The Pendant

Adrian

"How did this even happen? Where were the guards? All those people in the company and not one of you saw the people that did this? Are you fucking kidding me?! I am on my way right now. Do not call the police till I get there." I angrily hang up the phone and direct my driver to drive faster. How can this happen? Sage Enterprises is like my baby I will not let anything happen to it.

I reach the company entrance and jump out of the car. I walk as fast as I can to the server room. The company is in chaos and most people have been evacuated and only the IT people are inside trying to gather what exactly had been stolen.

"What is the status, Dave?" I ask my head in IT as I get to the server room.

" They accessed the main server and got proprietary intellectual property, some confidential research of the company, data secrets, and developmental documents. In layman's language, we are screwed if this gets to one of our rival companies and my guess is the thieves were hired by a big fish to do this. This is someone who wants to see the downfall of Sage Enterprises." Dave explains the situation to me his face full of worry.

"Is there anything you can do to salvage the situation? And don't we have our data secured? How were they able to access it?"

"This had to be some experienced people. Or people with some knowledge of computers as we have all our data three level encrypted. For someone who knows what they are doing, it can be very easy."

"Can we be able to catch them?"

"Maybe through our CCTVs but they had enabled blind spots in the places where they were passing through and completely disabled the ones in the server room for three minutes. Plus they came out through the front door where multiple people come in and out so it might take a while to catch them."

"Have you called the police?" I ask as I move towards the servers

"You told us to wait for you to get here Sir." He says while picking up his documents from the desk.

"Oh yeah, I totally forgot. Tell Angela to call them and ask her to get me a cup of coffee in my office."

"Yes Sir." He says while getting out and leaving me alone in the server room. I walk around and still cannot believe this has just happened. My dad left me the company when he died as one of the top companies in the country. I had maintained the good work and reputation I could not believe I was almost losing it this time. I am deep in my thoughts when I see a shiny substance at the corner of the desk.

I bend down to take it and to my surprise, I pull out a golden pendant. It looks shiny and expensive. I open the pendant and see a young woman in her mid-thirties. She looks elegant and beautiful with black flowing hair and strong cheekbones. The picture does not seem to be recent and my guess is that the woman is in her 50s now. I guess that this was dropped by one of the thieves as they were leaving. As I examine it, the police enter and I pocket the pendant.

"Good afternoon Mr. Sage." One of the police officers offers his hand to me as he enters the server room. He is short and his uniform barely fits him. He has a bulbous nose, a receding hairline, and a terrible haircut. He should sue his barber. Nevertheless, he seems nice and bubbly, unlike his associate.

"Not very good officer considering what has just happened," I say to him while shaking his hand.

" We are sorry about that and we promise that now that we are here we will get to the bottom of this." He says while I offer my hand to his associate. The second officer is quite tall and with a neat beard. He is not as talkative but seems to know what he is doing.

"Thank you, officers," I say while shaking the second officer's hand

" Okay, would you mind telling us what happened here?" The short officer asks me while taking a notepad and jotting something down.

"Actually, I was not around. I was at a business meeting in the morning when I got the call from Angela, my personal assistant telling me what had just transpired. I have however talked to Dave, my head IT guy and he explained we had lost a lot of important data about the company and our best guess is that this was done by a company rival. You should talk to Dave as he will give you the deity details."

"Do you have any rivals, Mr. Sage?" He asks while his eyes are still fixated on his notepad writing down some more.

"I am a big man officer of course I have rivals. There are people who want to see the downfall of Sage Enterprises. Too many people." I answer while folding my hands and leaning on the desk.

"Do you have specific

names? Maybe people who you have had quarrels with in the past umm let us say one year?" He asks while finally lifting his eyes and looking at me.

" I think I can name a few. Let me send you an email with the names."

"Did the thieves drop anything while fleeing the server room? Anything that can help us get them?"

" No, my IT people found nothing but you are free to look around." I lie. The thing is I do not really trust police officers. I will not just be handing them the only evidence I have to pin down the thieves. I will get down to this myself with the help of my trusted private detective, Steve.

