Chapter 6: Bentley
June 26 at 2:00 PM
Photo by Jason Wesley Upton (Flickr.com)
"Tyler isn't here, Mr. Bridgley," said Sara. "But you left quite an impression on him, as you did me." The line was silent and then went dead. A moment later the switchboard lit up with a call from the same number. Sara pressed a button and picked up the line. "Mr. Bridgley, I don't mind playing games. In fact, I'm quite good at them. Just tell me why you're doing this."
There was a long pause, but this time the caller didn't hang up. "Ms. Harp, is that you?" came a nervous high-pitched voice.
"Bentley?" Sara replied. "What are you doing? Are you the one who's been calling me this evening?"
"Uh, no Ms. Harp. This is the first time I've called."
Sara wasn't so sure. "What can I do for you, Bentley?"
"Well…it looks like someone hacked into the system through the public-facing router," said Bentley. "He wasn't on very long, about five minutes or so before I kicked him off. He did spider around the network pretty good and caused one of our servers to crash."
"When did this happen?"
Bentley hesitated. "About an hour ago. Sorry, Ms. Harp. I did not want to disturb you."
"That's alright, Bentley. I appreciate the update," said Sara. "By chance is this affecting the phone system?"
"Yes, our network uses VOIP to route calls. The latter relies on the former."
"English, please."
"I mean...phone calls utilize network bandwidth, so yes it's been affected," he cleared his throat. "I'm not sure what he did to the phones but the rest of the network does not appear to be corrupted. It's probably not a big deal, but I'm having trouble flushing the last entry. Right now all incoming calls are being tagged with the same number."
A fresh wave of pain crashed through her again. "Just fix it," she managed.
"Are you alright, Ms. Harp? Should I call your doctor?"
"No, call me an ambulance." Sara continued holding her side. She knew her body wouldn't hold up much longer. "I need you to do something else for me. Find out what you can about David Bridgley. And while you're at it, Tyler Thorpe."
