
“We have time to sift through them. Hyland’s in Scotland for a while.”
Her eyes flicked to a string of icons along the top of the screen. “No, we don’t have time.”
“We don’t?”
“This password automatically changes once a week. It’s set to change at eight o’clock tomorrow night. We’ll be logged out and we won’t be able to get back in.”
“You can’t change that?”
She tapped on the laptop casing. “Not without sending an alert. And I can’t disable the alerts without the system sending an alert that they’ve been disabled.”
“Sounds like a bind.”
The tapping became frantic. “Or change the email address the alerts are sent to without it sending a confirmation to the original address.”
“Okay,nowI might need painkillers.”
Her fingers stilled. “I thought you said you’d already taken some.”
“I said ‘...morepainkillers.’”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I...meant to.”Idiot.
“I really hadn’t thought this through. I thought once we accessed this, the solution would be obvious. Right here in front of us, like a...a...” She hovered the mouse over a folder and stilled, staring.
“Samira? What is it?”
“This folder. It’s password-protected. It’s the only protected folder here.”
He leaned over and read the folder name. “‘Trésor.’French for ‘treasure.’ Pretentious git.”
“Hence the treasure chest in the game? This could be it.” She clicked the folder, and stared at a password box.
