Last midnight

Dust and ashes

Location: unknown

"You are worthless!"

"How come you can't just grow up? I didn't hit you that hard!"

"Stop dad!"

"Just like your mother, always running around with accusations!"

"Dad!"

"Learn to be a man, not a pussy."

A few tears began to drip down his cheeks as the insults played in his mind. He used to be so good at repressing all the bad things his father had said about him, what changed? He concluded it was because he was locked in a closet, and being in tight places like this bring back bad memories.

He wished he could just be in the arms of his loved ones again.

Oh Ashlyn, he wanted to just hug and sob with her. He was going to escape soon, he just had to break out of these restraints.

~~~~

Location: EJ's house

"So, we have his name now?" EJ said as he looked to the employee file, then turned his glance over to Seb, who was still trying to catch his breath.

"Pretty much," Gina replied as she flicked through the information. "He went to East high; you learn new things every day."

"I don't know whether to be amazed or concerned at that information." Ricky commented.

"Guys!" Ashlyn disrupted their conversation. "We need to stay on task, who cares if he went to our school? I'm pretty sure there are worser things in the world."

"Good point Ash," Carlos said as he snatched the file away. "We need to just get his address-"

"What if he changed his address since then? This file is pretty old."

"Ricky, the file is from like last year. There is no way he managed to change his address within a year." EJ stated as he pulled out a document, it was a glossy yellow sheet with thick lettering that read: employee transfer.

Seb suddenly peeked over his shoulder. "Employee transfer? But wasn't he fired? Why do they have this?"

As EJ kept reading over, it felt like a lightbulb had finally switched on in his mind.

Employee name: Jack Stockwell

Position: bank teller

Supervisor: Isabella Berry

New workplace: Caswell renewable energy & co

Reason: In order to have this "issue" kept on the downlow, we must have Mr. Stockwell transferred over to this department. We all believe that he will work much better under Debbie and Dennis, as long as he is kept under extra supervision.

Holy shit.

As he retraced all the information that he was just given, he connected it to the clues given by Seb and Carlos. Everything made sense, no wonder why the charges were just mysteriously dropped.

"EJ!" Ricky swiped the paper straight from his hands. "What on earth is this?"

"You may want to read it yourself..."

And he did. EJ saw Ricky's eyes kept rereading the same words he read, how the same panic was able to connect the same dots. When Ricky passed the paper over to Gina and the others to have a look, his face was as white as a ghost.