"And Katie," I asked pathetically, but had to know. "She knows and is on board with this?"

"Of course, she's on board, you idiot!" If Morti was acting, he was certainly well-practiced at it. "She's doing the heavy lifting while you'll be sitting at home, writing code for video games, or watching porn, waiting for her return. They won't be fucking twenty-four-seven, in sex marathons, like your tiny brain will be imagining. We have far more important things to do. They'll spend most of their time making me and the board more money.

"You have my word she won't be harmed," he switched directions. "She'll return home Monday evening like a normal workday. Further, you needn't worry about disease, pregnancy, or any of those unsavory issues. She'll be treated with respect, just as you will."

"Respect," I said indifferently. "Doesn't seem like you understand the word."

"On the contrary," he replied. "We understand completely. You'll be expected to carry on with Katie as before. Love, cherish, trust, endearment, and of course, respect."

He got up and headed back to where he'd been earlier. "And don't you question for one minute that woman's love for you! I've had at least two hundred other women in her position. Katie was one of the hardest sells ever." He seemed upset about that.

"She threatened, cajoled, and even tried to bargain with us. With ME! Usually, Jack can handle things on his own. I'm beyond impressed with that young lady. If I wanted it, I'd take her from you and mold her into one of us but that isn't what she wants. For some reason, she wants a mundane, boring life with a 'nobody' like you.

"So, you're going to play along," he spat, turning toward me. "There's no one for you to turn to. Nowhere for you to go. If you pass wind during these next two years, I'll know about it. If you treat her like shit - let your fragile ego get in the way - it won't bode well for you either. I need her at her best. You can play along and start a life you've always wanted in two years or you can simply die. The choice is yours."

"When did you concoct this plan?" I had to know that, too. "When did you start colluding with her to become the company whore?" Mortimer looked up over me again. I felt a hard slap on the left side of my head that sent me to the floor.

"That's a very bad start, Weston," he warned. "Don't you ever disparage Jack's assistant. Ever."

The other guy lifted me like a rag doll and sat me back up in the chair. "Mr. Weston, we're finished here and I need to get back to the festivities. Monday morning, you'll report to HR for your termination interview and displacement of your funds and benefits. Do not fuck this up or it will be the last thing you ever do."

The same guy lifted my head and stepped back. I felt a sharp pain in my left shoulder and as I was losing consciousness, I noticed the two leads and wires attached to whatever was burning my shoulder.

>>>>

I woke up with a splitting headache. Even sitting up was excruciating so I gently put my head back down on the pillow and rubbed my temples.

The second thing I noticed was that I was in my own bed. In our bed - probably her bed - after this weekend. I couldn't see sleeping with her again after her time with Jack Powers, despite the threats.

Trying to get my bearings, I wondered, 'What the fuck had happened?' The events of the prior evening were so surreal I had a tough time believing they'd happened at all. Instead, my thoughts went to Katie, trying to get myself grounded. My wife wasn't in bed with me nor did I hear any noises within our home. That meant I wasn't dreaming. I couldn't remember how or when I went to bed.

That forced me to my feet. I was rubbing my left shoulder as I made my way to first the guest room, then downstairs. In the living room - no Katie - nor in the kitchen. I opened the kitchen door to the garage. Both of our cars were there. She wasn't home. It wasn't a dream.

Putting on some coffee, I popped three Advil, chasing it with a full glass of water. I realized my bladder was begging for release. I skipped the downstairs bathroom and headed for mine in the master.

That's where I found the dagger. A note in Katie's handwriting was taped to the mirror.

Good Morning, Baby,

I'm sorry you got sick at the party last night. I gave you three Advil before putting you to bed to help with your morning headache. I'm also sorry I had to leave so early for the merger conference. Because it's in Belize, I'll have my phone off. Please don't call me. I'll do my best to call you from the hotel. I know you always worry about me and that's sweet. Don't worry, my love. Everything will be fine and I'll see you Monday night. Get some rest and feel better.

