### The End?

It had been a long day, once again my team and I had worked late into the night. Crunch time is like that and I, as the lead programmer on the game needed to be there through all of it. Often, like tonight, I’d be the last one to leave the office. After I’d set the security system, I exited the office and then the building, headed across the parking lot to my car, a red BMW 650i Couple, for the short ride home.

My mind contemplating that we had finally broken the back of this project. We’d gone a week with the bug numbers declining. Sure, we still had several hundred to clear, but the find rate had declined and my team had kept up a steady fix rate. Two more weeks and we’d have a gold master to send off.

Halfway to my car, I realized I wasn’t alone. I heard the footsteps of someone rapidly approaching me. Thanks to my thoughts being distracted by the project, I’d forgotten to start my music playing allowing me to hear the footsteps.

I turned to face the person coming at me from behind. I couldn’t tell you what the person looked like or even whether they where a man or woman. All I saw was the gun in their hand, a gun pointed at me. Seeing it, my instincts went to duck and cover, and my body tried to duck down.

The gun flashed and the bullet ripped through my body, just above my heart, shattering the bones in my shoulder. Falling backwards, I hit my head on the boot of the car behind me before sliding down into a sitting position looking up at the shooter, silhouetted by the street lamps dotted around the parking lot.

The gun flashed a second time, or maybe it was six or seven guns that went off given that how many I saw. The bullet, there was only one, shattered my lowest rib on the same side as the first.

Barely able to keep my eyes open, I saw the shooter step forward and aim the gun again. At that moment, I hoped that my wife, Maggie, and my daughter, Emily, would forgive me for not being around anymore. And for all the time that I should have spent with them that I spent working on the next great game. I truly regretted all the time crunch time I’d worked over the last decade rather than being with my family.

Several people started yelling from somewhere, I would have sworn I recognized some of the voices. It didn’t matter the gun went off again anyway, biting into my left leg. Then I watched as the shooter turned and ran away.

Moments later, a face I recognized leaned over and looked at me. Helen, a graphic artist in charge of our user interface design and implemented, and spoke to me. Trouble was I couldn’t hear her.

Another face appeared, and then a third. I knew them both. Greg, our assistant producer, and Steve, the AI programmer, looked at me then glanced at each other with concern written all over their faces.

The world began to blur and fade away then. I fought to remain awake. I fought to keep my eyes focused on Helen, but I lost the fight in the end.

Next, I looked up into the eyes of someone I didn’t know with my chest on fire. As the world faded back to black, I noticed the paddles in his hands. I’d died, he’d brought me back.

### Waking Up

Pain, not like I’d just felt but still pain that was the first thing I felt. I opened my eyes opened, and I saw the reason I felt the pain, a dull ache really, in my leg. A nurse, by the uniform, had a hold of my leg and was flexing it back and forth. Working out the muscles in the leg that I’d just been shot in.

I tried to speak, but I found my throat to be extremely dry. So, only a scratching grunt game out. Enough to have the nurse drop my leg onto the bed and turn to see my eyes watching her.

A few hours later, doctors had seen me, nurses had watered me with ice chips and I felt a little better, Well, I could talk at least. I seem to lack the strength to hold my own cup and it took all I could to raise my arm off the ground let alone do anything more.

But, at least I was alive.

I learned I’d been in this long term facility for ten months. That my only visitor had been my daughter but she hadn’t been by in six months. It was her phone number that they had on record as my next of kin. They couldn’t tell me anything about my wife or about my shooting.

The notes also asked for the police to be contacted should I wake. Which turned out to be my first visitors.

“Mister Alan John Atkinson?” asked the older of the two that came asked.

I nodded, he introduced himself, Detective Kevin Griffiths, and his partner, Dario Bosi, before asking if I could answer a few questions about my shooting. Which I agreed to, then I recounted what I remembered of that night. With that out of the way, the questions took off in a direction I didn’t expect.

