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cars for nothing.
    His moderately competent assistant was trying to get his attention. “You have a meeting with the CEO of Stellar Global Funds at nine o’clock tonight. Even with this traffic we should be in New York with lots of time to spare.”
    “Yes, Declan, I remember,” Rob lied. He didn’t need to remember, that’s what the assistant was there for.
    ***
    Jessica couldn’t believe it.
    With some help from Jack she was able to find the asteroid that he had calculated could be headed to Earth. The problem was it wasn’t one asteroid. There were thousands. Tens of thousands.
    And Pan said this was deliberate.
    From the relative safety of her environment suit, she could see the expanse of rock stretching out for hundreds, thousands of miles, but without the Key they would have been almost impossible to see. They were all black, or at least mostly black. Not painted, but scorched.
    How in the name of God was she going to redirect them all?
    She returned to Colorado. This time they had chosen a location where she wouldn’t boil to death after putting the suit on, and the cool mountain air of Colorado was a nice compromise between boiling to death in the Austin Mini and freezing in the outside air.
    After lifting her visor, she looked John in the eyes. He knew. And he had no more answers than she did.
    ***
    It was like chasing ghosts, Arthur figured.
    With Pan’s help he had been able to steal a username and password where needed, get into the various banking systems and follow the money.
    Someone had infected the pizza sent to Jack Weston, and Pan was able to track that person down. Once Arthur knew who it was, he was able to find payment in his bank account and track that back. That’s where it got fun.
    His salary was being paid by the government, by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. So much for following the money. But Arthur had an idea.
    Everybody receives orders from someone, all they had to do was track them down. A little more assistance from Pan and Arthur was able to get into the telephone company systems and track down every message sent to the FBI agent.
    He found it: “Jack Weston. 15 Sirocco Close, Williams, Arizona. Salmonella.”
    Simple enough. So who sent it? Unknown, but thankfully the phone company kept all sorts of records.
    Sitting at a phone company computer in the middle of the night, carefully avoiding the security guards, he managed to trace the message back to a mobile phone in New York. A mobile phone that wasn’t in use anymore, and unfortunately one that was not on a contract.
    Another dead end. Or...
    Even the off contract phones are serialized, and the phone company knows who sold them. Arthur was thankful for his typing skills at this point, because there was a hell of a lot of typing pulling on these threads.
    There, a 7-11 in Manhattan. The message was sent at 6:45 pm, and according to the phone company the phone had been activated at 6:42 and hadn’t been used since that one message was sent. Single use phone indeed.
    Thankfully everybody had cameras these days, especially in New York.
    A quick jaunt to the 7-11 Headquarters in Dallas, and he was in luck. All the camera systems were centrally accessible. He suspected it was the result of a lawsuit from a few years before, but it didn’t matter, because he found the footage he was looking for.
    Only one person purchased a phone between 6:05 and 6:50. He took a printscreen, then sent a message to Pan.
    How do you feel about breaking into the FBI?
    He could actually feel Pan smile at the idea.
    A moment later both of them were in the empty field office in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Without speaking Arthur explained that a small field office was less likely to have night staff. Pan smiled at his friend. It was totally logical.
    Again Pan was able to provide a username and password for the FBI’s systems. Damn that Key of Knowledge was handy.
    Arthur scanned the image of the man into the system, and in less than two minutes it spit