I love you, Mr. Weston

Katie

That was it. I'm not proud that I slid down the wall to the floor and wept in the fetal position. My head hurt worse afterward but it was cathartic. My liver would probably fail by nightfall with all the Ibruprofen. I needed some food, pronto. The hot water of the shower helped settle my inner turmoil.

I sat at the table eating four eggs, sunny side up, half a dozen sausage links, and an English muffin, rereading her note looking for something that wasn't there. I knew there was no conference. Was it her way of letting me know where she was? Perhaps, Mortimer had lied. Maybe Katie had been tricked or worse, taken and held against her will.

Denial had kicked in - full force. The other side was, she could be in on it. Why then all the pomp and circumstance from Biggs? If he was that powerful, he could crush me without telescoping everything. I'd have to think more about that.

It also dawned on me that at least for now, I'd need to approach the situation as if it were a tech issue on my job. Work the problem backward, prove things, one at a time, which allowed me to eliminate others.

First, were there any obvious tells with Katie that I'd missed? I started making notes as I gobbled the food and poured a larger mug of coffee.

Katie and I met after college. I'd just graduated from Gonzaga with a computer science and engineering degree. My dual field of study was software architecture. Katie had a marketing degree and was self-taught in graphics arts. Beyond that, her organizational skills were off the charts.

One of the first things that Katie and I discovered we had in common was that we were both orphans.

That wasn't quite accurate, at least not in the way most people think of an orphan. Her drunken father had flown the coop when Katie was seven. From what she could remember, her mother tried her hardest at first. The way Katie described it, the family didn't have much to begin with. Eventually, Mom turned to drugs and alcohol. Things went downhill from there. Her mother committed suicide three days before Katie's tenth birthday.

Katie had it a lot tougher than me, whether in group homes or with foster parents. In comparison, my last foster parents treated me as one of their own from the time I arrived at age fourteen until I came of age. They actually offered to let me stay through graduation and for the summer since my birthday was in April. Being an older couple, they'd fostered for nearly twenty years and they had determined I'd be their last. They retired to Florida when I started college and they moved to Germany a year later.

Katie was already working at Worldview when we met.

Looking back, I had struggled to find a soulmate aspect other than our shared childhood experiences. We both liked metal music and football. I, of course, was a Seahawks fan, but Katie had some affinity for the Pittsburgh Steelers. When I asked her, she said it was their uniform colors.

The rest of our shared likes centered around our future. Having been in the 'system,' Katie and I had talked and planned at length about starting and maintaining our family. Two kids, or three if the first two were of the same sex. We had long detailed conversations about schools, discipline, and how to guide their morals.

We talked about it all the time, even on long hikes and camping trips. We discussed our domestic situation and where we were headed versus where we wanted to eventually be. How much we wanted and needed to make, how to maximize our earnings and sound investments, when we would hire a financial consultant to guide us.

I'm sure most of it was our strong desire to break the cycle. Of course, those conversations often led to serious talks about marriage and fidelity, especially, faithfulness, trust, and respect.

It dawned on me that if Biggs and his cronies did any decent amount of digging at all, Katie and I would probably check most, if not all, of their boxes. We'd be like a gift to exploit. That is, except for the fidelity aspect, which I supposed was either their carrot or stick.

I felt the urge to call my foster Dad in Germany and get some advice. I tamped that down for two reasons. First, I didn't know exactly what I was dealing with and didn't want to drag them into anything that could cause them any trouble. Secondly, I had the urge to prove that I could take care of myself.

For all I knew, Biggs, Powers, and my wife could be watching me eat breakfast on some sort of live feed and laughing at me. Paranoia was beginning to set in.

By lunchtime, some of the fog had cleared and I decided that two things needed my attention before I could make choices about my next steps. The first thing, without getting ahead of myself, was to find out if Katie was a willing participant. Replaying all our conversations over the past three-and-a-half years, I could see her possibly being enticed by the money, the power, and the promise of a high life.

