She blew him a kiss then turned back to the screens. On the top right corner of them all was the countdown. Fifty-five hours left now.
Mark got up and poured them both cups of coffee. He had a feeling that was going to be a staple for the next two days.
Something had been bugging him all afternoon. “It’s still weird, right? That Joaquin would send the robots like that if he didn’t have to. Everything we know about him suggests he’s strategic—sending robots where they can get caught and giving us potential clues…doesn’t seem smart.”
Jenna shifted a little in her chair but didn’t turn from her screens. “Maybe his ego got the best of him. He wanted to show what his robots could do.”
“Ortestwhat they could do.”
Now she turned around. “That would make sense. Maybe the ones that have been caught are only the tips of the iceberg. Maybe some weren’t even break-ins. Maybe…”
She turned back around, muttering to herself, typing frantically. Mark just let her work.
“Tests,” she said a few minutes later. “Of course. You’re the brilliant one now, Outlaw. I can’t believe this didn’t occur to me before. I need to add all the servers. It’ll take longer, but it’s going to give us actionable intel.”
He’d thought she’d been working fast before, but now it was really impressive. A few minutes later, the security monitor near the front of the bus beeped and clicked on. Mark got up to check out who was approaching. When he saw it was Ian, he opened the door.
“How’s it going?” Ian asked.
“Evidently, I’m brilliant and we’re in the process of making some sort of big breakthrough. Pay no attention to the part of the bus that’s on fire because Jenna’s fingers are moving so fast.”
Ian chuckled. “All that seems about par for the course.”
“I just make sure she has food and coffee and basically stay out of her way.”
Ian’s smile got bigger. “That’s what all of us do with Jenna.”
It was a little over an hour later when Jenna scooted back from her workstation and stood. “Holy shit.”
“What?” Mark and Ian both said at the same time.
“Vegas.”
“What about it?” Mark asked.
She poured herself a cup of coffee. “I wrote a program that collected any messages that pinged off any of the secret government servers over the past two weeks.”
“You can do that?” Ian asked.
She half hid her face behind the coffee cup. “Um…legally?”
Ian held out a hand. “Don’t even tell me. Just tell us what you found.”
“Whatever is happening in—” she turned back to look at the screens to get the countdown “—fifty-three hours and thirty-seven minutes is happening in Vegas. I couldn’t pinpoint more than that.”
Mark grabbed his phone and started looking up events. “Looks like there’s a couple big concerts and some sort of Broadcasters of America convention—all will have twenty thousand plus people in attendance. There’s an NBA game too.”
Ian rubbed his eyes. “Those could all be big terrorist attack locations. I need to get law enforcement on this, stat.”
Jenna nodded. “I’m sorry there isn’t more info to provide.”
Mark reached over and squeezed her shoulder. “A time and place? That’s pretty damned important intel.”
“He’s right, Jenna.” Ian already had his phone out. “It gives us more to work with than you think.”
“I should hopefully be able to get a list of robots who successfully completed their missions and weren’t caught, based on what government servers were used. I’ll run those dates and times against local cameras and see what we can find.”
Ian nodded. “Everything helps.”