“Mr Atkinson, how long had you suspected your wife of having an affair?” Detective Bosi asked. Drawing a sharp look from his partner.

I sputtered, “having an affair? What the fuck are you talking about? Where is my wife? She’ll tell you she’s not having an affair with anyone!”

“Mr Atkinson, my apologies for my partner’s ill-timed question. But, I regret to inform you that she was indeed having an affair with Isaac Gall. Do you know him?”

Maggie having an affair with someone. There was no way this was true. She was my whole world until Emily had been born eighteen, no nineteen now I guess, years ago. Just as I’d been hers. After that, it had been the three of us. We loved one another, and we loved our daughter, the proof of our love. They were why I worked as hard as I had. I wanted them to have everything they wanted. I could not comprehend her having an affair, it made no sense.

As for this Issac Gall, the name rang a bell but I couldn’t place from where.

“I recognize the name, but...” I started then paused. Remembering who he was.

“He was my daughter’s middle school English teacher,” I told them.

“Yes, that’s how we figure she met him. Did you know he lost that job?” Griffiths asked.

I shook my head, “no.”

“He started an affair with an eighteen-year-old at the high school. Broke the school districts rules, but not the law. So, he lost his job and found he couldn’t get a job teaching again. Anyway, his father suddenly passed away and he found himself in his second career, running the local coffee shop.”

“G Cafe,” I said, thinking about the place my wife loved to get her coffee from.

“Yes,” he replied. “We think this is where your wife and Gall met again.”

“That would be right, she loved the coffee in that place. I’d rather drink sewer water though,” I told them.

“That would be the opinion of most of the town I would say. He barely broke even we’ve discovered.”

“I still don’t believe my wife is having an affair with this man. I can see how they would see each other regularly, she would go there often but an affair seems to be a big stretch to me.”

“Okay. Let’s try another line of questioning and we’ll come back to that. Does your house have a security system?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of system? Features?”

“Basic stuff really. Alarms on the garage, front and back doors. Motion detectors in the downstairs rooms. All with a direct connection to the alarm company we use.”

“No cameras?”

“No. I didn’t like the idea of them having a record of my life sitting on their servers. Too many security breaches with these internet companies to feel safe. Why?”

“Did you install any cameras yourself?”

“No, the only cameras in the house would be my digital SLR camera and the ones built into our laptops. Again, why are you asking?”

“There are cameras throughout your house. We recovered a DVR system hidden in the basement that had recorded nearly a month’s worth of footage leading up to your shooting.”

“Who put them there?”

“We and your daughter assumed it had been you. That you suspected your wife was having an affair. She couldn’t figure out how you knew though. She didn’t suspect.”

I didn’t either. Until you told me, I thought my wife loved me as much as I love her.

“Wasn’t me. So, who was it? And what did you find?”

“Proof of the affair. Proof that your wife and her lover planned the attack on you. Phone records showed that you called your wife about half an hour before you left your office. Immediately after that call, she called Mr Gall. From the video we have, it was to inform him you’d be finishing up at work soon and to get down there.”

“Fuck! She wanted me dead. Why? You have videos of her with **him**?”

Images of my wife with another man, with that weasel of a teacher, ran through my head. I felt nauseous. I also felt anger, she was willing to kill me for him, for my, our, things. She wanted me dead, so she could keep the house and the car. She saw more worth in them than my life. My love for her died with that realization.

“She had convinced herself that you were having an affair as well. And she wanted to take everything from the marriage including the million-dollar life insurance policy she had on you.”

Life insurance policy? He couldn’t mean my work one, I’m not sure I even mentioned that to her. But, I don’t remember signing any paperwork for one recently.

“What life insurance policy?”

“The one you took out nearly two years ago,” he told me.

Two years! Just how long had her affair been going on. My stomach lurched again. It didn’t matter, she did it. She’s dead to me. Or she should be dead to me.

“I don’t remember doing that. I have one through work, I think that’s worth two years salary. On my base salary, no bonuses, that’s two hundred and twenty thousand.”