" Okay, we will look around and even look for some fingerprints and interview your employees. It might be that one of them helped them in this."

"I do not think so officers. I have the most trustworthy employees but do anything you need to catch these people." I answer as I slowly start heading for the door.

"You can never be too sure. We will inform you when we get something." The short officer says while shaking my hand.

"Thank you, officers," I say while heading out of the server room. I walk towards my office and close it ready to make a phone call to Steve.

"Hey Steve, how are you?" I say after he picks up at the fourth ring.

"Hey, I am good, how about you?"

"Not that good buddy. Some data has just been stolen from the company. Data confidential enough to bring down the company." I say while taking a seat on my office chair.

"Oh my God, I am really sorry to hear that and shook too. What happened?"

"How about we meet at Tim's café and I fill you in. I need you to look into the people behind this."

"Yes sure, no problem. How does five sound to you? I am attending to something right now but I will be done by 5 in the evening."

"Five sounds good. I will meet you there." I say while hanging up the phone. Steve has been my friend from high school and even though we took different professions we have maintained ties over the years. He has come through for me severally on issues about the company and even personal matters especially matters that I did not want to involve the police.

Tim's bakery has been my solace for the longest time possible. Tim and my dad were friends, I think they went to high school together. Tim was the nicest man I knew and he made beautiful sweet lattes that I had never had in all the five-star hotels I have been to. The café was small but cozy enough and I liked coming here to gather my thoughts together. It was something close to home. I walk in and see Steve sitting at the corner of the café reading a paper and I walk towards him.

"Hi mate," I say while approaching his table. He drops his paper and stands up to give me a hug.

"Hey there, how are you holding up?" he asks genuinely while returning to his seat.

"Today has just been a series of events. I am glad the day is over honestly. I cannot wait for Tim's latte. Let me order it first."

" No, I had already ordered it for you. They were just waiting for you to come for them to bring it over so that it is not cold." He says while signaling the waiter to bring over the latte.

"Thank you."

"You got it, mate. You had a rough day you deserve someone buying you a cup of coffee."

"I appreciate it," I say with a genuine smile.

"Okay so tell me, what happened?"

"So I had a meeting in the morning when I got a call that someone had just invaded our servers. I went back to the company as first as I could and Dave explained to me what had happened and turns out it is bad. They took a lot of important data that would potentially be used to bring down the company. Then the police came and told me that they would look into it. Before the police came I found this pendant and my suspicion is that it was dropped by one of the thieves." I say as I take out the pendant from my pocket and hand it over to Steve. He takes it and looks at it in silence for a couple of seconds.

"This looks quite expensive. It is made of pure gold." He says while looking closely at the pendant.

"Yeah, I noticed that and the picture of the woman on the pendant does not seem like a recent picture."

"Maybe it belonged to one of the thieves' mothers that was passed on to them."

"Where did you find it exactly?" Steve asks while the waitress finally brings over my latte.

"Thank you," I say to my waitress and take a sip of my latte before answering Steve allowing enough time for the waitress to leave.

"I found it at the desk almost towards the door of the server room at a corner. No one had seen it luckily except for me." I say while putting down my cup.

"Most likely it fell while they were leaving. This is nice Adrian. This is a start. Keeping in mind that not many people own pure gold pendants it might be easy for us to track down the owner of the pendant." Steve says while taking a sip of his latte.

"I do not want the police to be involved in this. They do not know about the pendant and I want to keep it that way. I just do not trust those people."

"I understand, maybe the police are working with the thieves, you never know. I promise we are going to catch these sons of bitches and lock them down." He says while giving me a reassuring look. I trust Steve and he is the best detective I know. If anyone catches these thieves it will be Steve.

"I appreciate it. I cannot wait to catch them. Now I am just wishing that Sage Enterprises will be able to survive the storm that is before it. I cannot imagine it falling in my hands. I will be a disappointment to my family and Dad wherever he is in hell or heaven. I cannot let that happen, Steve." I say while taking another sip from my latte.

"We will not let that happen. You are stronger than this and you have survived other attacks in the past. This is like any other attack and we will get past it."