I whimpered, and he tutted again.
“Well, you have to make up for all the time you were away from me. For such a long time, you just ran and hid. Do you know how hard I looked for you? That was naughty of you. You have to be punished.” He grinned nastily, and I closed my eyes, trying to control the rising panic. This was it. He finally had me. I thought of my poor parents and my friends and how they would suffer. I wished I could have at least told them goodbye. I thought about Gale and how he would be waiting for me. When would he realize what had happened? This was the end. I knew I wouldn’t escape him this time.
The sound of the phone ringing interrupted my thoughts, and I heard Joe answering it.
“Who is this?” he barked into the phone.
I opened my eyes and looked at him, and a wicked smile spread over his face.
“I am not sure I quite understand what you want me to do,” he said, his eyes narrowing. I didn’t like the look on his face one bit.
“And what’s in it for me?” he asked. Again, silence as he listened to the reply and smirked.
“That sounds like a plan,” he said and put his phone away.
“Looks like our time has not yet come, little bird,” he whispered, “but we will be together soon.” With that, he slapped me so hard that my vision blurred, and my head started to throb. He slapped me again, harder, and punched me in the stomach.
“This is for running away from me!” He laughed as he continued to shower blow after blow on me. All I could feel was pain and agony as blood ran down my skin. His insane laughter filled my ears as he continued to beat me. And then, finally, the cool embrace of the darkness surrounded me, and everything went black.
Chapter 3
Suspicious Happenings
Gale Fears
“What do you mean we have lost all our cases,” I thundered as I marched towards my office.
“Someone hacked into our online system,” Seth said with a dazed expression, “and erased all our files. Every single case file we had is gone.”
“How?” I roared. “How did they get past our security? I thought the system couldn’t be hacked!”
“Technically, every system can be hacked,” John, the head of IT, said. “But it is near impossible to hack into ours. I honestly have no idea how they did it. I have my entire team looking into it.”
“Do you realize what this means?” I shouted. “Do you understand? Without case files, we have lost all our hard work. Years and years of hard work! All our evidence. All our court filing. All our data. It’s all gone. Technically we have lost every single case already! How will we fight the cases without all the paperwork! Everything is ruined! I might as well set fire to the entire firm with you all in it!”
“Mr. Fears, we are looking into it,” John said.
“And what will that do?” I growled. “Will it bring all my files back? Will it save this firm?”
“What is going on, Gale?” I heard my father’s voice, and I cursed. How the hell had he found out so soon?
“Seth, brief him,” I said, unable to concentrate on anything right now.
As Seth explained what had happened, my mind ran over all the possible solutions. And I couldn’t think of a single one that could work.
“I told you,” my father said. “I warned you against setting up a digital system. You said I was against modernization. This is what I was afraid of. Computers can be hacked! If all this data had been on paper, the hacker would have had an impossible time getting rid of it. You talked of it being better for the environment and—.”
“We have some of the cases on paper still,” I said, my mind racing.
“Only the current ones,” Seth said. “Everything else was digitized.”
“Is there no backup?” Father asked.
“Of course not,” I said. “Backing it up to the cloud would compromise security.”
“Well, you might as well have had,” he said. “So much for security.”
“John,” I said. “I need the data recovered. We can find out how they hacked later on. Right now, I need my data back. See if anything can be done.”
