Unallocated Space: A Thriller (Sam Flatt Book 1)

by Jerry Hatchett

  "Shoot."

  "Sam Flatt is acting on bad information and I can't get in touch with him. It might be important."

  "What bad info?" Matt said.

  "You know the monitoring data I sent him?"

  "Sure."

  "That data was from station five-five-six-eight-nine."

  "Okay."

  "Sam went looking for the actual station, wanted to lay eyes on it, I guess. He called and wanted to know which buildings were connected to that station."

  "Right, so he could try to find where that video camera was when it shot some videos."

  "Here's the thing," Abdul said. "When he called, he asked for the buildings tied to five-five-six-eight-eight, not the six-eight-nine station that the data came from. I think he found the station and didn't pay attention to the number."

  "Where is the right one, where is six-eight-nine?"

  "Twenty-five feet away. And it feeds buildings on the west side of Las Vegas Boulevard. Get this, including the SPACE building itself."

  "Oh, holy hell," Decker said. "The videos might've been shot right there. He's looking at the wrong buildings altogether."

  "Exactly, boss."

  "Damn, Abdul. Why didn't you correct him while you had him on the phone?"

  "I tried. He was agitated, kept cutting me off, eventually hung up. I've tried calling back many times, but it goes straight to voicemail. I also emailed and texted."

  "Okay, keep trying to call him. I'm gonna try to track down the SPACE employee who's kind of his assistant while he's there. Let me know if you get him on the line, and I'll keep you posted."

  "You got it."

  CHAPTER 121

  MEADOWS MEDIA - LAS VEGAS

  MY WRISTWATCH GAVE its stacatto half-hour vibration just as I walked into the parking area under the back side of the building that housed Meadows Media. It was 12:30 AM, and no more than a handful of cars remained. I went to the stairway door that opened into the little garage and gave it a tug. Locked. Fortunately, this wasn't a high-security building, and the contractors hadn't gone overboard on securing what was essentially a fire exit. A couple minutes with some small screwdrivers from my toolkit did the job. I pulled the door open and stepped into a concrete stairwell. On the second floor where Meadows was located, I cracked the door and looked out into an empty carpeted hallway.

  It looked like every other office building in the world as I walked the hallway looking for suite 203. Most offices had solid wood doors, while an occasional suite was fronted by one or two glass doors. There was no way to tell which of the solid-door offices had someone inside right now, and I didn't see anyone inside the dimly lit glassed ones. Until I got to the one I was looking for, that is. Suite 203 fronted up to be the nicest one on the floor, which I didn't expect. Two glass doors in the middle of glass walls looked in on a well lit reception area. Not what I was expecting at all. When I pulled on the door, it opened, and a damned chime sounded that had to be audible throughout the suite.

  I stepped inside and almost immediately a guy appeared through a door that led from the reception area to the deeper offices. He was tall and ripped, wearing a 'The Meadows Media' logo shirt that fit him like a latex surgical glove. This didn't feel like a porn operation, but I was here and I intended to be sure.

  "What can I do for you?" He said, with a not-subtle glance at a digital clock on the wall that read 12:38.

  Herein lies the problem with unplanned actions: Shit happens. Odds were a video business would be empty after midnight, yet here stood Logo Shirt. I processed the options, none of which were good at this point, and walked up to him with my right hand extended for a shake. He reluctantly took my hand. I firmed up my grip just shy of crushing, and said, "I'd like to look through your offices."

  He didn't waste time looking bewildered by such a request. Instead, his angular face took on a hard sneer with his lip curled up on one side. "Fuck you," he said, dripping all the contempt he could summon.

  "Thought you'd say that," I said. Still holding his right hand, I yanked him to spin him a bit counter-clockwise, then hit him with a quick left to his lower jaw on the right side of his face. I released his right hand because I expected him to fall. He didn't. He had turned his head away just as I connected, lessening the impact. He backed up a couple steps and assumed a classic MMA stance. Great.

  He said, "You just made one hell of a mistake, asshole. I'm gonna fuck you up."

  I blew out a sigh. "I really don't have time for this. I don't want to hurt you. Stand aside and I won't have to."

