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Back The Short Drop
Chapters (61)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication
  4. CONTENTS
  5. START READING
  6. PART ONE
  7. CHAPTER ONE
  8. CHAPTER TWO
  9. CHAPTER THREE
  10. CHAPTER FOUR
  11. CHAPTER FIVE
  12. CHAPTER SIX
  13. CHAPTER SEVEN
  14. CHAPTER EIGHT
  15. CHAPTER NINE
  16. CHAPTER TEN
  17. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  18. CHAPTER TWELVE
  19. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  20. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  21. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  22. PART TWO
  23. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  24. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  25. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  26. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  33. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  34. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  35. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  36. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  40. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  41. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  42. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  43. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  44. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
  45. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
  46. CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
  47. CHAPTER FORTY
  48. CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
  49. PART THREE
  50. CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
  51. CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
  52. CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
  53. CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
  54. CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
  55. CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
  56. CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
  57. CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
  58. CHAPTER FIFTY
  59. EPILOGUE
  60. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  61. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

It took Gibson until Tuesday night to finish his program. WR8TH hadn’t put in another appearance, but his virus continued its relentless journey through the FBI memoranda and documents that Rilling kept uploading onto their servers, lest WR8TH become suspicious if the flow suddenly ceased.

Jenn stopped by Gibson’s room periodically to check on his progress.

“What do you need from us?” she’d asked the first morning after he began work.

“Three hots and a cot.”

“Any requests?”

“Breakfast at breakfast. Dinner at dinner. Surprise me at lunch.” He handed her a Summit Diner menu. Then he ushered her out of his room, flipped the “Do Not Disturb” sign, and locked himself inside. With the shades drawn and the air-conditioning dialed down to witch’s tit, it felt like a subterranean cave cut off from the outside world. He’d always thought more clearly when he was cold and bundled up.

Properly situated, he sat himself down in front of his laptop, put in his earbuds, and worked for what proved to be two straight days.

First things first. He needed the specs of the library’s network. He pinged the library and ran a scan of the available ports. He felt vaguely foolish hacking a public library in central Pennsylvania. He still had a fairly heavy rep in the insular community that gave a crap about such things and doubted very much this would add to the legend of BrnChr0m. It was a bit like Al Capone extorting a kid’s lemonade stand.

His scan finished and beeped, displaying its analysis. He read it with a frown. Usually you could count on rinky-dink networks like a public library to employ bottom-feeding IT personnel who were lazy or incompetent or both. Operating systems were often two generations out of date and hopelessly unpatched. Such networks were like big, friendly dogs; if you petted them they would roll right over and show you a dozen security vulnerabilities.

Unfortunately, in Gibson’s continuing quest never to catch a break, he seemed to have arrived in a municipality that took its IT seriously. The library network was running a current version of Windows and, by the look of it, was freshly patched with a firewall just for good measure. Gibson sighed and sipped his coffee. It wasn’t an elaborate setup, but it was professionally maintained. He’d just have to do it the hard way.