CHAPTER 6

After the meeting with Bruce, Steven wrote a brief letter and summoned his secretary with instructions to copy it to all members of the board of directors.

The letter was a summons to an extraordinary meeting to discuss the way forward now that the CEO had died.

The meeting was just going to be a formality, whose resolutions would be filed with the registrar of companies as the law stipulated.

Everyone knew who was going to become CEO now that Andrew was gone and the little girl was being taken care of.

He wondered what had taken Bruce so long, why his report wasn't coming.

Bruce had assured him that by eight o'clock in the evening he would have accomplished the mission so Steven stayed at the office and waited.

He could have gone home and waited for the confirmation there but recently there was a pesky girl he was staying with that listened too much on his calls.

He couldn't run the risk of this sensitive information leaking out to through her.

Nine o'clock still found him in the office, then ten o'clock he decided to call Bruce and find out why he wasn't updating him.

He dialed the number but as he was about to press the call button he changed his mind and decided to give it another thirty minutes.

This was uncharacteristic of Bruce. He was always giving out his location and letting him know about his successes. Bruce had never failed in his mission and Brenda was as good as dead according to Steven.

At half past nine he grew impatient. The vodka he'd been drinking to pass the time was almost finished and so we're the cigars.

He had earlier tried to access Andrew's office for more drinks only to find it locked and the personal assistant gone.

The woman was despicable and she was going to become the first casualty once he occupied the big office.

Those were his thoughts as he listened to the dial tone after he called Bruce. It went on for some time and just before it disconnected someone picked it up. From the voice it wasn't Bruce but a woman.

His heart skipped a beat as he digested that unlikely development. Bruce was not a woman's man, he cared less about them.

“Hallo." He answered.“ “Could I speak with the owner of the phone please?" He asked.

“I'm sorry but the owner can't speak to you right now." The woman on the other side replied.

“And why is that if I may ask?" A thin line of sweat was running down his cheeks.

“Because he died in a shootout with the police. His phone is deposited here at the Morgue's reception. And sorry, you didn't identify yourself." He disconnected the conversation, unhappy with the direction it was taking.

He shot up from his seat and banged the table. Bruce dead? How? He was indestructible.

His stomach was now giving him trouble and he was shaking, and sweating profusely.

The mission had backfired and now Bruce was dead. He had to take control of the situation.

First he had to find out where Brenda was and if Bruce had really died on his pursuit of her.

Calling the school was out of question, they had treated him with a lot of suspicion after Brenda's reaction.

The principal had even threatened to call security on him and he had gone out in shame.

Besides it was late in the night and his call could trigger more suspicions.

Bruce's death was a disaster for him, he had no other way of enforcement, which was Bruce's major work. Other dirty errands would be difficult for him to execute, and on top of it all he was now heavily in debt.

He had paid Bruce a tidy amount as down payment with funds he had stolen from his department.

The board of directors would certainly ask for audited accounts and he didn't want them to find about his sleaze on the very first day.

He would order his secretary to take care of that.

With nothing else to do at the office, he took the lift to the carpark and noticed that Jeanne's car was still there.

Something told him that this was unusual. How had she gone home? He wondered.

His head started spinning, looking for answers. He summoned the head of the guards and instructed him to come with the book where they recorded entries and exits.

Ordinarily, the book was used to record every movement and just by checking on the entries it was possible to determine who got in and out and the exact time of the log.

Steven went through the book and found out that Jeanne's name had been logged in during entry but she had not left the premises.

Through an elimination method he found out that she was the only member of staff whose whereabouts weren't backed up by the book.

And now since her car was still in the premises it meant only two things.

Either she was still in the premises, or she had sneaked out evading the log book.

It had to be the latter because he had gone to her office earlier and she wasn't there.

And besides, her official working hours had elapsed long time ago.

So why would she sneak out? The answer came quickly and he swore cursed loudly.

She sneaked out to go to Brenda's school to get her.

“Bitch. I'll kill her." He exclaimed as he limped towards his car. His foot was now getting more painful and the limping was more pronounced.

He had broken his leg long time ago when he tried to kill his brother, something he remembered with bitterness.

One day just after their father's death he laid ambush near his brother's house, holding a crude weapon.

His intention was to crash Andrew's skull and kill him.

Their father had given control of the company to Andrew and he didn't take it kindly.

Andrew operated like clockwork and his time of arrival was known to everyone. So precise was it that his guards would open the gate at a given time and sure enough he would drive in at the precise moment.

With steel nails planted on the path, Steven laid in the bush and waited.

Sure enough the car emerged and rode over the nails, puncturing it's tyres, then slowed and stopped.

In the semi darkness Steven saw a silhouette come out of the car and assumed that it was his brother.

Emerging from the bushes, he swung his weapon to hit the man but incidentally the man bent low to inspect the tyres.

The wooden plank missed the target and hit the side mirror, startling the man.

Steven realized only too late that he was targeting his brother's driver. His brother wasn't even in the car.

The driver, a former soldier, didn't wait for another blow, or even to find out the identity of the assailant. With one mighty kick, he hit the wooden plank from Steven's hands. A second kick send him flying into the bushes.

The commotion attracted Andrew's gate keepers who saved Steven from the driver's ire.

He had suffered a broken hip which didn't heal irrespective of countless surgical procedures.

When he was agitated like the case here, he felt a lot of pain but he tried hard to conceal it.

He entered his car and sped off, towards Jeanne's house.

He was certain she was hiding Brenda and he would kill them.

He drove furiously, breaking every traffic rule until he reached the estate where Jeanne lived. He wasn't senior security operative for nothing, he knew his work, which included surveillance on staff and learning where they lived.

Jeanne's file was somewhere in his cabinet and he had gone through it only a few days earlier. He had a good idea on the house, the designs and the possible points of entry.

Another team had reported that there were no security cameras and no security lights.

From a point of knowledge he decided to leave the car some distance away and approach on foot, through a dense forest.

His leg still painful, he abandoned the car and limped towards Jeanne's house, some two hundred meters away.

This was the day for settling all the scores, old and new.

He was going to kill Brenda with one bullet to the head then torture Jeanne to extract important information from her.

Later he would kill her too. He wondered why Bruce hadn't thought along those lines.

“Stupid bastard, that's why he went to pick fights with the police." He muttered to himself.

Minutes later he arrived at the gate but before he could venture inside he heard voices, then saw lights.

The compound was littered with police cars and he wondered what they'd come for. Had Jeanne contracted the police to guard her? Was she that connected?

His mission was now in jeopardy. There was no way he could get in there and execute his mission with so many policemen present.

But he decided to wait and learn what they were doing there.

His eyes accustomed to darkness saw the police carrying something resembling a body. Someone had died and he wondered who it was. He saw them carrying yet another body and he started thinking he was lucky, maybe someone had beaten him to the chase and killed the two ladies before he could lay his hands on them.

Maybe for the very first time he was lucky, and the way luck always evaded him.

He craned his neck further in an attempt to see more but what he heard broke his heart.

A policeman was talking into his gadget, filing a report only a few meters away from his hiding place.

The two dead bodies were policemen who were killed by a man who had broken into the house.

The house owner was nowhere to be found, the report said.

The assailant had escaped from the scene using a police car and he was gunned down in a shopping center a few meters away.

That report answered most of Steven's questions. The ladies escaped, and Bruce died pursuing them.

He rose to go but someone saw him.

“Police, freeze." A loud voice thundered, accompanied by blinding flashlight beams.