Chapter 33

1st October 2015: 23:45 pm.

“We need to get out of here!” Will said. I couldn’t stop screaming, everything that I had ever done. Fuck the money! Fuck everything. All I wanted was to see my little girl’s blue eyes shine. I would do anything to get her back.

But the rain was falling hard and the police were running like a swarm of bees back to their hive. I couldn’t think even when I heard Dad’s voice shout out, “Ted!”

I shook my head thinking that I was being selfish. Barbara was out there, otherwise they would have found more than clothes. They would have seen something more than that.

“Get up!” mother screamed in my ears. I looked at her, her pale blue eyes had tears as she held up her umbrella, and the site which had police men swarming it was now practically bare with only yellow tape attached from the trees. Tape to tell people not to cross. Not to go where they suspected my daughter’s body had been.

“We need to find Barbara.”

“But mother..”

“No buts, we need to find her. Just do what you need to do Ted. Will will help you, won’t you?”

Will simply nodded as he took my arm and directed me towards my car. We left everyone, and I felt a shadow of my former self, unable to deal with my new reality.

“They’ve charged Emma with not only kidnapping two children, but the possibility of murdering the other. They’re looking for evidence,” mother said as if it was an open and shut case. She was talking as if Emma was capable of doing all these things, but we both knew that she was innocent. Or maybe Mother didn’t have a clue, and Dad had kept it a secret. My eyes darted to him, but he didn’t look at me.

“But she would never harm Barbara,” I tried to explain to her. I wanted to fucking confess and tell her that it was all my fault and that both Emma and Barbara were innocent.

But Will grabbed me, moved me away from confessing, “Ted you need to get your shit together. We need to figure this out.”

His eyes told me that he wanted to go. Maybe he had seen a way out of this fucking nightmare.

Will reassured me, “We need to get through this as a team.”

My cold trembling hand patted him on the back and said, “Thanks.”

He shook his head. “I’m not fucking doing this for you. When this is all said and done we’ll go back to the way things were before. You can visit your girlfriend behind bars for all I fucking care.” He carried on walking as I tried to keep up with him.

I followed him as if I had the weight of the world on my shoulders. He was heading back towards my car. “And after all this is over, you can fucking divorce Emma and stop fucking around. You don’t deserve either of them, but you deserve this shit.”

I hated him for speaking the truth, but then I was thankful that he was acting as a friend. Helping even if he wasn’t helping me, at least he was helping Emma, and especially, Barbara.

“What’s the plan?” I asked as we were away from the police and my parents. I was trying to fight back the tears. I was trying to be positive thinking that Barbara must have been alive. Otherwise they would have found more than her clothes. They would have found her body.

“Find out where Li is, and fast.”

I was soaked, and so was he. I opened the doors and started the car. I called Li from the car, as Will handed me back my phone. Not only was it on, but he’d typed in the password. Was I really that fucking predictable? The code was my birth date and he’d known it from the moment he switched on the phone.

I looked at him, but then he ignored my stare as I called Li. She picked up on the second ring. “Darling I’ve been trying to call you. Where are you? I’ll come now.”

It was late getting close to midnight. The stupid bitch thought that I was calling her so that we could have some kind of rendezvous.

“Where are you? Are you at home?”

“No, at the office. I think I’ve got a lead,” she said enthusiastically, and I was confused for a minute. Thinking that she meant with Barbara, but the it sunk in that she must have been talking about the hack.

I was lost as to what to say. I just sighed, “Good.”

Then, I hung up and didn’t give here a chance to explain about the type of lead that she’d acquired, because I didn’t care. I only had one mission and that was to find Barbara. I turned to Will. “She’s at the office.”

He nodded and said, “Good.”

It meant that we would be able to find Li easily and find out once and for all where Barbara was. No more fucking Mr. Nice Guy. I wasn’t acting, I was going to get to the truth, one way or another.

My phone rang again and I put it on loud speaker. Loud enough for Will to hear.

It was Li.

“Ted, I need to meet you somewhere. Something’s happened. Just get to the address that I’m sending you now.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I knew that it had something to do with Barbara.

I sighed as I tried to concentrate on being on the freeway, but at the same time I didn’t know what to do.

I said, “She said that there’s been a change of plan…”

“I heard,” Will said as he sat motionless like he was cold and probably tired. I had flown in from the Bahamas and since I’d landed I hadn’t stopped. I’d been up and down, one emotional trauma to the next.

“We better get there and figure out what’s happened.”

I nodded, thinking that was exactly what I planned to do. “Thanks.”

That seemed to be the only word that seemed to escape my mouth.

“You don’t do things by halves do you, Ted?”

“I guess not!”

I sighed, thinking that everyone was after me for this. But then they could do whatever they wanted as long as Barbara was safe.

“Li. I mean why go back to her after all this time? Why still see her? I just don’t get it.”

As I stopped at the cross light and thought about this being the longest day of my life. I told him honestly, “Neither do I, Will.” I stretched my neck and thought about it some more. “Neither do I.”