Chapter 5 A cry for help

FRANK

There's an attachment. A technical analysis, forty-seven pages long, written in Audrey's precise, methodical style. She always wrote code documentation like she was explaining quantum physics to a five-year-old – thorough, clear, and completely unforgiving.

I scan through it. Thirteen different ways someone could infiltrate our systems. Thirteen different vulnerabilities that shouldn't exist, documented with the kind of detail that makes my palms sweat.

This isn't just good. This is brilliant. This is the kind of security analysis that companies pay six figures for, and she's just handed it to me like a grocery list.

At the bottom of the document, there's a phone number and a single line: *Frank, someone's coming for you. I think they've had quite a lot of time planning this. I wouldn't have contacted you, but there are kids involved now.*

Kids involved now.

I stare at that phrase until the words start to blur together. Kids involved now. Kids. Plural. Or maybe she just meant it generally, like when people say "think of the children" in disaster movies.

Morena's still standing in my doorway, waiting for me to process the magnitude of what she just told me. Three major contracts terminated simultaneously. The foundation of my company crumbling in real time.

But all I can think about is Audrey's email. The fact that she reached out after EIGHT years of silence. The fact that she's apparently living in Boulder, Colorado, a place I've never been and never thought about visiting.

The fact that she mentioned kids.

"Morena, I need you to handle the client situation. Set up meetings, figure out what they're really concerned about, see if there's a way to salvage this."

"Frank, this isn't something I can just handle. These are billion-dollar contracts. We need a full board meeting, crisis management, media strategy–"

"I know what we need. I also know you're the best CTO in the industry and you can buy me some time."

She looks at me like I've just suggested we solve our problems with interpretive dance. "Time for what?"

"Personal matter."

"Personal matter? Frank, our company is imploding and you want to handle a personal matter?"

I'm on my feet before I realize I've decided anything, jacket in hand. The chair's still spinning behind me.

"Frank, where are you going?"

"Colorado."

"Colorado? What's in Colorado?"

I pause at the door. What's in Colorado? A woman who used to make me coffee at midnight when I was debugging code. A woman who could solve problems I couldn't even see. A woman who walked away from everything we built together and apparently never looked back.

A woman who just told me someone's coming for me, and kids are involved.

"Someone who might have answers."

I can see the worry spreading across Morena's face. Five years we've worked together, and I've never walked out on her like this.

I could tell her. I could explain about Audrey, about the email, about the growing certainty that our company's implosion isn't random bad luck. But how do you explain eight years of pretending you don't have a heart? How do you admit that everything you built was just a way to fill the hole someone left behind?

"I'll call you when I can."

"Frank–"

But I'm already walking away, my mind spinning. Someone planned this. They knew exactly how to get to me - through her, through the one person I never stopped thinking about. They knew I'd drop everything.

The elevator doors slide shut and I catch my reflection in the metal. I look tired. I look like a man who's been running from something for eight years, only to find out it's been chasing him the whole time.

I pull out my phone and dial the number Audrey included in her email.

It rings twice before a voice I haven't heard in eight years says, "Romano Consulting."

Professional. Guarded. Nothing like the soft morning voice I used to wake up to.

"It's me."

Long pause. "Frank."

Just my name, but she says it like she's testing the weight of it. Like she's surprised it still fits in her mouth.

"You said someone's coming for me."

"Not just you. Me too. And other people in my life who don't deserve to get caught in whatever this is."

Other people in her life. Kids, maybe. The kids she mentioned in her email.

"Audrey, what people?"

"It doesn't matter right now. What matters is that someone's been systematically mapping your business relationships, your security protocols, your daily routines. They have access to information that should be impossible to get."

"How do you know all this?"

"Because they came after me first. Three weeks ago."

Three weeks ago. While I was sitting in board meetings and client calls, completely oblivious to the fact that someone was already setting the pieces in motion.

"What did they do?"

"Little things at first. My client database got corrupted. My bank account was frozen for 'suspicious activity.' My internet kept getting mysteriously interrupted. Then yesterday..."

"Yesterday what?"

"Someone hacked into my daughter's school."

The words hit me like a physical blow. My daughter's school.

"Your daughter?"

"She's seven. She's brilliant and stubborn and she didn't deserve to spend yesterday afternoon scared because some psychopath decided to use children as leverage."

Seven years old. Brilliant and stubborn.

I do the math without meaning to. Eight years since Audrey left. Seven-year-old daughter.

"Audrey..."

"I fixed it. Obviously. But Frank, whoever did this knows things about both of us that they shouldn't know. They're not just hackers. This is personal."

Personal. Seven years old. Brilliant and stubborn.

"When's her birthday?"

Long pause. "Frank, don't."

"When is her birthday?"

"March fifteenth."

March fifteenth, 2018. Nine months after the last night we spent together. Nine months after she disappeared from my life without explanation.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Audrey."

"Frank–"

"I have a daughter." The words feel strange in my mouth. Like trying on clothes that don't fit. "Seven years, Audrey. Seven years you've been doing this alone, and I never even knew she existed."

"You built something real. Something that matters. Why would you want to dig up old mistakes?"

"I have a daughter," I repeat, and the weight of it settles deeper. "You've been raising my child alone for seven years and you never told me?"

"I tried to tell you back then. Remember? You were so focused on making the company bigger, better, faster. I used to lie awake listening to you on calls at midnight, making deals that made my stomach turn. When I found out I was pregnant, I knew I couldn't bring a child into whatever you were becoming. I barely recognized you anymore."

"So you made the decision for all of us."

"I made the decision that was best for her."

Best for her. Not for me. Not for us. For her. For my daughter. For the child I never knew existed.

"Tell me her name."

"Isla."

"Isla." I say it out loud, and it doesn't sound like anything I know. Seven years of her existing in the world, and I'm just now learning her name.

"Does she ask about me?"

"She knows she has a father. She doesn't know who he is."

Seven years of bedtime stories I never read. Seven years of birthday parties I never attended. Seven years of being a ghost in my own child's life.

And now someone's threatening her.

"I'm getting in my car. I'm driving to Boulder."

"Frank, this isn't some movie where you show up and everything's fixed."

"Someone went after her school. Someone scared my kid. That changes everything."

"Does it really? Or are you just telling yourself that because it sounds like what a father should say?"

She's waiting for me to prove something. That I'm not the same person who chose work over everything else. That I actually mean it this time.

I can't give her that proof. Not yet. I don't even know if I have it in me. But I'm getting in the car anyway.