If she'd been offered what Biggs alluded to, I could see my wife putting up a gallant, albeit half-hearted fight. It would certainly play on her fears of failure. I knew she worried about the possibility of becoming her bio-parents, as I sometimes worried about myself. The difference for me had been those late teen years when my self-esteem and self-worth had been built up. I even remembered how inwardly jealous she was about my parents being at the wedding. I found that odd since they helped pay for it.

Beyond that, I decided to learn everything I could about Worldview, Inc. and those rich pricks. While it would be slightly more difficult without my job, I still had the same skills I'd used to hack their system and get that job in the first place. In many ways, a computer at the public library could garner me as much information as any other system. I'd probably need a new tablet for sending information. I'd also need to ensure I had a rotating IP address.

It hit me. I had my co-worker, Victor Davis' tablet in my backpack. He'd gotten a little sideways watching porn on his work unit and had offered me some side money to wipe it clean. That would prove useful, especially if I needed to embed a phish or spyware into Worldview's system. It would also provide an easy backdoor that would be hard to trace.

Katie texted me Sunday morning. I heard nothing from her on Saturday.

Hi Honey. The merger concluded without a hitch. Our resort is right on the ocean and the accommodation is over the top. It's so beautiful here! Having so much fun.

Then I received another just moments later:

Hope you're feeling better. Miss you bunches and see you Monday!

My very first thought came with uncontrollable rage. Was the fucking bitch rubbing her affair in my face? What else could it be? The more I calmed down, though, I saw it differently. The text sounded as antiseptic as her note and, unlike how she usually talked or texted. It was possible she'd been coached on what to say or outright told what to say.

Upsettingly, it was more mysterious with no questions answered. During dinner, I looked around our home, trying to decide where I could sit and work on my laptop without being noticed. I'd looked around Saturday in vain for recording devices and found nothing. I'd even checked the garage for a server - a ghost laptop, with an external hard drive - but found nothing.

Walking back to the house from the detached garage I saw it, and it was purely by accident. Just a little eighth of a white circle rising above the top of the eave's trough at the corner of the house. With the gutters being white, everything blended in. I got up into the attic and there it was in the same corner of the house.

The powerful laptop was connected to a small tower. A cable went through a small drilled-hole ledger just below the roof into what appeared to be a military-grade indoor-outdoor router. Whoever had set this up had done it dozens of times before. The quality of the equipment was impressive. It would have been more so if it wasn't there to spy on me.

My first thought had been to disconnect and remove it. My second thought was to call the cops since I now had at least some proof of these unreal circumstances.

But what did I really have? It could have made me appear even more paranoid or even crazy. Then I thought about Katie. I was still of the mind that she was in on the whole thing or at least a slightly reluctant participant, but I couldn't be sure of that. Was I to trust that maniac Biggs without hearing my wife out first? No, was the answer to that.

After plenty of consideration, I decided to play along until I could talk to my wife. If things were as Biggs had said, she might even be in danger if I were to try and thwart them just then. I could make some plans rather than risk both our lives.

So, I sat at the far end of our kitchen table with only a slider that exited our patio and a bare wall behind me. There'd be no unwanted surveillance happening unless Biggs and Worldview had Navy Seals at their disposal. For new thoughts and ideas, I used a pen and notepad.

I wrote only what I knew in bullet points and, whatever I still needed to learn below each, as my way of organizing. I decided to take what Mortimer had told me as fact because it was also the worst-case scenario but wrote questions regarding the things he'd said that seemed to defy logic.

For example, it seemed highly unlikely that Biggs would be so eager to reveal some of their 'secrets' if he was part of some powerful worldwide group unless he was so powerful it didn't matter what he said.

Surely, he didn't need to bolster his position or convince me. But, then again, maybe he did. People like he built himself up to be could easily grab me up and dump my body in a remote area.

Finding out whose side Katie was on was paramount. I then wrote the word 'side.' That wasn't exactly what I needed to discover. Katie could be only on her own side, for all I knew. She may also be 'siding' with Biggs and Powers because she delusionally thought it to be in our best future interests. She'd quickly learn how wrong she was if that was the case.

