Alden Parker leaned against his desk, sipping a Thai iced tea. "And yet, they didn't take the encrypted drives or the prototype hardware. They took… what, Knight?"
"A key," she whispered. "But not for a door. It's a hardware wallet. We tried to crack the encryption, but it started a countdown. If we don't put in the right sequence in the next hour, it broadcasts our location to the owner." Watch NCIS S19E19 The Brat Pack 720p AMZN WEB-D...
The blue light of the monitors washed over the bullpen, but Special Agent Timothy McGee wasn't looking at code. He was looking at a group of teenagers sitting in the conference room—the "Brat Pack," as the night shift had already dubbed them. They weren't your typical street hoods; they were tech-savvy, bored, and remarkably efficient at bypassing high-level security. Alden Parker leaned against his desk, sipping a
Down in the conference room, the leader of the pack—a sixteen-year-old girl named Maya with neon-streaked hair—wasn't talking. She knew her rights, and she knew the NCIS agents couldn't prove she had the "package." "But not for a door
The bullpen erupted into motion. Jimmy Palmer and Kasie Hines were already prepping the lab to intercept the signal, while Torres and Knight geared up. They weren't just investigating a burglary anymore; they were protecting a group of kids who had accidentally stolen a roadmap to a multi-million dollar cyber-terrorism plot.
Maya’s bravado flickered. She looked at her friends through the glass, then back at Parker. "We thought it was just a dead-drop for high-end gear. We didn't know it was… that." "What is 'that'?" Parker asked.
Parker walked in, skipping the intimidation. He sat across from her and slid his phone across the table. "I don't care about the snack cakes, Maya. But the guy who owned that locker? He was murdered by people much scarier than a bunch of kids with soldering irons. They’re going to come looking for whatever you accidentally 'liberated' from that secondary unit."