Chapter 205

205 Endless Suspicions

I appreciated having him with me so much. If I was here alone, I doubt that any real work would get done because I truly had a problem concentrating. My mind was a mess, and I couldn’t stop thinking about Ace and what he was up to. Maybe he wasn’t up to anything strange at all, and it was just in my head. Even though I knew this, I had a hard time throughout the day and the food at lunch tasted so bland due to my lack of appetite.

“We’re going to start shooting in 5 minutes!” the director yelled loudly.

“Thank you for working with us. You’re so cute. Are your parents here with you today too?” Jeremy asked the boy who was supposed to appear in our commercial.

I had to agree that he was cute and seemed very energetic as well. The casting team did a great job right off the bat by choosing him. The dog that the production team chose to work with were two golden retrievers and they were both on-site. One grown one and another puppy. They both looked so cute and the way they both wagged their tails made me believe that they were happy to be a part of our work.

“You will both look like superstars on screen...” I told the dogs as I bent down closer to them.

“I’m sure they will,” their caretaker replied to me.

I found myself smiling happily and for a moment I felt like I could concentrate on the work in front of me and push on through the day. Jeremy and I sat behind the director as the whole team went about their work. Now that shooting had started, there wasn’t much that we could do but stare at the result of the shoot on the screen.

“It looks fine...” I whispered to Jeremy.

“Yeah...thankfully...” Jeremy whispered in reply.

.....

Despite Ace’s worries and Jeremy’s initial concern, the entire shooting progressed smoothly from start to finish. It was late into the day and the sun had started to set when we finally stopped shooting. The sun as it began to drip below the horizon at the edge of the river made the final scene look very emotional as well as breathtakingly beautiful.

“The sunset is really impressive here,” I murmured in admiration.

“That is precisely why we chose this place. Hopefully, this makes a good finishing scene in the commercial,” the director replied before he laughed happily.

It seemed like he was also satisfied with the result of their hard work for the day. We got all the scenes that we wanted and after being edited, I thought that it would turn out exactly like we had envisioned when we drew up the storyboard. Hopefully, Ace would share our sentiments and thoughts on this as well.

“You’re welcome to just relax and look around. I need to review the work with my team and then they need some time to pack,” the director told us before heading off to join the rest of his crew.

Just as the director was walking away, my phone started vibrating. My heart skipped a joyful beat when I thought that Ace had sent me a text. I felt like I had been a very good employee and girlfriend by focusing on my work and not bothering him during his working hours. However, when I took a look at my phone screen, I discovered that the text that I had received wasn’t from Ace.

‘Where are you right now? Is Ace with you?’

I hated the fact that I still memorized the number that had sent me the text and that meant that I knew immediately who it was from.

Hell...

‘I’m outside working. Ace isn’t with me’

I texted a curt reply.

‘Do you know where he is right now?’

Kyle texted me back almost immediately. Why does he want to know so badly?

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Elizabeth left her office around two hours ago, but she hasn’t returned home,’

I stared at the message on my phone before blinking rapidly a few times. I didn’t even need to read between the lines to know what Kyle was hinting at. He thinks that Elizabeth had gone out to meet up with Ace and that was why he was checking if I knew where Ace was.

The pain I felt on my lower lip made me realize that I had started chewing quite hard on it in my frustration. The worst part of this situation was that I didn’t know where Ace was, and I wasn’t in the office building either.

‘Do you know where Elizabeth is?’

‘No and I’m guessing that you have no idea where your boyfriend is either...’

Kyle was spot on right. I had no idea where Ace was just like he didn’t know where Elizabeth had disappeared too. A knot formed in the pit of my stomach and for a moment I was oblivious to everything that was happening around me. I closed my eyes as a sinking feeling filled me.

I should have known that something was off. I mean, why would Ace send me out here in the middle of nowhere like this out of the blue?

Before I knew what I was doing, I had already dialed Ace’s number and my phone was pressed against my ear as I waited anxiously for the line to connect. If I remembered correctly, which I was quite positive that I did, Ace didn’t have any meetings towards the end of the day. That meant that right now, he didn’t have a reason not to answer my call.

No matter how long I waited, the line wouldn’t connect. Ace just wouldn’t answer my call. Why?

‘Can you call Elizabeth?’

‘She’s not picking up. I’ve tried many times already’

Great. So, they were both not answering their phones. Elizabeth wasn’t answering calls from her husband while Ace wasn’t answering calls from his girlfriend.

I tried dialing his number again although I knew that it would lead to the same result.

The source of this content is nov/el/bin[./]net'

–To be continued...