That brought me back to Victor and his tablet. I quickly set up a trojan that would gain me access to accounts payable and receivable and attached it to an email, with a system restart link. Once Victor followed the instructions, I'd have access to start searching for older and abandoned receivable accounts and if any of them had forgotten money, I could begin siphoning little by little. I would also find and use a former employee to gain access to other useful email information. Finally, I texted Victor to come by to get his equipment.

It started with one drink to settle my nerves. I'd told myself to take it easy even before I began. However, one led to two, and two led to four. It was damned good whiskey too, the kind that made me start to feel sorry for myself. Somewhere along the way, I decided to test some theories related to the surveillance devices in my attic. All day I'd been careful. I worked on my tablet for a while then I did some household chores. I'd get on the iPad again and do some more digging, then I'd pretend to look for something to do, trying to seem lost. I wanted to appear defeated if anyone was indeed watching me.

I should have turned on the TV and watched a hockey game or some mindless comedy. Instead, I fumed and stewed. At one point, I threw the empty bottle at the living room wall. It missed the large framed wedding photo above our fireplace by inches. Then I paced back and forth across the floor trying to get a grip on my rage. I found a bottle of Jameson in the kitchen cupboard, left over from a long-forgotten neighborhood party.

Three fingers of that liquid found me in our bedroom going through Katie's dresser drawers. I returned to the living room with a handful of Katie's panties and lingerie that I'd bought her over our time together. The gas fireplace went on and I didn't even wait for it to heat up, tossing the garments over the fake logs.

After another hefty swig, I went into our shared office and opened our safe. I found the marriage license and was also reminded that my Sig Sauer 9mm was there but had no use for it at that moment. Walking back to the fireplace, I debated tossing the document into the flames. That's not accurate. I fought the inner turmoil with equally matched voices in my head telling me what to do. It ended up on the kitchen table with the Jameson.

In the garage, I found my axe. Going to our bedroom I surveyed the furniture. The bed was no match for the axe. I would have kept going with the destruction if I hadn't been so out of breath. The axe would need a good sharpening before I used it again.

Another glass of whiskey and a beer chaser found me in my favorite chair where I soon passed out. The morning was worse than Saturday when I woke up. I was severely hung over and disoriented. The alarm clock said twelve-thirty. It hit me that the email I'd discovered over the weekend had me scheduled in HR at one. Fuck it. They could wait.

I strolled in at one-thirty-five, head held high. I waved and smiled at some of my co-workers on my way to 'the pit,' as we all called it.

It took Mr. Walker much longer than expected with paperwork and explanations galore. Converting my 401k into an IRA. It hardly mattered as I hadn't accumulated much. Cobra Insurance. Endless forms. I was certain someone was getting their jollies from my misery. It was past four when we finished.

"I need to see what you have in my file," I demanded.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Weston," Walker said. "I can't show it to you in the exit interview. I will, by law, mail copies of everything to you this afternoon."

"I need to get some of my personal belongings in my cubicle," I stated just as flatly.

"That's been taken care of by your wife, sir." He came right back with it. So, Katie was back. Suddenly I thought of another reason the termination had taken the entire afternoon.

My suspicions were confirmed as I pulled onto my street and saw the Porsche Carrera parked in my drive. The hood was still warm as I made my way to the front door. I took a very deep breath and went in.

Jack and Katie sat on the sofa - my sofa - next to each other but not close enough to be touching in any way. As soon as I walked in, Jack rose to his feet. Katie just sat there until he motioned that she should also stand. That simple act was so surreal it sent a shiver down my spine. I guess Jack not only wanted to fuck her, but he owned her as well.

"Welcome home, Andrew," he said in his most convivial, business-like tone. "I trust you had a busy last day at Worldview?" It felt like an ambush, which of course, it was. Maybe he planned to goad me into attacking him, but that wouldn't have fit Bigg's script. I didn't answer right away. I was trying to figure out what the smug prick was doing in my house. I didn't have to wait long.

"I thought we needed to meet properly, I mean," he continued. "Face to face. I heard how unhappy and disappointed you were on Friday evening. How it was planned, I assure you, was not intended for effect or to cause pain, it was simply necessary."