  Logo Shirt blew out a great big belly laugh, then gave me a 'come here' gesture by curling his fingers.

  "You've gotta be shitting me," I said. "Are you supposed to be Neo or Morpheus?"

  He did it again.

  "Last chance," I said.

  His face reddened and contorted, and he charged. The guy was really quick, and grabbed me in a bear hug and jerked me up off my feet, then slammed me down and to his left. In an instant, he was following me down, intending to straddle me for a little ground-and-pound. As he went down, I rolled away from him and got to my feet. He sprang back up like a jack-in-the-box and I started backing up. Within a foot, I was against a wall, and there he was. He hit me two times, then a third. I shook my head and pushed him back.

  Logo Shirt was fast and hard, and had obviously done a lot of training. The big problem with that, however, is that rules become ingrained. It's what makes it a civilized sport instead of brawling. I didn't have time for civilized. My baby girl was waiting for me. It was like an internal switch; once flipped, the black fog shot into my soul and erased the light where things like compassion and mercy reside. There was one goal now, one consideration, a fevered drive to do what I came to do. Logo Shirt was standing between me and that. Most unfortunate. For him.

  He was two or three steps in front of me. I took those steps with perfect calm, oblivious to everything in the world except my target, his Adam's apple. I knew he was hitting me when I got close, because my target shuddered and shook in my vision. Then I was there, and everything was happening very slowly. I watched my fist as it drove into his throat, felt the muscles collapse, then the cartilage, and finally, the airway. I was stepping away even as he fell backward, his hands going to his throat as if they could somehow claw away the hideous and panicky inability to breathe he was experiencing.

  Two minutes later, my exploration of the suite was complete. No porn studio here. When I got back to the reception lobby, Logo Shirt was still wheezing and holding his throat, but he was managing to breathe. He'd live.

  CHAPTER 122

  LAS VEGAS

  COURTNEY MEYER

  "FOR THE THIRD TIME, the call began at twelve-thirteen and forty-two seconds, a.m., Las Vegas time!" Meyer said into the phone on the van's console. "It lasted five minutes, seventeen seconds. The authorization is alpha-six-two-nine-hotel-eight-one. Oh sure, I'd love to be on hold some more."

  She turned to Console Agent and said, "On hold again. How in hell is it that these NSA geniuses can spy on the whole world but can't pull up one pre-authorized recording of a simple phone call?"

  Console Agent just shrugged and resumed staring at the screens.

  Meyer waited. Three or four minutes later, she perked up, listened intently for a moment, then said, "Thank you, thank you, thank you. Would you please hold a minute so I can be sure it came through?" She turned back to Console Agent and found him nodding and giving her a thumbs-up. She returned to the phone. "Thank you, we got it."

  After hanging up the phone, she watched Console Agent work for a bit. He said, "Ready to hear it?"

  She nodded and he pushed a button. From speakers on the console, a deep voice said, "Hello."

  Sultanovich's voice, which she recognized, came next. In a foreign language.

  "Damn it," Meyer said with a brisk slap of the console counter in front of her. "You have access to translators?"

  Console Agent nodded and picked up the phone.

&
nbsp; CHAPTER 123

  SPACE

  BRANDY PALMER

  "JACOB, I'm begging you, tell me what's going on," Palmer said.

  Jacob Allen remained quiet as he stood at the window of his office gazing out at the lightscape spread before them in the night.

  She reached out, touched him on the shoulder. "You need to talk to someone. I'm your attorney, but I'm also your friend. What is it?"

  After a good minute of silence, he turned to her and said, "I've lived with this insanity as long as I can. Whatever is going on in the basement, I want to know. And I want it to end."

  There had been little doubt in her mind as to what was troubling him, but hearing it still caused her stomach to churn. "You know you can't do that."

  "I have to."

  "Have you forgotten the agreement you signed? The agreement that all of this is built on?" Palmer stretched her arms and gestured a sphere.

  Allen spun on her. "Forgotten? That document has haunted me every day since I signed it. Forgotten?"

