“Yes, Clarence. I just need to pick up something I forgot.” He went upstairs to the darkened offices. He noted Emily’s desk light was still on but the lights in his office were dark. He pushed open the door.
“Emily?”
Silence.
He went around the desk, looking for her, but she wasn’t there. He went to the door and flipped on the lights, looking all around, as if he expected her to pop up from somewhere. Somehow, she had found some clothes and left, probably furious and hurt. But how? His eyes drifted down to his wastebasket, which he remembered dumping several old files in it that afternoon.
Now it was empty.
Oh shit. The janitors. He checked all the offices and found no one. He went down a flight of stairs and found two men on the next floor. One was wearing the standard dark blue shirt and pants that he’d seen many times when he worked late, but the other, a tall, broad-shouldered man, was missing his shirt. Edward went to him at once.
The man winked at him and said, “Hey, you must be lookin’ for sumthin’, huh?” He laughed and the other man stopped worked to laugh along with him.
Edward grimaced. “Yeah, uh, it was a good joke, wasn’t it?”
“I tell ya, if’n I had a piece like that under my desk, why I wouldn’t leave her alone, nuh uh!”
“Uh, what happened to her?”
“Oh, she begged me for my shirt. How could I refuse?”
“You gave her your shirt?” Edward could see it would’ve been enough to cover her.
“Well, I didn’ exactly give it to her,” he laughed and Edward felt his anger rising.
Edward’s anger rose quickly. “What? What did you do?”
“Why, whadaya think? I made her buy it from me.” He laughed again and the other man began to move closer, big grin on his face. Edward noted the name on his shirt: Ben.
“What do you mean, ‘buy it from me’?”
“What do you think I mean? Naked little piece of ass like that?”
Edward wanted to hit him and realized not only would that be foolish, but he would be hitting the wrong person. If anyone deserved a punch in the nose, it was him.
“You-you ... raped her?”
“Oh, hell no, man! She seemed ready to scream bloody murder! Once I got her calmed down, she agreed to trade me a BJ for my shirt. Then Ben showed up and he wanted a littl’ sumtin’ too...” He winked.
Edward had a vision of Emily, naked and on her knees, giving blowjobs to the two janitors. He clenched his fists.
“So what happened to her?” His anger was evident on his face.
Ben, an older man with a shock of white in his black hair, spoke up. “Hey, man, we didn’t do nuthin’ else to her. She was willin’.”
“Yeah, she tol’ us her boss made her do that,” the shirtless janitor said. “You must be him, huh? That prolly won’t look too good if it gets out.”
“I just want to make sure she’s all right.”
“I dunno. After she was done with us, she put on Charlie’s shirt and split,” Ben said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at his partner.
“I’ll be checking with her to make sure nothing else happened to her,” he said warningly, but it was an empty threat and both men knew it.
“Oh, sure, you check with your naked slut and see if she wants to press charges,” Ben laughed. “I’m sure she’d like to forget the whole thing!”
Edward ran back upstairs and checked Emily’s desk. Her purse was missing. That meant she probably made it to her car and drove home. He realized he didn’t know where she lived. He dialed her cell phone and listened to it ring and ring. When it went to voice mail, he said, “Emily. It’s me. I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me. I’m at the office and I found out what happened. Please call me.”
He drove home, dispirited. He knew, without even thinking about it, that this was not something a Dom would do. Putting one’s sub at risk like that was a boneheaded play. It had seemed so harmless, to leave her trapped naked in his office for a few hours. But it had been a big mistake.
He drove home and paced, waiting for her call. When it didn’t come, he called again, but hung up when he got voice mail. She was probably furious and he couldn’t blame her.
“Damn it,” he said aloud.
15
The next morning, Edward trudged into his office. He had hoped by some miracle that Emily would be sitting at her desk as if nothing had happened, but wasn’t surprised at all to see her desk empty.
He went inside and called her home number again. Still no answer. He had called her home and cell number several times last night and had gotten nowhere. Biting his lip, he called Mrs. Dowd. He was about to lie to the stern-faced HR director.
“Hi, Mrs. Dowd,” he said, trying to put some cheer into his voice. He hoped she hadn’t heard anything about last night’s debacle.
“Oh, Mr. Caudry, I was about to call you,” she said. He heard nervousness in her voice and his heart sank.
“Oh?”
“Yes, I got a call left on my voice mail this morning. Seems Ms. Robinson has quit. That was rather sudden, wasn’t it?”
Edward closed his eyes. “Uh, yeah. I was calling to find out why she wasn’t in. Um, did she give a reason?”
“Well ... she said she’d had enough—I’m sure that you’re familiar with that kind of explanation.” Her voice had a scolding tone.
She assumed Emily grew tired of Mr. Caudry being a caustic, demanding boss and had quit to get as far away from him as possible. He did not dissuade her in her view.
“Well, that’s disappointing,” he said.
“Yes, it is. Do you know that’s the sixth secretary who’s left your office in the last two years?”
“That many, huh?”
“Yes. Perhaps you need to go a little easier on them.”
“Well, I’m disappointed too. Emily was starting to work out.”
“So you said. But her actions are telling quite a different story, aren’t they?”
“Do you have her address? I’d like to go talk to her?”
“To what end?”
“To see if I can convince her to return to work.”
“Do you really think that’s wise?”
“Why not?”
“She might consider it some form of harassment.”
“I doubt that. I’m just going to see if we can’t work something out. She really was the most impressive of all my secretaries.”
Mrs. Dowd’s voice paused on the other end of the line. “Really?”
“Yes. Really.”
“Well, it is a bit unusual...” He heard her fumbling around. “Here it is. Three-four-oh-six Maple Street. Apartment four-oh-five. Now you be nice. If she doesn’t want to come back, don’t yell at her.”
“I won’t, Mrs. Dowd,” he said, closing his eyes.
He picked up his keys and returned to his car. It took him fifteen minutes to arrive at her apartment complex. He knocked on her apartment door. Nothing. He tried again. Pressing his ear to the door, he tried to listen to see if she was inside, ignoring him.
Edward went downstairs and found the apartment manager. He explained that he was worried about Emily Robinson and could he let him in to check on her? The manager, a stern-looking woman in her sixties who reminded Edward of an old-fashioned schoolteacher, took some convincing before she agreed.
“Don’t touch anything, you hear?” she said when she unlocked the door and led him inside. “This is all private property, I don’t care if you’re her boss or not.”
“I just want to see if she’s here,” he said, but as soon as he entered the room, he knew she had fled. There were no personal mementos anywhere. Just old tired furniture that looked ready for the junkyard.
“Did this place come furnished?” he asked, as he headed for her bedroom, half expecting to find her dead beside a bottle of pills.
“Yeah,” the woman said, following on his heels. “It looks like she skedaddled.”
He rounded the corner and saw the empty bed, stripped of sheets. The bathroom was equally barren. A quick trip to the kitchen showed some food still in the refrigerator and a few lone cans in the cabinets.