I nodded quickly at Chloe, pointing to the black plastic device on the table.

The green light on the side of the cloner flickered.

“I have it right here,” Chloe said.

“And the recovery key?” Lucas asked. “Did you extract it from the secondary partition?”

Chloe looked at the tiny screen of the cloner, then back at me.

I held up a finger, signaling her to hesitate.

“It’s taking a minute,” Chloe said. “The progress bar is only at forty percent.”

A heavy silence stretched over the line.

“It shouldn’t take that long,” Lucas said.

His voice had lost its warmth.

The flat, demanding tone of the real Lucas was beginning to leak through.

“The motel Wi-Fi is slow, Lucas,” Chloe said, her voice rising in pitch. “I’m doing the best I can.”

“Don’t get defensive,” he said, his tone softening just enough to be manipulative. “We are too close to the finish line for mistakes.”

Chloe bit her lower lip so hard a tiny bead of red appeared.

“I know,” she said.

“Once you have that key, we bypass the bank’s secondary security block,” Lucas said. “The entire holding account transfers to the offshore ledger.”