Wife's Bitter Revenge Against Neglectful CEO Husband-Chapter 136: Where’s Colby?
The sleep helped, but it wasn’t long enough. That damnable phone dinged with incoming messages. I ignored it as long as I could, but whoever texted me was impatient. The phone rang with a call.
If it was Alec, I was giving back the ring.
"Tee, get your ass online, now." It was Stiff. The ring was safe.
"Ten minutes," I mumbled into the phone.
"Brush your teeth while you’re logging on."
I looked at the time. Eh, I’d worked on less sleep.
"Sure. On my way."
I ran a hand over my face and smoothed back the hair. I checked the text messages. Two were from Alec, who was just checking in and wishing me a good day.
I reminded myself to load the AI text response mod on the new phone so Alec received periodic touch-base messages during the day while I was too busy to focus my energy on him.
I sent a virtual hug back and made a beeline to my office, stopping by the bathroom and the kitchen on the way. The bottle of water and apple were a poor substitute for coffee, but I skipped dinner, so I needed something in my stomach.
I cursed when I saw what the boys had been up to while I was slacking off.
They discovered where Colby had been cataloged at Bright Future as a donor. So far, the child had donated hundreds of pints of blood, four organs and tissues, including stem cells, a kidney, bone marrow—twice—a cornea, and a segment of his liver.
I didn’t feel much better about having been right. They were using the kid up one piece at a time. This boy would be fighting the trauma of all that abuse to his body for the rest of his life. On the positive side, Colby was still alive. That alone was an amazing accomplishment.
Dorsey and Candice remained active with Bright Future, but it appeared they were working in Europe now. Let’s see how successful they were when their passports were revoked.
I spent a few minutes revoking their passports and erasing their identities. So easy. I wondered how they would navigate Rome without bank cards or identities. Eh, what the hell. I had Stiff hire a Rome detective to keep an eye on them until we had a package of incriminating evidence to send to the police.
Lucky me. CK read my mind and found evidence of three Italian boys who had disappeared in the last two years under similar circumstances to Colby. Two of those boys were still active on the Bright Future roster. The third boy wasn’t so fortunate.
Now, the newly hired detective could hand over the evidence and the women at the same time.
On, wait. They’d need their identities back. So I gave them partial identities that lacked passports, cell phones, email and social media accounts, and any financial resources whatsoever.
If we needed the Schumakers later, we would know where to find them. The Italian police would warehouse them for us.
Stiff determined Colby lived in the dormitory located at the Bright Future complex. The dormitory residents included the living donors and some healthcare staff. There were visitor quarters elsewhere in the complex. I guess I could see where it might be a little distasteful to lodge the spare parts in the same building as the recipients.
I was surprised to find that the building included a floor devoted to educating these children. The children also had access to a gymnasium and a swimming pool.
It seemed ironic to treat the children as if they would have futures when the organization’s archives documented hundreds of victims who had died of medical complications over the course of the last seven years.
Who knew forced organ donations were considered medical complications?
I called Stiff and then added CK to the call.
Ck said, "Man, you’d think they would have better security. We’ve all hacked in, and there’s not one valid firewall between the data and us."
My guess was the fact the identities of the transplant recipients were masked constituted adequate protection to management. After all, the recipients were the affluent few who could afford their services. The kidnapped kids were ghosts. Why protect the identities of ghosts—valuable ghosts, but ghosts nonetheless?
"How do we rescue Colby?" Stiff asked.
"We have enough to involve the police. They could bring him out legally, but it could take time. The police will want to verify the information first," I said.
Stiff added. "And if Bright Future thinks they are at risk of being shut down, they may decide to—"
Ck continued, "—liquidate their inventory. Teela, we can’t let that happen."
I hadn’t thought this far ahead. We had been at a standstill in our investigation for so long that it was a bit overwhelming how quickly things had come together once we found the right lead. It would be shameful to lose Colby now due to a poorly executed extraction plan.
No one was better with extractions than Jake. It was time to call in the big guns.
The coward in me wanted to pawn the job of talking to Jake off on Stiff. After all, I had disappeared out of Jake’s life as well. I wasn’t sure how he would react to me showing back up only to want something from him. But I knew I had to give Jake the opportunity to face me and say his piece.
So far, I’d been lucky. No one had denied my reentry into my friend zone, but at some point, my luck had to run out. Everyone’s luck ran out eventually.
If I was going to do this, I wouldn’t be doing it caffeine-free. I took five minutes to make coffee and sat out on the porch before calling Jake.
He picked up on the first ring.
"Is everything alright?" Jake asked.
"Hello. Yes. I’m fine. You? How are the boys?"
"The boys are fine. I’m fine. Why did you call, Teela?"
"We found Colby."
"Where?"
I provided Jake with all the details.
"Let me check into it. I’ll call you back."
"Thanks, Jake. We are worried if we wait for the police, the organization will get rid of Colby."
"Teela, welcome back."
The line went dead.
I sat on the porch and watched the fog dissipate from over the treetops while I finished my coffee. I was going to miss this. I’d never sell this place, but it wouldn’t be the same using the cabin as a vacation home as making it a true home as I had for all these weeks. I had faith the tradeoff would be worth it, though.
Working with Stiff and CK again reminded me how much I enjoyed being a part of something bigger. And then there was Alec. He was my heart. I could not picture a long-distance relationship with him, and he could not live here full time, not and run his business.
It was time to go back to the city. I’d planned to wait until I’d finished Eugene’s project as well, but it could be done from my office at Crazy Code. I needed to be closer to my work unit, and I needed to be more accessible while we rescued Colby. What if they needed me?
Yeah, that sounded ridiculous. My entire platform was online. All the on the ground work was in Jake’s purview. Considering my past performances, that was debatable as well, but I’d promised Alec I would stop taking chances. And I was literally in the mountains, avoiding being important to anyone’s life. No one needed me. Not really.
"Get a life, Teela! Trust the process."
I set about preparing the cabin for closure while I waited for Jake to reach back out. I hated the thought of disposing of all the fresh fruits and vegetables Estelle had delivered, so I boxed them up. Maybe I could find a home for them on the way through town. I had to stop anyway to gas up, so dropping off the produce wouldn’t slow me down.
Stiff called, "Take a look at this."
He passed a security feed through to my phone. For the first time, I saw a breathing, moving Colby as he walked down the hall hand in hand with an elderly man in a white doctor’s coat. The boy had a patch over one eye. He wore a red and white striped shirt and skater shorts. The shorts must have been a little big in the waist because he periodically tugged them up with his free hand.
I almost cried. It was one thing to see pictures and hear the stories from CK. It was another thing to see Colby as a walking, breathing, real boy. I wanted to hug him up and kiss away all his boo-boos. I wanted to take away all the pain he must have experienced. But I couldn’t because I was here, and he was over a thousand miles away.
"What did Jake say?" Stiff said.
"He is checking it out. He will get back to us."
My phone lit up with another incoming call.
