She read the numbers slowly, her voice never wavering.

I watched her face, looking for any sign of weakness.

She was holding together better than I expected.

“Seven, bravo, two, six,” she continued.

On the other end of the line, I could hear the faint sound of keys tapping on a laptop.

Lucas was entering the code in real-time.

“Go on,” he said.

“Nine, nine, delta, four,” she said.

This was the critical part.

The ninth digit was the one we had shifted.

If he had a live verification tool running, the system would flag it immediately.

My heart hammered against my ribs.

“Hold on,” Lucas said.

The tapping of the keys stopped.

Chloe looked at me, her eyes widening in panic.

I made a downward motion with my hand, telling her to stay calm.

“What’s wrong?” Chloe asked, keeping her voice level.

“The server is responding slowly,” Lucas said after a long three seconds. “The Palm Springs network must be lagging.”

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

“Read the last four,” Lucas said.

“Echo, one, six, zero,” Chloe said.