The King of Fear: A Garrett Reilly Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page B

of sending him nude selfies, and he couldn’t even do her the honor of looking at them. Now she was pissed, and he had lost any chance of seeing whether she was a true redhead, or just faking it.
    “Bollocks.” With one quick jab of his right hand, he slotted her thumb drive into the USB port of his work computer. In a breathless rush, he clicked on the drive’s tab. A folder opened, but it was empty. He clicked it again, surprised, then closed it and looked for other folders on the thumb drive.
    There were none.
    He texted Dorina again: Drive is empty. No pictures.
    He waited for a reply.
    Hello? Dorina? A mistake? Sent me wrong drive?
    Still, no reply came.
    Dorina? Hello?
    He waited another five minutes, hopeful that Dorina would check her phone and write back, that she would realize her mistake and send a new thumb drive. Her hair was so spectacularly red, and her face so pale and lovely.
    Suddenly, it occurred to him that there might never have been any pictures on the drive.
    He snatched the thumb drive from the USB slot and jammed the memory stick into his pocket. It had been sitting in his computer for ten minutes now. Leone didn’t understand much about technology, but he reckoned that ten minutes was more than enough time for something horrible to be downloaded onto the network. He figured half a second was probably more than enough time, but what the hell did he know?
    Then Edgar’s phones began to ring.
    First one. Then another. And another. Leone stood and watched as Edgar raced to answer each one, putting successive customers on hold as he grabbed the next receiver. “First European Bank of Malta, can you hold, please?” Edgar said over and over.
    Oh God, Leone thought, horror-stricken. I have done something unspeakably stupid.
    He started quickly across the bull pen toward the front door. He had to get the thumb drive into a trash bin as fast as possible, away from his cubicle and away from any trace of his involvement. Breaching the network was a termination offense. Why hadn’t he remembered that earlier? Because he was hungover and lonely, and he had a one-track mind. God, sometimes he hated himself.
    Abela called out from his office as Leone strode past, but Leone made as if he didn’t hear his friend. Was it his imagination, or were all the phones in the central bank office suddenly ringing in a rising crescendo—at operations, trading, customer service. Employees answered in a cacophony of languages: Maltese, English, Italian. Out of the corner of his eye, Leone saw the older VP of banking come sprinting out of his office—running as if he’d just heard that the building was on fire—toward the IT offices.
    Oh shit, Leone thought. The building is on fire. I set it on fire.
    When he turned left into reception, he was stopped dead in his tracks. Four Maltese policemen, dressed head to toe in their spotless royal-blue uniforms, were marching in the door. They were trailed by a half dozen stolid-looking men in dark suits. Their faces were grim and set, and their eyes flashed to Leoneas he tried to hurry to the exit. Leone knew immediately that they were bank examiners, and they were not happy.
    “I just have to use the WC.” He pointed desperately at the hallway.
    “You cannot leave,” the first Maltese policeman said, thrusting out a beefy hand.
    “But I have to go.” Leone clutched the thumb drive.
    “This office is closed and quarantined,” one of the grim-faced men in suits said.
    “But why?” Leone asked, even though he knew full well the answer.
    “You’ve been breached.”
    “I didn’t do anything,” Leone wailed, a pitiful look on his face.
    The bank examiner stared at Leone, eyes full of indignant scorn. “Maybe, maybe not. But as of this moment, your bank has no assets. It has officially collapsed.”

Q UEENS , N EW Y ORK , J UNE 14, 1:52 P.M.
    G arrett walked north and east through lower Manhattan, keeping mostly to side streets and away from avenues. He walked fast,