  "Then you know it's binding. You can't do anything about it without putting this company at grave legal risk, Jacob."

  "I'm an idiot for ever going along with some mystery space in my basement."

  "You did what you had to do to close the deal. And, I…"

  "What?"

  "I hate to bring this up, but as the attorney for this company, I have to remind you that the basement issue is not the purview of Jacob Allen, but rather that of SPACE Corporation."

  "Which I run, Brandy. Me."

  "For investors."

  "What are you trying to say? Spit it out."

  She blew out a long, slow sigh. "The investors are concerned, Jacob."

  "I haven't heard a word from them."

  "I have."

  "Excuse me?" Allen's face reddened as he turned his body to square up and face her. "Are you talking to the investors behind my back? Is that what I'm hearing, Brandy?"

  The silence was almost tangible.

  "Brandy?"

  She raised her hands, palms down, patting the air. "You need to calm down."

  He slammed the heel of his fist into the window hard enough that it flexed in its frame. Palmer tensed, thinking it might actually break. She realized she was subconsciously backing away from him. To put it mildly, this was a side of the docile Jacob Allen she had never seen. She watched as he turned back to the window and resumed his silent gaze for a good sixty seconds. Then he turned his head toward her and with great calm said, "Brandy, you and your firm no longer represent this company. Your services are terminated."

  "You can't do that."

  "I just did. Get the fuck out of my office."

  THE MOMENT she left Jacob's office, Brandy Palmer dialed her phone. When the man on the other end answered, she said, "We do have a problem. Jacob is not just allowing this Sam Flatt to meddle. Now's he encouraging him."

  MAN ON PHONE: "This must end."

  PALMER: "Agreed. What do you want me to do?"

  MAN ON PHONE: "Nothing. I will manage these two birds with one rock."

  CHAPTER 124

  SPACE

  I WAS ALMOST BACK to the front entrance of SPACE when the phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out and saw the new-email icon. When I opened it, the first thing I saw was a new picture of Ally. She was still restrained in the chair, but now a figure wearing a black ski mask stood behind her, holding a knife to her throat.

  Ally's face was contorted, her eyes liquid and spilling fat tear trails down her cheek. It was a face that said PLEASE HELP ME, DADDY. A paragraph of text sat below the photo.

  IF YOU WANT KNIFE TO STAY AWAY FROM HER THROAT, FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS. KILL JACOB ALLEN. HE DIE TONIGHT OR YOUR DAUGHTER DIE TONIGHT.

  BENEATH THE TEXT, another picture, this one of Jacob. It looked like a typical corporate headshot, probably from SPACE's website. It was a good ten years old, with noticeably fewer wrinkles on the sad, hound dog face.

  When I thought these assholes couldn't surprise me again, they had proved me wrong. What the hell was this about? Did they really expect me to kill a man for them? Or were they yanking my chain to keep me distracted? One thing was certain: I wasn't going to play their game, either way. I was going to find these subhumans and end this. All of it.

  WHEN I STEPPED off the elevator on my workfloor, I stepped into a hive of police activity. Centered on the men's restroom. Great. I strolled down the hall as casually as possible, wondering where Nichols was and why he hadn't kept everyone out like I told him. Unfortunately, the gelatinous tub of lard known as Detective Huddleston saw me and scrunched up his eyes as I approached, a show of great mental effort on his face. Presumably he was trying to remember where he'd seen me. His mouth was parted just enough to expose those damned tombstone teeth. I very much wanted to remind him of my bringing the rape videos to him and him blowing the whole thing off. Then I wanted to let him know I had seen his fat ass on the LAX surveillance footage as he met Daria and Anya. Then I wanted to do all manner of other things to him. Maybe I'd get my chance before the FBI got him.

  I passed on by, went to my workroom, and grabbed my laptop and a couple other items from my gear that I'd need. The more I thought about it, the more unlikely I believed it to be that they could have broken into my computer. It was well protected and I was a smart user. There was a tiny risk I was wrong, but it was a risk I had to take at this point.

  This time when I passed by Tombstone in the corridor, he said, "Mr. Flatt, we need to take your statement, since I understand you've been working in this area for quite some time."

