Chapter 27
1st October 2015: 21:27 pm.
As soon as I arrived at my office, I was just about to ask Ruby, my secretary, to call John. It was late and I’d already told her that I was on my way. I was surprised when she said that she was working and so were some other people. Then again, we’d been hacked. I had a suspicion that no one felt the urge to go home until this problem was solved. John was already sitting outside my office with his laptop bouncing on his belly as he continued to type with his fat fingers.
“John!” I shouted seeing as he was distracted and talking to himself and typing.
“Ted, great, you’re here.”
Under any normal circumstances, we would have a little conversation about my trip. I would attempt a joke that he wouldn’t find funny and vice-versa. But we were too stressed to play silly games. I cut through the chase as I told him exactly what was on my mind.
“Tell me about it, John.” I ushered him into my office. I needed something to focus on, other than my missing daughter.
Anything!
Dad and Bentley told me to play out my acting skills and I had done that for the last hour, God, if Li had started getting undressed and had tried to seduce me then I would be sick. I needed a few minutes break from being under her web. She wanted to fucking cook for me, as if everything was okay. Maybe I should have stayed. Eaten. Smiled. Even fucked her, and then I would have found out the truth. But I couldn’t fucking touch her. I couldn’t force myself to do that. Not now.
I wanted to go and see Emma, reassure her that it was all going to be okay, but I couldn’t even do that. So the only option was to come into the office. I knew that going to my parents’ wasn’t an option. Dad would most likely tell Mother, who would run for a knife and chop my cock off. Dad would probably hold me down while she did the deed.
My parents hated me.
My daughter was missing.
My wife was behind bars.
And I was at fucking work!
Trying to figure out who was fucking up our accounts was going to be near impossible. I knew fuck all about IT. John had a better chance of doing that, but judging by the stress lines that were clearly written all over his face, he hadn’t had much luck and I was hoping that he would have good news.
I had called Will, my old best friend, about five times on the way here and left messages every time for him to come here. He hadn’t answered and the last time his phone rang, he’d actually hung up the phone. Will didn't even say a word, just fucking hung up! Well, I couldn’t have blamed him. I deserved that, but there was a time he would have picked up and said, ‘What’s up bro?’ Now I was far from a bro to him, I was his fucking enemy. The guy that just happened to marry the girl that he was in love with.
“I didn’t think you would be in with the news of Barbara,” John sighed as he hovered at my door, trying to figure out if he should come in or not. I wasn’t here to look for Barbara. He wanted an explanation. Some good reason for me to be in.
I could have said to him, “Remember that secretary I had around five or maybe it was six years ago. Fuck knows. Anyway, I had a child with her. She swapped her with Barbara and now she’s…” the whole sentence scared the shit out of me. The whole idea of saying it loud gave me this silly notion that it could actually be true.
No, it couldn’t.
I fucking just needed to be here for an hour and then I would be back on the case. If there was no news, I would fucking sleep with Li. Fuck the living daylights out of her, just to get the truth out of her. If that didn’t work I would just strangle her neck and Emma and I could be locked up together! Mother would really love that.
There were three options of places to go, which left me with no option but to come into the office.
I shook my head, “Just tell me what you’ve got. My phone is on and if they have any news they’d call.”
He stood as if he was in the Principal’s office, unsure what to do next. I’d told him, my private life was my business. Not his.
“John!”
He nodded and then he pulled his prized possession and put it on my desk. I knew that once he started talking about technology then he would forget about my troubles. He seemed more concerned than I was, but I was fucking petrified. If it was some stranger on the street who had taken Barbara then it wouldn’t have been so bad. I would have been less scared, but it was Li. The woman that I had taken away on holiday. The one that I was supposed to dump. The woman that was the mother to one of my children.
“Ted, are you there?”
I shook my head as I stood next to him, not listening to a word that he was saying. My mind was in turmoil and all I kept thinking was ‘What the fuck am I doing in the office?’
That was when there was a knock on the door. The person that I had been ringing on the way here was finally in my office.
Ruby, my secretary that took over from Li, knocked on the door, “Will Hale’s here to see you. You said that if he came I should disturb you.”
I nodded. “I did.”
John adjusted his glasses and then tried to stand up, he spent too much time at his desk. Eating and programming, even though he was supposed to be the CTO and get away from that side of things, he could never do that. “Once a techie always a techie,” he would quote that every single time I questioned his management style and his inability to delegate.
“No, you need to stay. Grab a chair. This is going to get interesting.”
I smiled at John, who was completely confused and then my fears of Barbara entered my head and I decided that as soon as I was done with Will, I would get to the important task, which was finding my little girl.
Fuck staying in the office!
It wasn’t working, my job was to distract Li, and that way I knew that one of Dad’s men was following her brother, Zhang. My job was just to get Li to confess. As soon as I got out of here I would find her, maybe Will would forget the past and be a friend as he had been so many times. Maybe he would help me on my search.
I needed a friend right now.
Not my dad.
Someone who had my best interests at heart, and that person was Barbara. God knows that my little girl didn’t deserve to be punished for her dad’s selfish acts. It was me that deserved to be punished - maybe I should just let them hack everything and ruin me. I just wanted my little girl back. Nothing more and certainly nothing less.