Colonel Ward looked at me, his expression softening slightly.

“You must be Emily,” he said. “Your father has talked about you for years.”

“Thank you for coming,” I said.

“We aren’t finished yet,” the Colonel said, turning back to my father.

He pulled a small electronic tablet from his leather folder.

“The Senator is refusing to speak without his counsel, and he’s claiming legislative immunity,” Ward said.

He tapped the screen, showing a red warning light.

“And we have a problem with the transfer,” the Colonel added, his voice dropping.

My father frowned, his brow furrowing in the bright light of the helicopter beams.

“The cloud transfer?” my father asked.

“It was intercepted,” Colonel Ward said. “Someone else was waiting on the network.”

A sudden chime echoed from my father’s pocket.

The blue light flared again, much brighter this time.

The screen of his phone began to flash a sequence of numbers that neither of us had ever seen before.

My father stared at the screen, his thumb hovering over the glass.

The numbers reflected in his eyes, a rapid scroll of green and white digits.