“We found that out as well,” he replied.

“Okay, so, where is the wife and her lover? And do you know how long had they been together?”

“For the first question, the earliest we can track by is seven months before you got shot. So seven or eight months, probably not longer.”

Eight months? But the life insurance policy was two years old. Did that mean there were others? Or did that mean the life insurance that she was looking out for her and Emily should something happen to me? I wonder if she would clear that up for me and tell me how long, how many affairs she’d had. But that first needed to know where she was.

“Your wife was very nervous when we interviewed her. Enough that she became the prime suspect. When we got her phone records, and we discovered she’d been talking a lot to Mr Gall. Including the night of the shooting, we interviewed her again. This time down at the station. We also brought in Mr Gall. Their stories matched a little too well, but we had no evidence yet to link them conclusively to the attack on you.”

“Okay, so you let them go?”

“We did and planned to have them followed. However, they took off straight from the station. Mr Gall managed to escape to Mexico. Shot himself rather than allow himself to be arrested and deported. He left a confession.”

“My wife? Was my wife with him?”

“She hasn’t been seen since she left the station that day. We don’t know where she is.”

“You’re still looking for her?”

“Yes, but there hasn’t been a sighting of her in all this time. No accessing her funds, nothing from her phone, no relatives are admitting to her having contacted her. She just vanished.”

“My daughter? Do you know where my daughter is? She’s not come to see me for a while I’m told.”

“She hasn’t heard from her either. As for where she is. She moved out west for University. I’ll check with the nurse on the desk to make sure they have that contact information. My guess is they do, but it will take her time to arrange a flight home.”

Did out west mean she went to the University of Washington, I wondered. She’d talked about going there, it had been where her grandfather, my dad had gone and where I had intended going. Until, well I put together a game and sold it. That lead to a job offer. Just for a year, I told myself and my parents. We finished that game and it sold really well. My royalties off that game would have paid for my studies two times when all was said and done. I rolled into another game, this one based on an idea I had pitched. My parents tried to get me to go to University before it was too late. But, I couldn’t leave my baby behind. I wanted to see my game across the finish line.

Two years later, we finished the game, I’d met Maggie and Emily was on the way. Marriage followed and University didn’t seem so important anymore. Well, for me at least. Maggie went back and finished her Computer Science degree. We’d met when I had been volunteered to give a speech on game development at her University.

I wished now that I’d listened to my parents and gone back to University. No, that wasn’t true because then I wouldn’t have Emily. All the pain in the world was worth it to have her in my life.

“Did her boyfriend go with her, do you know?”

Please tell me he didn’t.

“Boyfriend?”

Does this mean he didn’t go with her?

“Yes, her boyfriend. Jake Evans.”

“I don’t know. His name hasn’t come up in the investigation.”

Surely, they would have talked to him? Emily seemed to spend every moment she could with him. I’d kept quiet about my dislike for him, Maggie had thought him to be harmless and a phase and not to worry. But, maybe if they didn’t talk to him then maybe it had been a phase and she had gotten over him before all this happened. I’d just not noticed to wrapped up in the overtime and the rush to get the game done.

“I guess I have to wait and ask her then.”

“Seems that would be best.”

“So I guess you guys have two mysteries to solve now, maybe three.”

“How so?”

“One. Find out what happened to my wife. Two. Who put the cameras in my house. Three. What happened with Jake Evans.”

He laughed lightly, “that last one is for you I think. But, yes, we need answers now to the first two. We’ll be in touch, Mister Atkinson.”

### New Beginnings

The next morning, they transferred me from the long term care facility for coma patients back to the hospital to begin my rehab. The nurses seemed happy about that, seemed all their patients usually left in a wooden box.

Waiting at the nurse’s station on the ward they took me was my daughter, tears rolling down her face as she saw me coming in.

Her face told of joy at seeing me and disbelief at seeing me actually awake and alert again. Finally, the joy won out and she rushed over to me. She kissed my cheek, held my hand and told me how happy seeing me awake made her feel.

