“Well, she didn’t come with me in the car, I ran out of there as soon as I realized the library might be in danger.” Jade. When Jade might be in danger, my head doesn’t let me forget. “Maybe she came afterwards. Do you think she got caught in the fire?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think of that. Surely, they’d know by now… I mean, they’ve… um, started combing through the wreckage.”
The thought of my assistant lying in the burnt ashes of the library makes me dry retch, my stomach muscles squeezing, pushing the bile up my throat. Xavier grabs a waste bin and holds it up for me.
“Dude,” he cringes, his reaction to seeing me weak.
“Find out. Now.”
HER
Xavier’s car is waiting by the time I walk out of Kaine’s apartment building.
“How is he?”
“He’s getting better.”
“Can I come visit?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“I think… not just yet.”
“This is freaking stupid, Xavier.”
“I agree, but he needs to be focused on other things right now. You guys have the rest of your lives.”
“Which could’ve been cut very short just a day ago!”
“I know. Just… look, how about you help me figure out what’s going on? You’ve been so close to Kaine lately, maybe we’re missing something, he’s missed something. I’m going to the office now. Tell me everything he’s told you on the way, maybe he’s shared something with you he didn’t tell me.”
“And then maybe you can do me the same favour.”
***
It’s strange entering Kaine’s office without him.
There’s only supposed to be a skeleton staff on today, the core essentials working on the phones, fielding calls about the fire, and those who have urgent assignments. Kaine had his Vice President send out a memo, stating that everyone could stay at home to recover from the ordeal, and even those who hadn’t been there could take a day off to support each other.
But when we get to ASH Industries, it seems it’s busier than ever.
“Why are there so many people here?” I ask Xavier as we watch them while we travel up Kaine’s private elevator.
“I don’t know. They know they have the day off, I guess… I suppose they all just wanted to come to work.”
“Maybe it’s easier to be together right now, than apart,” I say, and Xavier doesn’t miss the meaning.
“Maybe.”
“If only Kaine felt that way.”
“He does. He just… feels other things as well.”
“You know him well.”
“Probably only second to you.”
“How do you two even know each other?”
“Let’s just say… we both have a similar life goal.” A soft smile drifts over Xavier’s face.
“Care to share?”
“No,” comes the curt answer.
“So, same in that regard as well.” I give him a weak smile just as the elevator doors open.
The floor is dark and deathly quiet. Not even the hum of computers or lights.
Xavier throws a look at me, and it conveys his similar uneasiness. There’s something so strange about being here without Kaine. Or even Jemima.
He goes straight to Kaine’s desk, going through the letters and papers there, looking for clues.
I don’t really know what to look for. I might have been his personal confidante but I don’t know that much about his business.
I wander around, looking for a light switch. But knowing Kaine and how high tech he is, it could be hidden anywhere, or eyeball activated, or something that will just leave me at a dead end.
There’s a pile on Jemima’s desk and I wander over there. I’m surprised to see how messy it is, compared to the other times I’ve been there. I sit down in her chair and spin it around, surprised at how close Kaine’s desk seems from here, through the glass. I wonder if she spent hours staring at him through it. Dreaming up her day dreams of them being in love, I wonder.
I spin the chair back and my hand slaps up against her computer.
It springs awake. Asking for a password.
“Xavier? Do you know how I can get into Jemima’s computer? There’s a password.”
“Yeah, Kaine has a master password. Only he has it. Let me get it from him.”
I watch him put the phone to his ear, and then faint sound of talking.
I want to run over there and rip the phone from his ear and yell at Kaine, make him tell me why he’s doing this. Keeping me from him. But I don’t. Because I as much as I love him, my heart’s taken a beating.
“Jade? Try this: AI_VA22801_JS,” Xavier calls out to me from Kaine’s desk.
I type it in and as I do, I realize what it is. A combination of his company, my initials, and my grandparent’s zip code in Harrisonburg. The screen goes blurry as I watch it freeze as it attempts log in.
There’s a soft ding, as the company logo appears on the screen, along with some opened programs.
“I’m in!” I announce. “What should I look for?”
“If I knew we wouldn’t be here. I don’t know, see if there’s anything that doesn’t make sense.”
I click on the open programs, there’s an open word document, with a list of names from an internal email server. Nothing that means anything to me.
There’s a browser icon and I click on it. It opens to a Facebook page, Jemima’s. Seeing her face conjures up a mix of emotions. Confusion over where she is, and if she’s okay, to remembering her kissing Kaine that night at the pre-launch party. “She’s done it before,” he said. Like that’s supposed to make it better.
I press hard on the mouse, angrily clicking through her photos. It doesn’t look like she posts much, maybe once a week or so, so it doesn’t take long to go quite far back.
My eyes start to glaze over as I click obsessively through the photos. I don’t know why I’m torturing myself like this. Maybe I’m looking for some evidence that there was more between them than there really was. Something, anything, to explain him suddenly pushing me away.
But there aren’t any picture of her with him.
Just her with friends and family. She seems quite obsessed with tagging and captioning though.
There’s one with a big group of her family.
“Kerry, Joe, Gail, Devon,” I read through the names.
And then one face looks slightly familiar. I zoom in. Where do I know that face from? I zoom in closer. Oh, it’s the man who came to do the installations at the library. Emerald Earring Man. I hadn’t realized he was Jemima’s cousin.
“Xavier? Did you know Jemima’s cousin works for ASH Industries as well? Has someone asked him if he’s heard from her?”