The Silence That Speaks (Forensic Instincts 4)

“Well, you’re awesome at it.” Emma leaned a little closer than usual and laid a light hand on his shirt. “I’m sure you’re amazing at everything you do.”

He looked as if he was going to pee his pants.

“I...” He turned beet-red. “Maybe we could have a drink sometime,” he blurted out.

“I’d like that.” Emma’s nod was eager. “But right now, I have to get to the ladies’ room ASAP. I’ve been waiting to go for a half hour.”

“Sure. Yeah. Of course.” Roger stepped aside. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Can’t wait.” Emma hurried into the ladies’ room, shut the door and shuddered. Remembering her end goal, she glanced down at her tightly fisted gloved hand. Good girl, she congratulated herself. You haven’t lost your touch.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Emma headed down to the basement. She had to be careful, since this was where the IT department was. But it was also the least bustling place in the hospital. So she stopped short of where Roger’s office was, made a quick left turn and, as planned, headed toward the custodial closet.

She surveyed the corridor as she approached. A thin flow of people. That was the best it would be.

She cleared her throat when she was two steps from the closet.

The door opened, and the man in the janitor’s uniform collided with Emma in the hallway.

“Oh, excuse me,” Ryan said, shifting the mop he was carrying to block the front of his uniform from view.

“No problem.”

Emma bent down as if to pick up something she’d dropped. Using her gloved hand, she adeptly reached into her candy-striper frock, retrieved the hospital ID badge she had just pickpocketed from poor, unsuspecting Roger and slipped it into Ryan’s jacket pocket.

“You look soooo hot,” she muttered in a teasing voice. “Good luck.”

With that, she continued down the hall.

Ryan rolled his eyes. Then he turned to do his job. He walked over to the locked door of the first office in the ramshackle hall. He knocked. No answer. He knocked again. Nothing.

Convinced that Emma was right about this office being virtually unoccupied, he held the ID card up to the proximity reader with a gloved hand and waited for the loud “clunk” as the bolt retracted, unlocking the door.

The office looked like a storage room, but it contained the one piece of equipment Ryan needed—a computer.

He shut the door behind him, heard the lock reengage and went straight to the desk. Seated behind the computer, Ryan removed the stolen badge carefully, pulled a special fingerprint kit from his other pocket and proceeded to “lift” the IT guy’s prints from the ID badge. He then transferred the index finger print to a flexible plastic strip and punched the button that woke up the computer.

Pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del, the screen whirred to life and waited for authentication. Ryan took the plastic strip, slid it carefully across the fingerprint reader and smiled as the system recognized him as Roger Lewis, Systems Administrator, with access to all resources.

Ryan navigated through the maze of drives and folders, until he came across one named “rlexington.” He expanded the menu to show file permissions and attributes and saw that one directory called “personal” had every file inside encrypted with a password.

Realizing this would take too long to break, he reached into his pocket for an empty USB drive, inserted it into the computer and initiated the replication of the entire contents of the “rlexington” folder.

But that wasn’t enough. The next order of business was to create a new administrative account for himself, with full remote access so he could obtain everything else he needed in the future. He worked quickly.

Done.

He then inserted a different USB drive and installed a spyware program of his own design that would allow him to access the hospital network via the internet, all without detection by antivirus and intrusion protection software—just in case the extra administrative account was found and expunged.

Eliminating any sign of his being here, Ryan packed up his gear and waited for the computer workstation to go back into sleep mode. He pocketed the ID badge to drop off just outside the IT offices. By now, the panicked Roger Lewis would be looking everywhere for his badge. Some pal of his would have let him in—but camaraderie like that wouldn’t last for long. Lewis would be frantic. Eventually he—or his irate boss—would find the badge in the niche between the door and the wall, and Roger would think it had accidentally unclipped from his belt and fallen off when he pushed through the door. Little did he know...

Ryan dumped his mop and uniform in the custodial closet and retraced his steps through the basement. As he walked, he removed the latex gloves he was wearing, and dropped them in the garbage just before he left the hospital.

* * *

Janet was entering some administrative data into her computer when her office door abruptly opened.