A nurse had her return to the station while they got me situated in my room.

Seeing her, alone, drove home that the detectives hadn’t lied to me. That my wife had had an affair and that she and her lover had planned to kill me. Up until seeing her, I’d drifted back into believing they’d got it wrong somehow. That finding her would clear it all up. We’d be together, a loving couple again with an amazing daughter as proof of that love.

“How have you been?” I asked as soon as she entered the room.

“Okay, I guess. I didn’t take the shortcut to here that you did. I lived through the year, you just took a nap. The worst part, that being sleeping beauty for a year didn’t help you in the looks department.”

I laughed, my first one since I had woken up. “How are you really? How have you coped with everything?”

“Good dad. Really, it’s you that should be answering the how are you question, not me.

“As for how have I coped with everything. Well, Helen from your office helped the most. She moved in with me at the house and basically got me through Thanksgiving and Christmas last year then was there for graduation and helped get me to University.

“She fought social services to become my legal guardian and her paying rent to live in the house is what keeps the bills paid. I ... She really came through for me, for us, in a big way.”

“I always like Helen. I’m glad you had someone there for you. What happened to Jake?”

Emily’s face soured at the mention of him. “He didn’t like me spending time at the hospital instead of with him. He kept pestering me to use the empty house time for us to get together. Then, a week after you got shot, he was gone. Never heard from him again. His best friend told me he’d lost his job and moved back in with his parents. But I know that to be a lie. His parents died, he lived with his grandmother until he left school then got his own apartment. I asked at the Staples about him, weeks later. The manager told me he just phoned them and said he couldn’t come back.”

“Fucking loser. You’re **so** better off without him.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that at the time dad?”

“Your mother convinced me that if I said anything, you’d attach yourself more to him.”

“Fuck that bitch. I wasted too much time with that fucking loser. Dad, next time fucking tell me you don’t like. Okay?”

I nodded, “sure.”

“No, I mean it. Mom, she’s a fucking bitch. I bet she like losers like him. I want your opinion, good or bad. Please.”

“I will, honey. So, is there anyone new in your life?”

“Not really, there is one that might be something. He only just got the courage to talk to me and then I got a call and had to jump on a plane. So, when I go back, we’ll see where it leads or if anything happens at all.”

“What are you studying?”

“Computers. I’m like the building, Engineering side of it though. Not what you do. I built a digital scale. Just a pressure sensor and three LEDs to show the number. But it worked! First time too!”

I smiled at that, then soured. Her mother had excelled at school too. Hearing Emily, brought back memories of Maggie coming home to talk up her successes at school.

“What’s wrong dad?” Emily asked concern painted over her face.

“Just old memories, honey.”

“Of that fucking bitch of a mother of mine?” she spat.

I nodded, “yes, she did well at school too. I think you get your smarts from her.”

“I get nothing from her dad. You’re the smartest person I know. If I got my smarts from anyone it’s you. The only thing that bitch is good for is rotting in hell!”

“What happened after I was shot? Or is this all from finding out she tried to kill me?”

“Well her trying to kill you **is** enough, but between when you got shot and when she disappeared, she changed. She changed a lot.

“The first week or so, she was the doting wife and mother. Spending every waking moment at the hospital. Except for school, I was there with her, so I know. We ate at the hospital, I did homework at the hospital. She slept at the hospital too, sending me home. So I had fresh clothes and showered for school the next day.

“When you didn’t wake up after that first week, she changed. She’d dress a little slutty. Would say she was going to the hospital but frequently, I’d show up there after school and she wouldn’t be there.

“The police started to interview everyone close to you. Helen told me they started with everyone at work. Your friends at your Sunday morning pick up soccer game. Finally, they got to me and then mom.

“After they talked with mom, she seemed on edge. Always seemed to be looking over her shoulder. She wouldn’t drive the same way anywhere two times in a row. That shit made me late for school a couple of times when she convinced herself she was being followed.”

