Part C: Chapter 49

"His records are clean, there is no mention of him anywhere in any of the databases,” Mal said, turning around in his chair. Carter and I were behind watching him do his thing.
Carter and I both cursed under our breaths. We thought we would find something on this Julius guy which would lead us to Jemila but unfortunately even that was a dead end.

“The guy either doesn’t leave a digital footprint because he has no idea what the internet is or he simply has a really skilled guy who can erase it for him,” Mal continued. “Which would be strange and worth looking into if he wipes his digital footprint, then it means there is something that he is hiding.”

Carter turned to me with a worried expression. “Do you think he’s our guy or maybe we are just reading too much into it?”

I shrugged, not knowing what to think of this situation. When Julius had entered my office that day, he oozed money and there was no way such a man would not have a digital footprint. Was he hiding something that would lead us to her? I now had so many questions regarding this man and what his true intentions had actually been when he came asking for Jemila back as if she was his property and he decided what she did and where she went. Which also leads me to wonder how he knew where she was and why he had only decided to come looking for her after the first kidnapping.

“From the looks of it, we can’t rule him out just yet,” Mal said, pulling our attention back to him. “Just give me a few days and I’ll find something on this guy.”

“Then why did you say he has no digital footprint for you to track?” Carter’s eyebrows arched in confusion.

Mal rolled his eyes at him. “That’s because you both just showed up at my doorstep and asked me to look for a guy with no information to work with other than his name and apparent phone number which was a bust,” he replied coolly as he leaned back in his chair. “The number he gave you was obviously used in a burner phone and was just meant for immediate contact, after that, it was disposed of. Come on guys, we’ve been through this multiple times every time you show up or call asking for me to track someone for you.” He sounded so disappointed but I couldn’t care less what he thought of us. He was the one in charge of working with the computers and I had my own skill set in business.

“Yeah, yeah, no one really cares about that anyway,” Carter replied with a wave of his hand. “Just tell us how much time you need to find the information we need. And don’t waste our time like you did last time.” He was now glaring at Mal.

Mal raised his hands up in surrender as he pushed his chair back and away from Carter. “Look, things happen and I may have lost the initial information you had provided me after someone hacked my system.”

“You were hacked?” Carter and I asked at the same time.

“It was nothing serious, just some jerk online trying to start a war that they didn’t win.” Mal sounded confident as he said that but it had made me slowly lose my trust in him. If someone could hack him, what did that mean for all the confidential information I had shared with him. “Look, I can reassure you that they didn’t take any of the information because that was on my main one. They only hacked my personal one which I was using at the time to do the work since I was on vacation and it’s because you are regulars that I took the job.”

My eyes narrowed into thin slits. “Don’t you mean we pay you well enough to do your job more than anyone else?”

Mal shrugged as he spun around to look at the screens in front of him. “Think whatever you want and I will think whatever I want too,” he replied casually. “But I’m back now so that shouldn’t take me more than five days at most. I just have to reverse engineer the algorithm and I’ll be set with having all the information that he may have deleted or hidden. Easy work.”

“I will snap your neck if you are lying to us,” Carter growled. “And rest assured that I will hold myself to that threat.” He turned around and walked out of Mal’s office.

I sighed, “you know he’s not joking right?”

“Unfortunately, I know just how scary he can really be, so I’ll make sure to deliver in the stated time frame.”

“Good.” And then I also left his office.

Carter was outside leaning against my car looking very lost.

“You okay?” I asked as I unlocked the car and rounded the other side to get into the driver’s side.

Carter opened and closed his door with so much force. “Fine.”

I just sat there. “That’s my car you are treating like that, you know.” This was one of my favourite cars among the rest and I never let anyone drive it, not even Carter when he begged and pleaded with me for a whole year straight. It was a classic going at 160 per hour and one of the first sports cars of the post-war era. It had taken me years to finally get the Mercedes SL 300 Gullwing and had cost me a fortune but money wasn’t a problem.

“Crap, sorry,” Carter said with a sigh, “I forgot it’s your baby and you threatened to kill anyone that disrespected it.”

“Damn straight.”

I started the car and zoomed into the main road. “Do you really think he’s the one behind this?” I asked, quickly glancing at Carter who was staring straight ahead.
It took a while to respond because he seemed lost in thought just like before. “Maybe, maybe not and maybe we are just trying to pin the blame on someone who really doesn’t even know anything about any of this, much less wish harm on Jemila.”

I looked ahead as I stirred the car with one hand. “But all the evidence says otherwise. I think that traitor that Sean talked about might somehow be informing the actual mastermind behind this whole thing.” I glanced at him momentarily to gauge his reaction.

“That could be true, but we won’t know until either Ivan finds the traitor or Mal finds something on him or Sean finds something in his search,” he replied. “For now, all we can do is not give up hope because I can feel it deep down that she is still alive and out there waiting for us to find and bring her back home.”

We drove in silence after that, me focussing on driving us while Carter had his head propped back on the headrest.

“Shooting rink?” he finally broke the silence after thirty minutes of us driving.

“Sure, why the hell not,” I replied, changing directions and lanes. “We haven’t gone shooting in ages. Might help us place our thoughts in order.”

Carter just murmured something and that was how we ended up at the shooting rink shooting dummies as a way to relieve our stress. I was focussing on getting my targets at long range and imaging the dummy as the person who had kidnapped my Jemila.