Silken Prey

Silken Prey Read Online Free PDF

Book: Silken Prey Read Online Free PDF
Author: John Sandford
Tags: Fiction / Thrillers
she would have made up a better story.”
    Lucas shook his head. “Unless your office is a lot more public than I think it is—”
    Smalls held up a hand: “Stop right there. Wrong thinking. The thing is, it
is
public,” he said. “It’s a temporary campaign office, full of rented chairs and desks and office equipment. I hardly ever go there, but technically, it’s mine. I have another office, the Senate office. In that office, my secretary would monitor people coming and going. Nobody would get in the private office without her knowing, and watching them every minute. There’s classified stuff in there. In the campaign office, there are staff people going in and out all the time.”
    “You think a staff person might have been involved?” Lucas asked.
    “Had to be. There are undoubtedly a couple of devoted Democrats around—just as . . . and this is off the record . . . just as there are a couple of pretty devoted Republicans over in Taryn Grant’s campaign staff.”
    “Spies.”
    “If you want to be rude about it,” Smalls said. “So you get a couple of young people as spies, and some of them are a little fanatical about their status, and about helping one party or the other win. So, yeah, somebody on the staff. That’s a good possibility. A probability.”
    “The computer didn’t have any password protection?”
    “Yes, of course it did. Want to know what it was? It was ‘Smallscampaign.’”
    “Great.”
    “Yeah.”
    Lucas asked, “Do you know what happened to it? Your computer?”
    “The St. Paul police have it,” Smalls said.
    “You think you could get access to it?” Lucas asked.
    “Maybe. Probably. I don’t know if I could get to the computer itself, but we should be able to get a duplicate of the hard drive, which would give you everything relevant,” Smalls said.
    Lucas nodded. “Okay. You’re innocent, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “So: call your attorney,” Lucas said. “Today. Right now, on Sunday. Tell him that you want to duplicate the hard drive to start preparing a defense. Take it to court if you have to, but get the hard drive for me. If you have to go to court, you argue that you will be irreparably harmed, with only a week to the election, if you’re not allowed to see what you’re accused of. You’ll get it. When they give you access, call me, and I’ll send somebody down to monitor the copy process.”
    “Somebody from your company?”
    “No. It’ll be a computer expert named Ingrid Caroline Eccols—everybody calls her ICE, for her initials,” Lucas said. “She’s an independent contractor, and she knows this kind of thing, inside and out.”
    “A hacker?”
    “Not exactly,” Lucas said. “She does a little bit of everything. She’s worked for law enforcement agencies, from time to time, and the St. Paul crime lab folks know her. I think she may have worked on the other side, too. I do trust her, when she says she’ll take a job. The key thing is, when it comes to copying the drive, she won’t miss anything. There won’t be any games. She’ll get everything there is to get.”
    “John Shelton is my attorney,” Smalls said. “I’ll get him going. You get this ICE.”
    “Another thing: I need a list of everybody who works for and around the committee. Send it to my personal e-mail.” Lucas took out a business card and a pen, wrote his e-mail address on the back of it, and handed it to Smalls.
    “I’ll do it this afternoon,” Smalls said.
    “Do it right away,” Lucas said. “I need all the help I can get from you, or I’ll spend a lot of time sitting on my ass.”
    “Let me tell you another little political thing,” Smalls said. “The Democrats have me right where they want me. My opponent is young, good-looking, about a hundred times richer than I am, and is running a good campaign. Her problem was, I was going to beat her by six points, 53 to 47 or thereabouts, before the child porn thing happened. She might have cut a point off
Read Online Free Pdf

Similar Books

Whisper

Kathleen Lash

Star Hunter

Andre Norton

Snow Blind

Archer Mayor

Love on Call

Shirley Hailstock

Peter Pan Must Die

John Verdon

The Bride's Curse

Glenys O'Connell

A Mother at Heart

Carolyne Aarsen