She sighed, looked around the room, then continued. “When the police asked her to come in for a follow-up interview, she had trouble putting the phone back on the receiver because hand shook so badly. Yet, she still went. After she’d taken me to school.

“I walked home that day. I thought at the time that she’d gone to the hospital after the police and lost track of time. But, when she didn’t come home I started to worry. I called the hospital and they told me you’d had no visitors that day. I had my laptop open looking up the number for the local police station when Helen called. She always called on nights she couldn’t pop into the hospital to see you back then.

“I told her the bitch was missing and she insisted on coming to our house, she left work to come over. I’m pretty sure she took a lot of shit for it. She slept in the spare bed that night, and together we went to the police station the next morning.

“The police came and searched the house. Helen stood there with me. They found these hidden cameras and a box in the basement that recorded the contents,” she told me then paused, taking time to figure out how best to ask the question. I knew what she wanted to know, so I saved her from asking.

“I didn’t install the cameras. I’ve no idea who did that. I wish I did, I wish they had warned me of what she had planned. Or warned me before that of her affair. Did you know him?”

“He was my teacher back in middle school, but I hadn’t seen him since I moved up to the high school.”

“So the police found the videos, and knew about your mom. What happened next?” I asked.

“Well, they took away the storage device, but didn’t tell us what was on it. The detective on the case told us to call him immediately if she contacted me, then left. I uniformed police woman informed me that they would contact social services and let them know I was alone. Helen stepped in then and said she wasn’t alone.

“Helen moved in that day. Your company managed to get a lawyer for her, and they dealt with social services. For days left before I turned eighteen, social services didn’t care, they just gave Helen the paperwork to be my guardian for the next few days and kicks us out of the office. Didn’t offer any counselling or anything. Someone was there to look after me and they washed their hands of me. It was pathetic, dad!”

I could feel her hurt there. The anger. I’m sure some of it was being cast off by the people that should have been her safety net. By the one, who when all else fails, come to the rescue and look after you. But, her real anger was the sense of being abandoned by her loving parents. She just deflected that anger. After all, I’d been shot and had no control over what had happened and she knew that but still, I wasn’t there when she needed me. Her mother, she had run away, fleeing the results of her actions. I wondered if she even gave a thought for the daughter she had left behind.

“I ... I’m sorry, honey. I wish I should, I would have been there for you if I could,” I told her, tears rolling down my tears at the thoughts of what my daughter had to go through. My own guilt at not being there for her mixed with relief that Helen had been.

“Oh, daddy,” she said, her own tears flowing now. “Daddy, I know you’d have been there if you could. Knowing you fought to live. Fought to come back to us. It helped. You didn’t give up dad, and so I couldn’t give up.

“Helen helped though. She moved in. She paid rent too, to ensure there was money for the bills. She saw me through the last of school, helped me pick the college and even came out with me for orientation.”

“I’m so glad you had someone to help, honey. Where is Helen now?” I wondered. Helen had been my work wife sort of. I guess I kind of had a few of them. I ran the programmers, assigned their tasks and monitoring their progress. She designed the games user interface and assigned the graphic artists. We’d discuss what we could and couldn’t do. We’d match-make programmers and graphic artists for the tasks. Knowing for the best results, you had to have people that worked well together working together. After all, the late nights of crunch time created enough stress that you didn’t want to add personality conflicts if you can help it. But, you also wanted to ensure the best possible product.

Helen and I worked to ensure that together. She had been my sounding board at work, as I had been hers. It had all be above board and professional.

“She’s at work. She texted me that you’d been moved from the long term facility. I was told you had woken up and she went there this morning. She’ll be by in the evening. I should tell you she still lives in our house.”

“Okay.”

“She would check up on you once a week for me. I wouldn’t have gone to UW if she hadn’t agreed to that.”

“Honey, you need to do what’s right for you. If that school was the one for you then you should go, no matter what. Your grandfather would be proud you went to his alma mater. He wanted me to go there, I just found life got in the way of that.”

