Free Unauthorized Access by Andrew McAllister

people? And then there was the financial hit the bank was sure to take.
    Paul had to admit, though, that the real reason he was taking this so personally was because AMS was his responsibility. It was driving him crazy that someone had managed to sneak this kind of surprise past him. Paul felt like he had failed and now the only way out was to identify that someone and get the keyword so they could fix the remaining accounts.
    Kelleher was talking about the two of them getting a few hours sleep and then coming back in to search the desks and hard drives of all AMS team members. This was a crazy long shot in Paul’s opinion. Who would be stupid enough to leave evidence lying around where untrained investigators could find it? No way should the bank’s reputation depend on a search like that. Paul figured the surest way out of this mess was to trace those emails, and that would take someone with more clout than he had. That would mean leaking the truth to the public, which would then clear the way to bring in the FBI.
    So that was exactly what Paul intended to do.
    It would mean his job if Dysart found out he was the source of the leak, but Paul figured his job was hanging by a thread anyway. His best chance of staying employed was to get the keyword as quickly as possible. That meant bringing in some folks who knew what they were doing. He checked that he still had a copy of the email from the Financial Patriots and then went looking for a quiet office with a fax machine.
    * * *
    Lesley and Shayna paused outside Champions for a quick hug.
    “Later, kiddos,” Shayna said, then walked off toward the parking garage under the Marriott next door.
    Lesley put her arm through Rob’s and they started along the sidewalk.
    “Want to come back to my place?” she asked.
    “Love to,” he said, “but I’d only fall asleep on you.”
    She squeezed his arm tighter and said, “Are you sure?”
    “Oh, man,” Rob said. “Any other night that would work. How about tomorrow after work you come over to my place. I’ll get us a pizza and we can talk about how we’re going to spring the ring on everyone back home.”
    “Double cheese?”
    “Of course.”
    “It’s a date.”
    Lesley’s cell phone rang. She dug it out of her purse.
    “Hi Lesley, it’s Arthur.”
    “Why if it isn’t my favorite producer,” she said. “You must be calling to offer congratulations on the First Malden piece.”
    “I wish I was,” Pearce said. “We just received a fax that throws some doubt on your story. It’s a copy of an email message to the First Malden Bank from some group calling themselves the Financial Patriots of America. It says they’ve sabotaged the bank’s computers, removed money from customer accounts. The gist of the message is that greedy American banks have caused the recession and now this group is striking back.”
    “But my uncle said it was just some minor computer glitch.”
    “Which means either this message is a hoax or he lied to you.”
    Lesley looked at Rob. Her mind raced as she tried to work out what this could mean.
    “It’s probably some whacko group who had nothing to do with it trying to take credit,” she said into the phone. “Happens all the time after we break a story, right?”
    “That was my first thought,” Pearce said, “but the fax came from a machine inside the bank.”
    Lesley’s head was swimming as she tried to reconcile this information with everything she had heard from Rob and her uncle.
    “But this message just arrived now, right?” she said. “So earlier when I was talking with my uncle it would have been natural for the people at the bank to assume it was some sort of technical problem.”
    “Not according to this email,” Pearce said. “The group informed the bank at six o’clock last night that an attack was imminent.”
    Six o’clock. That was just before Rob was called in to the bank for an emergency. Lesley sighed and said into the phone, “All right. How do you