He removed the stick and tossed it back into the leather bag with a laminated ben stapleton nametag looped into the handle. That had been one of the first things he’d had to check—that the bags were individually marked. Didn’t want any mix-ups. He reached into the bottom of the bag for a second Arrival-shaped stick. His heart fluttered briefly when at first he couldn’t find it—he’d checked earlier to make sure it was there—but then there it was, tucked under the Arrival key fob.

This second stick, upon close examination, was slightly different than the other one. There was a small nick on the left rear taillight.

This had been Kyle’s greatest fear, that the second stick would not be there. It was an even greater fear than that of being discovered, and he’d already had a close one in that regard. He hoped no one else would spot who he really was now, in this location. It was a lot trickier to get rid of someone in a community center gymnasium. What was he supposed to do? Bounce a basketball off their head until they succumbed.

The truth was, his encounter with Travers had left him shaken. After pitching the man over the railing he’d gone back to the upper deck and knocked back a couple of scotches—he had to give Arrival some credit there, having a fully stocked bar that early in the day—to calm his nerves.

But now, sitting here in the community center, he was doing his best to put that encounter behind him. He needed to be in the moment.

There was work to be done.

Kyle inserted the second stick into the laptop and waited for the data contained within it to download. It would have been nice had he been able to get the information in this stick days or weeks ago, but Arrival’s security firewalls were always changed every day, by Lisa Carver herself, wherever she happened to be at the time.

He needed the most updated version to gain access to the system.

And from the looks of what was appearing on his screen, he had it.

A slow smile crossed Kyle’s face. He felt a tingle of excitement running all the way from his toes to the tips of his fingers. What he was seeing was akin to opening up King Tut’s tomb, taking the lid off the Ark of the Covenant, opening up a safe recovered from the Titanic.

This was it. A portal into the brains of the Arrival system. An entry point. Someone had left the door open to Fort Knox and put up a sign that said come on in and help yourself.

But Kyle didn’t want to help himself. He didn’t want to take anything away. He wasn’t interested in stealing any of the Arrival company’s secrets.