“Good. I’ll take care of human resources. Oh, and here’s a keycard for you.” She pulled another one out of her pocket and handed it over. “You’ll need it for the stairwells and elevators. I’ll need to get you a key for your office. This is a master key, so I’m keeping it. Oh, and you must leave your cell phone with security. They have assigned lockboxes up front. You log in the cell, and the front desk staff takes care of it.”

“To keep someone from inadvertently creating a Wi-Fi connection to the air-gapped system.”

“Right.” Nora tugged her shirt down and stood tall. Her smile was tenuous at best. “I imagine finding the issue won’t take too long.”

Oh. It could take weeks. But she would hope for the best. “That depends on what I find, and if you get me access to everything.” Otherwise, this could be a colossal waste of time.

Or she could be hunting someone who had already come and gone. Someone who could already be selling Hanstech secrets or proprietary software on the dark web. She needed more information from Julian, but he was gone now. A fist squeezed her heart. She wouldn’t let his death be for nothing.

Mackenzie dropped into the ergonomic chair and booted up the computers. Nora leaned over her and logged in. She scribbled the login information and password on a sticky note. “I’ll have HR come in to set up your biometrics tomorrow.”

“Will HR want me to fill out employment paperwork?”

“I said I would take care of it.”

“Okay, just making sure. Whose office was this? Looks like it hasn’t been unoccupied that long.”

“This is the programming floor. An AI specialist, I think. With around a hundred and fifty employees, I can’t keep up with everyone.”

Mackenzie started typing on the computer.

“I need to run down to my office on the first floor, then I’ll be back up to get you. So that’ll give you a few minutes.”

“I can’t stay through the night?”

“No. We don’t want to draw unnecessary attention.”

“Let me at least look at your security programs to see if any threats were detected.” Then she could go hunting for security breaches.

“Do you want to talk to the cybersecurity department tomorrow?”

Mackenzie shrugged. “Not yet. Your program could stop a majority of threats, but those are known threats. I’m looking for an unknown threat, except, well . . . I know about it. It would be like, say . . . a zero-day threat. You’ve heard of that, right? It’s a vulnerability that isn’t known yet.”

Nora’s blank expression said it all.

“How could you not know this stuff working at a software company?”

“I have employees for that.”

Whatever. “That’s fair.” But explaining the details was not going to happen.