Read Hard Days Knight: Under-Cover Knights, Book 1 for Free Online

again, please, Angel?” While Abby handed an older gray feline to Luc, Leanne took the boy’s blood pressure. Del glanced over toward Luc and saw Earl texting on his phone even though Luc had requested the phones be muted.
    Leanne said, “Angel’s BP is now 117 over 90, a considerable drop in just fifteen minutes.”
    Abby said, “Pepper’s doing. Dogs have a calming, restorative effect on our health and well-being. Not to mention, they love unconditionally, and therefore make excellent role models. It’s one of the reasons I got involved with animal welfare. I could relate to being tossed aside. In helping these marvelous creatures regain their health and find homes, I’ve found my passion, and it came from a life experience most would term unfortunate .
    “You don’t have to be a professional or an adult to contribute. Dr. John talked about this last month. Volunteering with animal shelters or the local veterinarian can often lead to positions as vet techs, dog walkers, groomers. But if cleaning up doo-doo and walking dogs isn’t your cup of tea, you can volunteer with almost any organization—hospitals, nursing homes, city parks, government, and in private philanthropic organizations.” She looked at Jude. “Even sports arenas.”
    “Yeah,” Jude spoke up. “But volunteer means you don’t get paid.”
    “That’s not always true, Jude, but there are tangible rewards to volunteering. The increase in self-esteem, the knowledge that you’re making a difference in another’s life, learning to work with others and developing work habits that can be included on your first job application, not to mention references from the supervisors you work under. I hope you’ll all give some thought to volunteering now and in the future. Many of the most important accomplishments in our world today are by people who see a need and think of ways to solve the problem, often without pay. We have an excellent example in Mr. Larue.”
    Del thought, Way to go, Abby, turn their attention toward someone they obviously admired. She noticed Luc looked a bit embarrassed by the attention that was focused on him. Then, every phone in the room went off.
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    W ith a quizzical expression Luc reached for his phone so everyone could hear it ringing.
    “Mr. L, you were supposed to turn your phone off—” Steven said, just as his cell rang and then one by one all of the phones in the room started to blast their various ringtones, including Del’s.
    “Our next presenter is our old buddy, Earl.” Luc turned, holding up his ringing phone. “Did you have something to do with this, Earl?”
    Earl’s silly grin reminded Del of the Lampoon Magazine picture, with his wide smile, alert eyes and freckles. “Once a geek, always a geek.”
    He stepped to the center of the room. “How many of you know what hacking is?”
    “I know what “jacking” is,” said a teen sitting behind Jude.
    Angel said, “He’s talking about computer hacking, dipsh… Uh, that’s where you get into the big credit card company websites and steal people’s passwords and sh—stuff, right?”
    “That’s right, Angel. Or that’s part of it. A hacker is a derogatory term for someone who uses computers to gain unauthorized access to documents or programming. Like what I just did to your phones. A harmless prank among friends but not so harmless if the “hacker” is stealing into the Visa records online, or ferreting out secrets from the Pentagon. The difference is illegal intent. Often hackers and programmers start out the same way, with a curiosity for information systems and how they work. At one time they were all just geeks.
    “You might be a geek, if you like to take your phone apart and find ways to work around the systems that make it run. Anyone know what that’s called?”
    “Jail breaking,” said Jude.
    Earl nodded “If you ever thought about overriding the code on a security system, you might be a geek. Essentially, I started out that way.