Two hours later

Mr. Chen stood at the entrance of the parlor watching the principal members of the Cabal return from lunch with their lieutenants following close behind.

“I trust everyone had a pleasant lunch,” Chen said.

“More than good, it was superb,” Mr. Tage said.

“Excellent, because we have an additional problem we have to solve.”

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Mr. Chen let his words hang for a moment.

“What sort of problem? How does it affect the plan?” Dahlia asked.

“There is a problem with the code that Jeremiah’s hackers wrote. It’s susceptible to detection.”

“Another to add to Jeremiah’s long list of mistakes,” Mr. Tage said.

“We need someone to fix this worm, so it isn’t detected until it captures every piece of data we require in supporting the doxing operation.”

“Nigel is a capable hacker—we should get him on that job,” Dahlia said.

“Where is the boy? Shouldn’t he be here already?” Chen said.

“Rick Watson, Nigel’s father, is retrieving him as we speak,” Mr. Tage said.