Free Unallocated Space: A Thriller (Sam Flatt Book 1) by Jerry Hatchett

three deep breaths before responding. "Ms. Palmer, your gender and my sense of chivalry are the only things keeping me from—"
    "Whoa, whoa, whoa," Allen said. "Let's take a deep breath, everybody."
    "I just had three deep breaths," I said. "And you don't want to know what I did with the last finger somebody stuck in my face."
    She dropped her hand and turned to Allen. "Jake, I told you it was a mistake to hire him. His type are all the same."
    "My type?" I said.
    She was cocked and ready to fire a response when Allen gave her a look that caused her to freeze momentarily, then fume. But she said no more.
    Allen said, "Sam, I understand the need to notify police, but I need you to understand that the timing of this is…precarious for the company. Perhaps you can give us a few days?"
    "No, Jacob. I can't. There's no time in something like this. I have—no, we have—evidence of multiple felonies. Do you think the police will give a damn why we didn't turn it over as soon as we found it?"
    "I believe I can handle the police," he said. "And I'll sign an addendum to your contract that indemnifies you from any fallout. I don't mean to seem callous to this situation, but my legal responsibility is to protect the company. And I think the best way for me to do that right now is to very carefully consider the fallout before any of this is disclosed."
    "First, you can't indemnify me against criminal prosecution. Second, what the hell is wrong with you people? You saw that video, and there are a lot more of them. If those animals had you, would you want someone to wait a few days?" He didn't say anything. I had more to say, and did. "Understand this, Jacob. I always maintain maximum confidentiality for my clients, but when I see clear evidence of a crime, that's it. It's out of my hands. It will take me a couple hours to get everything extracted and copied. Once that's done, I'm headed to the police department. Any more questions?"
    He looked at me with a sad face, maximum droop, and said nothing.
    I closed my laptop, unplugged it, and left the room.

    L AS VEGAS POLICE DEPARTMENT
    DETECTIVES BUREAU

    W e sat in a cramped office that had to be ninety degrees. Puke-green cinder block walls, no windows, and an old surplus metal office desk without a square inch unused. The detective's name was Ronnie Huddleston. He looked about forty. At least three hundred pounds, with a complicated comb-over unlike anything I'd encountered before. The flushed look of his face suggested a lot of drinking and the puffy eyes told the same story.
    Huddleston took the DVD, inserted it into an older Dell tower, and waited until a window appeared listing the contents of the disk.
    I leaned over so I could see his screen and said, "The fourth file from the top is pretty representative of the collection."
    He made no indication that he heard me, and double-clicked the first file, which was nothing more than a text inventory I'd included of the disk's contents. Huddleston stared at it as if it were a foreign language. After about a minute of that, he turned to me and said, "What is this, exactly?"
    "It's a list of the files on the DVD that I put together, an evidence log of sorts."
    "You made this DVD?"
    "Yeah, I extracted the relevant files from the suspect's hard drive, and put them on that disk for you."
    "So these aren't even originals?"
    "No," I said, "but they're digital copies, exactly the same content as the originals."
    He blew out a dramatic sigh and hit the eject button on the computer's DVD drive. The tray slid out, and he removed the disk and handed it across the desk to me. "This is no use to me, Mr. Flack. I'll have to have the original."
    "The name is Flatt. You telling me you're not even going to look at it?"
    He spread his arms, puffy palms face up on his desk. Then he smiled. I couldn't help but stare. He had tombstone teeth, bright white and way too big for his mouth. He looked like a grinning mule. It bothered me to look at him. "I