I turn to Taylor and Welch. Barely keeping control, I tell them in a low but clear voice, "I want everyone, and I mean everyone, in this company to get a complete background check. I don't care how long they've worked for me, I don't care who they are, I don't care how recently they've had a check, I want you to run every search you can on them. I want you to go back to their childhoods, their parents' childhoods, even their grandparents' childhoods if anything looks at all hinky in their backgrounds. Start with the Seattle employees. I'll expect summaries by end of day tomorrow and a complete report by Monday. After that, continue with the other cities, starting with the South African offices. And no one is to know except for the three of us."
"Yes, sir," they both respond in unison. Welch moves to take the laptop and I stop him immediately, "Leave that here." He backs away instantly.
"Anything else, sir?" Taylor asks.
"As a matter of fact, there is," I answer. They look at me expectantly. "You two will investigate each other and submit your reports to me by Friday morning." For a brief moment, there's a look of surprise on both their faces but it disappears instantly.
"Yes, sir," they respond again.
"That is all." With that, they leave my office.
I go back to my desk and plop into my chair. Staring at the laptop on the other side of my office I have a million thoughts swimming in my head. Primary among them is the safety of my wife and son. Oh, god, I don't want to live if anything ever happened to Ana or Teddy. I contemplate sending them away but only for a moment – we were stalked in fucking South Africa! Nowhere is safe. I have to keep them near me.
Elbows on my desk, I hold my head in my hands. There's an unpleasant thought niggling in the back of my brain, maybe pieces of a half-remembered dream, I don't know. All I know is, as much as I hate to, I have to share this with Ana. It's the right thing to do although every instinct I have right now is to shelter her from this. But I know she'll find out eventually and if I haven't told her, then we'll have to investigate surrogacy for the new baby because she'll have my balls.
Taking out my cellphone I call her direct line but Hannah answers. She informs me that Ana's in a meeting and I tell her to interrupt it. My wife's on the line in less than a minute and I tell her to cut her day short and meet me at home. She knows by my tone that protesting would be a waste of time and after telling her I'll send Sawyer right away, we hang up. Another call to Taylor to pull the car out front and to tell Sawyer to pick up Ana and I'm almost ready.
After ejecting the usb drive I close the laptop and put the drive in my jacket pocket. By the time I'm downstairs Taylor's there, holding the car door open for me. As soon as I'm inside I open the laptop and reinsert the drive. I study each of the pictures, trying to get a sense of their timing; the whole slideshow seems to be in chronological order. The ones in the very beginning have only Ana and look like they were taken shortly after Teddy's birth; she's still carrying some baby weight. There are fifteen shots in total and they span the last twelve months or so. I go through the show again, looking for more clues. By the time we get to the house I don't know much more than when I first saw the pictures.
As we pull up to the front door, Ana's car pulls up right behind us. I get out and run over to her; she's opening her door and as she gets out I practically drag her out of the car. Saying nothing I envelop her in my arms, taking in her sweet scent, relishing the feel of her firm, solid body.
She wraps her arms around my waist and presses her head against my chest. We stay like that for at least half a minute before she kisses my lapel and looks up at me. "Christian, what's this about? You're scaring me."
Reluctantly letting go of her, I take her hand and say, "You'll see." Taylor's waiting by the door holding the laptop and I tell him to set it up in my office. Before going there we stop at the kitchen to retrieve our son and say hi to Gail. Ana stays to fix herself a cup of tea; I tell her I'll see her at my desk, then I go the liquor cabinet and pour myself a couple fingers of scotch.
Once we're settled and the laptop's ready, I tell her what little I know and then start the slideshow. Since I've already seen it several times I'm studying her reaction now. Like the first time I saw it, she seems unaffected at the beginning, maybe a little puzzled, but as the show progresses I see her concern becoming more and more apparent. When she sees the final shot, she looks closely at the screen, then looks at me with a puzzled expression and asks, "Christian, who is that you're with?"
What the fuck!?
"Ana!" I answer in disbelief, "That's you!"
"It is?" she squeaks and looks back at the screen.
"Yes!" I'm struggling to control my voice. "Remember you wore a red wig?"
Turning to me, then back to the screen, she says, "Oh my god, right! I forgot about that. Oh shit, then this is the club in Johannesburg!" Realization finally sinks in. Her hands go to her face and she looks at me again, obviously distressed. She slumps back in her chair and lets her hands drop. "I'm so sorry, Christian, I just didn't recognize myself and couldn't figure out who the hell that was. I thought maybe someone was blackmailing you!"
"You really thought I was with another woman?"
"NOOOOOO!" she wails, "I thought someone photoshopped it! Oh, baby, I'd never think that of you. That's why I was so baffled. It wasn't until you pointed it out that I recognized the setting. I know you'd never cheat on me." She climbs onto my lap and wraps her arms around me.
"So what do you think this means?" she asks, concern apparent in her voice. I'm still a little miffed about her reaction but that doesn't stop me from hugging her.
"I'm not sure, especially now that you bring up the idea of blackmail," I answer. That never occurred to me; my first thought was that this was a warning about a possible kidnapping or hostage situation. But what Ana's thinking makes sense; the pictures of my wife and son show me what I have to lose. If the person behind this isn't aware that that was Ana in the red wig, he might think he has something on me.