Our conversation got put on hold then when a doctor turned up to examine me and sign off on my starting physical therapy. After he left, I noticed that she pulled my daughter into a room. I assumed to talk about next steps. The kind of support I’d have if released and that kind of stuff. I’d told him I had no idea what would be at home for me. Explaining my daughter was now in University on the other side of the country and that my wife and her lover were the reason for me being here in the first place.

It left me with my thoughts and emotions for company. I felt a wave of seething anger for my wife leaving our daughter to fend for herself. Stupid really because Helen was an adult, she could take care of herself. Or could under normal circumstances, losing both parents wasn’t that. I still had trouble believing she’d had an affair, let alone try to kill me for him. I felt like demanding proof, demanding to see the videos they claimed to have to prove that to me. To allow me to let go of the idea that the police and my daughter were wrong. Even though logically, the fact she had run and wasn’t here showed her guilt. If she cheated, why did she do it?

Not being there enough for her? She’d always said she understood and the long breaks after the project shipped where good times. She knew we had been getting close to the next one. By the timesheets, this one would be a month-long. I could extend that with the three weeks I hadn’t taken. Giving us all of December and January together possibly. Maybe that was the reason why she tried to kill me now. When I’d be off work, she wouldn’t be able to sneak out and him.

Did she fall in love with him? I wasn’t there as much as some would be. So, maybe me not being there as much left her vulnerable to his attention. Then, given his more limited prospects, they’d decided to try and keep everything we had. Problem with that it didn’t sound like my wife.

I had to admit unless she was found, I would never know why. Even if they caught her, she might not feel inclined to tell me anyway.

Maybe it was best to focus on getting better, looking to the future and making sure I was there for Emily whenever she needed me.

Emily returned from talking to the doctor and our conversation turned to more mundane things. She talked about her courses and projects at school, where her friends had ended up for college and the new friends she’d made in Seattle. She talked of attending Washington Huskies football games and trips to the Seattle Thunderbirds play.

Later, Helen joined us and she added gossip from the office, update on the game we’d been working on when I shot and the new game, a sequel to my last game. That game it seemed had lots of problems. Greg had left to take up a Producer role in the Bay Area and exposed who did the real management work on our team. We all knew it, now management had proof of what I’d told them. Though Mike, the Producer, blamed Greg’s replacement, at assistant producer position, and the time he had to put in to train him. A guy he picked and who had never worked in games before, coming from a medical software company. Helen wanted to quit, go do her own thing.

That last item had me wondering if she had stuck around just for me and to support Emily. I would need to talk to her when Emily wasn’t around.

A few hours later, we were all yawning and decided to call it a night. As they headed out of the room, I realized one thing I hadn’t asked.

“Emily, did you come straight here from the airport?”

“Yes, dad.”

“Where is your suitcase?”

“At the nurses’ station.”

“Okay. Love you, see you tomorrow.”

“I love you too,” Helen said with a smile. Emily smiled at hearing it and walked out of the room. Missing Helen blowing me a kiss before exiting herself before I had time to react.

### Recovery

Turned out, I woke at just the right time for Emily. It had been a day before the reading week prior to heading into exams. She had even talked to one of her professors and managed to get her exams proctored through a friend at the State University, an hour’s drive away. It would mean some late night exams, as they insisted on her doing them at the same time as her classmates. But, she could do them here and remain with me.

She spent days with me, her laptop and course text books in hand. I quizzed her when she asked. I talked through solutions that I would use in some of the situations presented. I had fun, ignoring why I was in the hospital was an added benefit, and felt Emily and I getting closer than we’d ever been.

The physical therapy kicked my butt in those first two weeks. I walked on shaky legs down a channel created by two bars I could use to hold myself up if I needed at the end.

It got me released in time for Thanksgiving at home. Which Emily and I ate at a local hotel. Helen had headed out of town, gone to visit her parents, sister and brother in Florida.