Evasion Read Online Free Page B

analytical, introspective, and good with inanimate objects, data and puzzles. Which was likely one of the reasons he adapted so easily to computer programming.  He could easily consume himself with a programming challenge for days without tiring of it. But engaging in the small talk associated with colleagues and friendships was taxing to him.
    He would do it out of necessity, of course, but would much rather spend his time focused on code, on exploring the intricacies of the manner by which a string of characters in a particular format could command the control of a computer-controlled environment.
    It was likely the reason he didn’t have many friends.
    No, he could count, on a single hand, the number of people besides his parents that he had forged any lasting relationship with – something that lasted longer than the time associated with a particular chapter of his life.
    There were no high school friends that he maintained contact with; except for Pierre, his childhood neighbor, someone he saw and spoke to only when he returned home to visit his parents, and Mr. Prescott, the computer science teacher whom he had maintained regular email contact with since that first day he began to take Scotty under his wing.
    Even his relationships through university didn’t seem to last longer than the term by which he shared a classroom with someone, or the year he was dorm room-mates with another person.
    And the colleagues he had worked with remained just that – colleagues.
    So no, there were no long term relationships, no natural inclination, like his father, to bridge those personal connections, to reach out to those around him, to inject a sense of belonging and empathetic understanding into a room.
    Even while nervously waiting for his kidney surgery, more than two hours delayed and still not having had a bite to eat nor a single sip of water beyond dinner the evening before, his father sat in the waiting room calmly observing those around him and occasionally offering a friendly nod or quick quip meant to inspire a smile.
    Lionel Desmond was indeed a unique character.
    Scotty didn’t properly “get that” the morning he had spent waiting with his parents in the operating room, dividing his time between trying to read Cuckoo’s Egg and thinking anxiously about the meeting he had planned in order to take on what seemed like some intriguing freelance hacking work.
    No, it wasn’t until much later that Scotty understood there was more to his father than he had ever paid attention to.
    It wasn’t, perhaps, until the day Scotty had seen his father, eighteen months after he had supposedly died on an operating recovery room table, that he figured there was much more to the man than anybody in his life had ever properly suspected.
    But that morning, Scotty was frustrated and anxious, and eager to do nothing more than see his father get into the operating room so that he could get to his meeting and explore the possibility of a new hacking assignment, a new computer challenge.
     

Chapter Three
    Today  
     
    Scott stood and watched as the guard slowly walked toward him, his right hand coming up with a Taser.
    Then he turned to look over his shoulder and saw Herb walking toward him from the other side, his gun drawn.
    “You cannot evade us!” the two said in perfectly matching tones.
    “Shit, shit, shit!” Scott said, spotting the empty meeting room to his immediate right. He immediately ducked into the room and slammed the door behind him. Then he locked it and dragged one of the three meeting room tables over to it, flipped it over on its side and pushed it up against the door.
    Someone slammed against the door from the other side.
    Scott knew it wouldn’t hold. Besides, the guard likely had a key to the room.
    There wasn’t a phone in this twelve by eighteen foot meeting room, just a few more tables, a half dozen chairs, a whiteboard and a single window. But even if there had been a phone who could he call? Building