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“He uploaded it to all of them.”
“What?” Kyle looked up at her then. “How?”
“Not sure.” Natalie crossed her arms. “But if you move, I’ll see if I can capture a copy for our analysts in Arlington.”
Deep in thought, he allowed her to take his seat. “When would Arrieta have time to do that?”
“Hard to tell.” She typed in a command, then sat back as the files she’d selected duplicated. “Given the nature of the upload, I’d say he probably had the techs slip it in without the staff here even knowing.”
“Arrieta could do that?”
“He’d have to have someone here to input the data in person, but he could have easily bribed or blackmailed someone on the staff into doing it for him.” She rummaged around in Todd’s drawers and pulled out a thumb drive, which she clicked into place in one of the computer’s USB ports. “Now let me just make a portable copy for us, and we’ll be all set.”
Moments later, she removed the small drive and shoved it into her pocket, then shut the system down completely. “All right. Let’s go. Can you give me a boost up?”
Kyle did, then climbed back into the ventilation system himself. This night wasn’t going to plan. Not at all.
* * *
“I’m sorry. Can you explain that again in English, please?” Kyle said.
Natalie bit back a chuckle. The guy was great in the field, had mad skills when it came to battling his way out of a tough situation, but when it came to technology, he was a mess. Sure, he could handle the basics: phone, laptop, internet. But anything beyond those seemed a total conundrum. “Okay, let’s try this again.”
They were each settled on a double bed in their motel room. The walls were covered in a hideous orange-and-brown-striped wallpaper that looked like it had been beamed in directly from 1972, and the carpet was a muted green shag. Still, the bathroom was clean, and the door had double deadbolt locks, so it was all good.
She shifted on her mattress to face him. “From what the Agency analysts told me, Arrieta used something called a replicating virus.”
“Meaning it can copy itself?”
“Yes!” She grinned. Several hours had passed since they’d left the server compound, and the remnants of their improvised dinner—delivery pizza box, soda cans, and candy bars from the vending machine down the hall—covered the nightstand between them. “Unless we stop it, it’ll spread itself around the world until it basically shuts down the internet.”
“That’s the part I don’t get.” Kyle frowned and rolled his shoulders. “How will overusing the internet shut it down? Isn’t the internet all about use?”
She glanced at the empty paper plate and his phone beside her. The plate she threw away; the phone she held up. “Think of it like this. When there’s an emergency—say, a mass shooting—people flood the cell network with calls, trying to reach their loved ones. Too many calls at once, and the towers go down. They can’t handle the overload.”
“Okay.” Kyle crossed his arms, and Natalie did her best not to notice all those sexy muscles bunching beneath his tanned skin.
Hard as she tried, she couldn’t seem to resist her attraction to him. The more time they spent together, the more she was drawn to him.
“Huh.” He scrubbed his hand over his stubble-covered jaw. “But if phone lines go down, they come right back up once the use goes down, right?”
“Right, but with the internet, it’s different. We use it for so much, from GPS to cellular networks to healthcare. Losing internet service even for a little while would take those out around the planet.”
“We’d eventually get past it, though.”
“Not before Arrieta had a chance to strike. My guess is, him taking down the internet would only be the beginning. He’d use the pandemonium that followed to launch an all-out assault on our government, on the institutions he blames for ruining his life.”
“Crap.” Kyle shook his head, rolling over onto his back. “America didn’t screw up that guy’s life. He did a fine job of that all by himself.”
“You and I both know that, but Arrieta sees it differently. For him, the US abandoned him when he needed it most.” Natalie sniffed, then set his phone aside. “Is there more pizza?”
“Here.” Kyle handed her the box. “Finish it up if you want.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” she said, taking another slice.
He laughed. “Seriously?”
“Okay. Maybe I could.” She winked. “But I won’t.”
