Dino by Jaime Lewis
Chapter NINETEEN
“What were you able to find out for me?” Travis Gabbert questioned his hacker buddy, who he paid a reasonable sum of money to hack into the Virginia Beach General Hospital’s database.
“The rumors you heard were true. Paul Roland is listed as a patient at the hospital.”
“Were you able to access his patient file?” Gabbert was hoping so but feared it was unlikely. Hospitals have stepped up the firewalls they had in place to prevent people like him from gaining access to sensitive information.
“No. They have a very complex system. If I had more time, maybe I could find an entry point somewhere, but the timeline you’re on, I don’t think it’s possible.”
Damn! “I figured so. Thank you, Luis. I’ve just wired you the final payment for the job. Keep your phone handy because I’ll have some other jobs coming your way soon.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
The line went dead, and Gabbert threw the phone onto the table next to the bed. He was holed up inside his hotel room that overlooked the boardwalk in Virginia Beach. His original plan of torturing Paul Roland by targeting his daughter had been altered now that Paul was in the hospital with an undisclosed condition.
He grinned to himself. Those assholes at the bureau thought that just because he no longer worked for them that he was cut off from the world. Newsflash for them; he had connections worldwide that would come in handy for what he had planned.
He pulled his notebook out and flipped it open to the list he had compiled of all the enemies he’d been accumulating over his twenty-four-year tenure at the FBI. He vowed that one day he’d get even with each one for helping to damage his reputation within the bureau. Most were colleagues he’d worked cases with, but there were also judges, former politicians, and others who worked for other law enforcement agencies.
See, during the day, he played by the FBI’s rules, but once he was off the clock and nightfall came, he was a vigilante. The people he investigated were people who broke the law, and lawbreakers had to be punished. Many of the investigations he was given the lead on eventually went cold after weeks or months of gathering and examining evidence. But it wasn’t for his lack of trying. It was just hard to close out a case when the main suspect just vanished out of thin air. Then depending on the timing of things, the person would surface, but in a body bag. Thirty-two of them, and he knew the names of every single one of them. He knew he was a sick son of a bitch, but why spend thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to bring in one criminal? He believed he was saving his government a lot of money and a lot of time. With a dead suspect, nine times out of ten, the case was closed.
But then some had humiliated him over the years. They were the ones who replaced him on cases that he couldn’t close or made it difficult for him during court proceedings. Those individuals would pay the price as well. Two of them already had. Next up on his tour around the country was Paul Roland for his part in having him removed from the Elias Barros case. His daughter, unfortunately, was going to pay the price because of her dad. But not knowing what Paul’s condition was had put a slight curve in the plan he had devised. He wanted to make Paul watch his daughter suffer. He could still have a little fun until his grand finale. After all, he had all the time in the world now.
