When The Devil Whistles by Rick Acker Read Free Book Online Page B

overbilling some of the time. They’d be on the hook for triple the amount of each overcharge plus $10,000 for each inaccurate invoice they sent the government.
Allie grinned. This would be easier than a slow run on the bunny slopes. Almost as boring too, but she could live with boring if she was well paid for it.
The only potential problem was that none of the files she’d pulled were for government projects. She pulled up the directory again and scanned it for telltale words like “U.S.,” “State” or “base.” Nothing.
She decided to risk running a few searches. There was a chance that an alert IT staffer might spot what she was doing, but it was a small chance. Even if they did catch her, there wasn’t anything particularly suspicious about an accounting temp who had been hired to help the company get ready for a government contract running searches for government invoices in the company’s accounting database.
“Your search has located 0 records,” her computer informed her.
She frowned and did a little more digging in the directory. There was a secure server she couldn’t access. That must be where all the government files lived.
She drummed her fingers on her fake wood desk as she weighed her options. Ask someone to give her access to the secure server? No, the connection would be too obvious when the documents she found there later appeared in Devil to Pay’s court filings.
Try hacking into the secure server? Maybe. She’d helped configure security software for an accounting database during a previous assignment and had learned a couple of tricks in the process. At the very least, she could poke around and see whether the system administrator had left an unlocked “back door” in the security barriers. She’d be careful, and she doubted that they’d be on the lookout for internal hackers. After all, how many employees were likely to try to hack into a bunch of customer files? Still, it would be risky.
Was there time to take a quick trip into forbidden cyberspace, or was she done for the night? Allie glanced at the clock on her computer: 6:23 p.m. She hesitated, her fingers poised over the keyboard. She needed to call Mom and Sam tonight, and she really couldn’t put it off any longer. It was already 8:23 back home in Illinois, and Mom usually went to bed by 9:30.
Thinking about calling Mom got her thinking about Dad. She’d been trying not to think about him all day and most of yesterday, but she couldn’t hide from him anymore. His blood-spattered face filled her mind, repeating soothing lies over and over.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Worries about secure servers and dreams of easy money vanished, burned away by memories bursting out of a locked box buried in the back of her mind. Tonight was their night, and she couldn’t keep them away. Tomorrow she’d force them back in, close the lid, and lock the box again. But tonight was their night.
Yeah, she was done. She wiped her eyes and opened them. The computer screen glowed expectantly, showing a list of Blue Sea’s servers and their filepaths. Tomorrow. She sniffed and turned off her computer.

11
T HE EARLY EVENING SUN ARCED OVER THE CANOPY , CASTING SPLINTERED gleams as its light caught imperfections in the thick old Plexiglas. Then shadow filled the cockpit as Connor nosed the White Knight over into a power dive, making sure to keep the sun directly behind him to blind antiaircraft gunners on the ground.
The deep roar of the single Packard V-1650 engine thrummed through the entire plane. The airspeed gauge climbed fast, racing past 200, 300, 400. The airframe shook with speed and the altimeter plummeted. A familiar adrenaline rush hit Connor and a wide grin spread across his face.
The Japanese airstrip rushed up at him. Zeroes and Oscars lined up in neat rows on either side of a dirt runway. Camouflage-painted buildings and fuel tanks hid among palm trees. Uniformed men scrambled for cover or ran for their planes. Machine