  Slowing but not stopping, I looked back over my shoulder, and said, "I wasn't here tonight. Can't help you, and wouldn't have time even if I could." Back to my normal pace. I could literally feel him plodding behind me, his footfalls imparting a tiny vibration to the floor.

  "I'm afraid you'll have to make time."

  I pushed the elevator button and turned to face him. "Don't think so." The elevator door opened a few seconds later and I stepped inside.

  He was six feet away, then three, then reaching to stop the doors as they were halfway closed. "You don't get to—"

  Those sausage fingers were too inviting, curled around the edge of the elevator door. The plastic brick of my laptop's power supply weighs about three pounds. I drove the end of it into his fingers, and I didn't hold back. He jerked his hand back and his face morphed into a contortion of pain, that vast mouth opening, sucking in air to power the satisfying howl that followed. He looked like a hippo. Just before the doors closed completely, I raised my hand in a finger gun and fired it at the bastard.

  CHAPTER 125

  SPACE

  IN MY ROOM, I did a pretty thorough five-minute scan for cameras or listening devices and found none. The next few minutes were spent activating the cheap burner phones I had grabbed from the gift shop before coming up. I plugged them up to their chargers to be sure they were topped off, then booted my laptop and went to work. Much had to be done, and time was short. Tombstone would get my room number as soon as he stopped crying about his fingers, and then he'd be on his massive way within minutes. This time he'd bring help.

  Thanking the Lord that I'd taken the precaution of setting up a number of backdoors into the SPACE network, I went straight for the reservations system. I chose an empty room on the seventy-second floor and eventually figured out how to assign it to a non-existent guest. For reasons I can't fathom, the name that popped into my head was Edna Haverstein, and I went with it. Next I looked in one of my rolling suitcases and pulled an old keycard from one of its pockets. I tend to keep them when I check out, because they're handy for forensic experimentation and testing. I'd always opened my room with my bracelet, but the locks also had conventional keycard slots. Out of the main reservations database I went, and into the module that allowed desk clerks to program the electronic cards. I connected the card writer I'd retrieved from my workroom gear, and coded the old keycard for room 72195.

  The nex
t need was for Sam Flatt to disappear from SPACE's techno-tracking system. Shocker of shockers, I finally caught a break. The bracelet management system was in the same permissions module as the keycards, which meant I at least didn't have to go hunting for that. Now I needed a name and position. The human resources database was easy. I filtered it down to people assigned to the security division, sorted by employee name, and started scrolling through the long list, looking. Hoping to find two people with exactly the same name, so I could add a layer of confusion, I struck out. I did, however, find a pair who were close. Julia Gomes and Julia Gomez. I jumped back into the permissions module and with great care not to disturb the nearly omnipotent permissions my bracelet wielded on the property, I did some name-switching.

  Now my bracelet was assigned to Julia Gomes and hers to Sam Flatt. Then the tedious part: I had to switch the history of movement that was assigned to our two bracelets. If the police or anyone else looked at my tracking record, they needed to see my known movements; they needed to see that Sam Flatt left the murder scene after breaking Tombstone's fingers, and high-tailed it to Sam Flatt's room. Anything else would lead them to suspect that I was using someone else's bracelet ID. I imagined Tombstone's big ass shaking the floor more than once as time kept ticking. Finally I got it done and tidied up with a little e-housekeeping.

  One more task and I'd be ready to go. I hated to do this to a client who had already paid me close to a hundred grand for the few weeks I'd been here, but I had no choice. First, I found the bracelet tracking system. Then I rebooted that system's main server and quickly jumped to the surveillance network. Too bad the casino surveillance system wasn't isolated from the rest of the property, but I had noticed a while back that it wasn't. Design flaw. With a wince, I shut down SPACE's surveillance system. All of it.

  The clock was ticking. With those systems down, I had a few minutes of invisibility. As soon as the servers came back up, I'd be visible on camera and my bracelet would be trackable. I didn't want my “Julia Gomes” bracelet anywhere near my room when it came back online. I threw everything I could imagine I'd need into one of my roller bags and headed out.