Ana shifts and looks at me. "What did you think it was before I brought up blackmail?"
Oh, I really don't want to answer her question but there's no avoiding it. "I thought whoever's behind this might be planning a kidnapping or taking a hostage." There's a look of horror on her face now and it's tearing me apart.
"Oh my god, Christian, what if you're right? What are we going to do?"
I draw her close to me again; resting my chin on top of her head I tell her, "I'm taking care of it, baby. No one is messing with my family. Promise me you'll listen to Sawyer and Taylor?"
"Okay, I promise," she says in a small voice. She gets off my lap and moves back to her chair. "How did they know it was you at the club? You used an alias."
"Yeah, that's been really bothering me. Whoever this was obviously used some kind of hidden camera. Remember we had to surrender our cellphones at the reception area?" She nods in agreement.
"Has Taylor found out any more about Gary Lesourd or Larry Sordo?"
"Not anything beyond what you already know. Once I got these pictures I put him and Welch on a different project." She raises her eyebrows and I continue, "They're investigating everyone in the company and I mean everyone."
"That's a rather daunting project."
"I don't care. If it's someone who's working for us that's behind this, I intend to flush him out and hang him by his nuts."
"I don't think it's anyone working for us, Christian."
"You don't? Well, if you think it's someone from the house renovation then we need to get the Eden project going. We're still meeting with the architect on Friday evening, right?"
"Yes, he'll be here at seven."
"Okay, then, why don't we see what Gail's making for dinner? We can talk more about this later." I stand up and she goes to the playpen to pick up Teddy.
As we leave my office, wonderful smells from the kitchen indicate something delicious is in the offing. We stop there on the way our bedroom to leave Teddy with Gail and to see what time dinner will be ready; Gail says it'll be about an hour.
When we get to our room, I grab my wife as she starts taking off her work clothes. Nuzzling her ear, I whisper, "We've got an hour, babe. What do you say we hit the clit?"
Giggling, she responds with, "Okay, but let's make it a quickie."
"You're on!" We strip immediately and hop on the bed. I do some oral prep work to make sure she's ready and then I glide right in. After a few minutes of furious fucking I hear and feel her explode; almost instantly I follow suit. I stay hard inside her and after a short pause I help her along to a couple more orgasms. When I'm sure she's had enough I roll off her and catch my breath.
Just then I have a thought and jump up to get my phone from my pants. I hit the speed dial and as soon as Welch answers I start right in, "Two more people to run checks on, Welch: Gail Jones Taylor and Carmela Irupram. Make sure you check financials on everyone. Look for expensive habits: drugs, gambling, cars, anything that would lead to excessive debt. Like I said earlier, summaries tomorrow evening and full reports Monday. Oh, and don't forget the flight crew for the jet." Without waiting for a response I hang up.
Ana's staring at me from the bed, mouth agape. "Gail, Christian? Seriously?"
I sit on the bed next to her and take her hand. "I told you, Taylor and Welch are running checks on everyone who works for us. I also told them to run checks on each other and give their reports to me. I'm not taking any chances with this, babe."
"But Gail?! Christian, she's worked for you for years! We trust her with our son!"
"Yes, and I'm sure she'll come up clean but like I said, I'm not taking any chances. Maybe someone's targeting her and she doesn't even know it." She shakes her head in disbelief.
"Ana, you saw that picture! In spite of all the precautions we took someone knew we were there and wants us to know that he knew! I've had wackos threaten me but nothing like this." She still looks skeptical but I'm not backing down.
"All right, so why don't you investigate Kate and Elliot, too?" she mutters sarcastically as she gets out of bed, "And Mia. And your parents. And my parents."
"Ana, that's enough! I'm doing what I know is best for my family!" I shout at her back as she heads for the bathroom. She waves her hand dismissively. "Whatever." God, I hate when she fights me on things like this.
By the time we've both had showers and are sitting at the breakfast bar we've cooled down a little. In spite of my earlier intentions I avoid talking about our stalker threat. Instead, we go over ideas for the garden so we're consistent about what we tell the architect on Friday. After dinner we settle down in the family room with Teddy while I go over some spreadsheets and Ana reads some book drafts. After a while, though, it becomes apparent that I can't really concentrate. I put down my laptop and look at her. As if reading my mind, she looks up and says, "You, too?" I nod.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asks.
"Not unless you can come up with a good idea as to who's behind this," I answer.
"Not a clue."
"Then maybe I'll turn in a little early."
"Think you might get a visitor tonight?"
"The thought crossed my mind."
"Okay, I'll join you in a bit. I just want to finish up a few things here."
"Okay, I'll tuck Teddy in."
I get up, give her a kiss, and pick up my son to take him to his room. As I go up the stairs I think about what she said earlier. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to investigate the family. Nah! That's crazy. A little paranoia is healthy; too much only keeps you from seeing the real threats.
After I've bathed Teddy and put on his pajamas, I settle in the rocker to sing him a lullaby. I generally sing whatever croony type tune that pops in my head and for some reason, tonight it's Moon River. He must like it since I only have to sing it once and he's fast asleep. I put him in his crib and cover him up, then stand there, just looking at him and gently stroking his soft hair.
"I'll do whatever it takes to keep you safe, baby boy."