“Sir!” John smiled as an excitable young blonde woman in a blue business jacket and matching skirt came up to him. Following behind her was a dark brunette in a similar maroon suit. The businessman recognized them as two of the company’s secretaries; Elizabeth and Michaela. 

“Yes? What is it?” John asked.

“It’s the missing Keat’s file.” Elizabeth said, smiling. 

“I thought I told you not to worry about that…” John smiled. “It was lost when we had that server trouble six months back, remember?” 

“Yes sir…” Michaela said, “Only we knew how important it was. Mr. Roberts was so insistent. And since all the electronic files were corrupted, we thought…” 

We went back through the physical files and found a copy!” Elizabeth blurted out. She held up an old file folder, packed with dog-eared sheets of paper. 

John gulped. “What? But I thought all those files had been shredded!” 

Michaela nodded. “Yes, but you remember that stack of unsorted files that’s been stuffed in Henry’s old cubical for so long? We were clearing that out and found a copy. Must have been misfiled and ended up in the pile.” She smiled. “Lucky break, eh?” 

John nodded. “But of course. Now, we’ll finally be able to get to the bottom of those…irregularities in the Keat’s Project finances.” After a pause, he added, “Have you told Mr. Roberts the good news?” 

Elizabeth shook her head. “We called his office, but his secretary said he’d stepped out. We went to go look for him but we saw you and came over.” 

John smiled. “Well, I’m glad you did. Why don’t you come into my office? I might have better luck reaching him…” 

***  

“Hey John…” The voice of Mr. Roberts came over the phone. “Are you free?” 

“Yes sir, how can I help?” John replied. 

“I just got back from my meeting and my secretary told me I got a call from two of the girls in your department.” The older man said. “Only it seems they’re missing at the moment.” 

“Haven’t seen them…” John replied. “You know those gals, always running off at the worst times…” He winced as there was a crash behind him. 

“What was that?” Mr. Roberts asked. 

“Uh…cleaning lady knocked something over getting the trash can…” 

“Ah, ok. So you don’t know what those two were calling me about?” 

“Fraid not…but I wouldn’t worry about it. Couldn’t have been all that important or they’d have called again.” 

“Yeah, you’re probably right…Well sorry to bother you. Catch you on the links this weekend?” 

“Of course. See you out there!” John hung up the phone with a sigh of relief. “You two are making too much noise!” He said, rotating his chair. 

“Mmmppphhh!!!” The two tied up girls lying on the floor behind his desk moaned back, unhappily. As soon as they had reached his office, John had suddenly pulled a gun from his desk and taken the two secretaries captive. Lacking any proper materials to tie the ladies up, he had been forced to make due with what was at hand. Elizabeth’s wrists and ankles were wrapped up in the power cable from John’s laptop. Michaela had had her stockings removed and those used to tie her up. Her neckerchief was tied between her lips while Elizabeth was chewing on John’s tie. It wasn’t the best binding job in the world, as the lamp Michaela had knocked over showed, but hopefully it would do for the next couple hours. Once everyone else had gone home for the day, John could smuggle the girls out of the office. 

“Sorry ladies, just bad luck you stumbled on those missing files.” He said. “I thought I’d covered the tracks of my embezzling scheme, but not well enough.” He grinned. “Now I need to make sure you two go missing as well…”