Take the Fourth by Jeffrey Walton Read Free Book Online Page A

bucks and asked if I wouldn’t mind waiting there while he went to go get his camera, he said there was another ten in it for me and he would be no more than five minutes. He wanted a picture of the engine, he seemed nice enough but he never returned, I waited like an extra ten minutes.”
    “And then?”
    “Nothing, I got tired of waiting… more like pissed, so I punched it a little and squealed my… the tires.”
    “Where was this?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Was there a playground around?”
    “I don’t re… . wait a minute… I remember looking in my rearview mirror… seeing if this guy was going to return, I remember seeing a big red sliding board . . But, but that’s all I remember.”
    Detective Charles Lynch wrote the ending time of his interview down on his yellow pad.
    “Officer Roberts here is going to take you down to see one of our sketch artists.”
     
    And just like that, the detective was out the door… no apologies… he didn’t have time, time was of the essence. In his mind now this was a bonafide kidnapping case and the Levi’s call placed by the GBI was justified.
     
     . . .

Chapter 5  
    “A ccess Denied” Strange he thought and tried it again—“Access Denied”. He tried another search, and the same reply was shown on the screen “Access Denied”. He didn’t get a “Server Unavailable” or a hundred other messages implying database backups or system maintenance. It was he himself that was being denied access which was strange in and unto itself for there were only three other people who had access to the machine and knew its purpose and two were at the White House and one them had asked for his help in the research. It was only a matter of time until the phone rang. He tried to circumvent his point of entry to no avail. He tried backdoors and other tricks of the trade and each and every time, “Access Denied.” Someone shut him out but whom? Why? Just as the phrase “son-of-a-bitch” was echoing through his brain, the inescapable ring of his cell phone sounded. It was indeed Scott.
     
    “How did you do?”
    “I was able to pull names, dates, times, and locations and was in the midst of creating a solid timeline of events but… .”
    “But what?”
    “I was locked out!”
    “What do you mean locked out?”
    “Exactly like I said, I got an access denied message, from what I gather it was placed by someone in house. I’ve tried other venues but they pretty much have them locked as well.”
    “Who has access to shut down something like this?”
    “I could only speculate that it was from the top in the department either Peter or ummm Mike, and neither of them have a clue and why would they suddenly shut us out, it’s not like they know about the network?”
    “Good question. Send over what you have so far, I’ll try to access this as well, if not I’ll call Peter. I’ll be back in touch shortly. Give me fifteen minutes.” Click.
     
    Scott immediately pulled up his virtual private network (VPN) on his laptop, logged in, and scanned his index finger. During the few seconds in which it took to connect, he cursed under his breath. He simply didn’t have time to do his own research; he was the point man to the President, he was the man with the answers, he didn’t dig for data, he didn’t comb through meaningless information, he didn’t analyze the mundane, he had an inside man to do just that, one who used to have access.
    “Fuck!”
    On the screen “Access Denied”.
    He flipped open his cell, punched in a number on speed dial and within a few seconds the direct line to the director rang.
    “Hello Scott, make it fast please I’m in the middle of shit storm as you can imagine”
    “I know I’m working on the same from my end, I was trying to piece together a timeline but I was shut out of a system I need for completion. The President wants this information yesterday so helping me restore my connection is imperative. I got an access denied