(Two days before the incident that would change Blythe's life):

"Steven, you've arrived!" Frank said when he saw his son in the kitchen. It was already 9 a.m.

"Yeah! I managed to finish all my reports last night," Steven replied while slicing his quesadillas.

"Good, so you'd be joining us in the trip," Frank said with a pleased look.

Steven nodded while chewing a mouthful of quesadillas. "Where's Sarah?"

"She's in her yoga class" Frank replied while walking to the counter "she will be back at an hour." He poured himself a glass of orange juice.

Frank was halfway out of the kitchen with his glass of juice when he remembered. "Steven, don't make noise. Blythe is asleep on the couch in the living room, she must be tired from her long flight."

"Blythe?!" Steven exclaimed.

"Sarah's daughter, you forgot already!" With a furrowed expression.

"Oh! Yeah, you mentioned about Sarah having a daughter but never told me her name," Steven said. Frank shrugged and left the kitchen.

Steven finished his breakfast a few minutes later and decided to match a face to this weird name Blythe. He had met Sarah before a couple of times but never met her daughter.

He entered the living room and saw a girl almost the same height of Sarah around 5ft, 4 inches, but could not exactly estimate her height since she was asleep on the couch while hugging a square pillow.

He noticed that she had the same features as her mother. Heart-shaped face, thin lips with slightly upward arch at both sides making it as if she is smiling even when asleep. Yup, this is definitely her daughter he thought, staring closely.

Blythe opened her eyes and was shocked by a man staring at her only two feet away. At once Steven realized that he had startled her by his awkward pose. He was bent in a bowed position with both his hands were on his knees for support.

"Sorry! I didn't mean to startle you," Steven said while standing straight.

"Uh" was all that Blythe managed to say while adjusting herself to a sitting position and realizing that she had fallen asleep in the living room.

"I'm Steven by the way," Steven said.

"I'm Blythe, and you must be Frank's son. You two look alike," Blythe replied.

"Yes, you look like your mom too!" Steven exclaimed while turning to go,"there's some quesadillas for breakfast, you must be hungry!"

"Thanks, I love quesadillas," Blythe stood up and followed.

At the counter, Blythe sat with her plate of quesadillas and a glass of orange juice while Steven stood on the left side of the kitchen where the coffee maker was on.

"Coffee?" Steven asked while reaching for a mug located inside the cabinet right above the coffee maker.

"Yes please," Blythe replied.

"Creamer, sugar or milk?" Steven said while adding milk to his mug.

"Nah, I like mine plain," Blythe replied.

"Ok, here you go," Steven placed Blythe's mug in front of her and then sat across "I heard you recently graduated."

Blythe nodded while pulling the mug closer to her.

"Congratulations, so what's your major?" Steven asked.

"Thanks, computer programming! You?" Blythe replied while forking her quesadillas.

"Statistics, I work as a market researcher analyst," Steven replied while reaching for his cellphone in his left back pocket.

"Where's Mom & Frank?" Blythe asked after swallowing and proceeded to slice and fork another quesadillas.

Steven replied without taking off his gaze from his cellphone screen "Sarah's in a yoga class, she'll be back around ten and my Dad is probably in his study."

Steven felt his phone vibrate and reached for it. He received a short message from an unknown number. "Meet up in 20 minutes, East port dock 23."

He left Blythe eating her breakfast and told her that something came up and told his dad that he had some urgent meeting and soon he was in his car, a white Toyota Camry, on the way to East port.

He was not happy meeting his boss but he did not dislike him either. It is just every time he meets up with him, more orders and instructions were given and his boss had the habit of inquiring and pondering upon every detail.

He hoped the meeting would be brief and would not affect his plan of spending quality time with his father and the two new additions to the family. He had been working hard for the last few months and a two week vacation would be pleasant.

He arrived at the East port few minutes early. As soon as he got down from the car, he spotted in the distance one of his colleagues wearing a black baseball cap and a matching black T-shirt and jeans.

Daniel was standing midway at the dock. As soon as he got close enough, Daniel motioned to his left and walked towards a small fishing boat at the far end of the dock, Steven quietly followed.

On the small boat, Steven found his boss waiting in the cockpit. As soon as they got onboard, his boss turned the engine boat to life.

None of the men spoke a word to each other. They waited patiently to be far enough from the coastline. Their boss wore similar clothes as them. Grey T-shirt, black jeans and had sunglasses.

Daniel looked around the same age as Steven but their boss was much older, it was evident on the entire grey hair and wrinkled forehead. Although the man's face looked old, his body said otherwise with a lean build.

Steven spoke first "Good morning Sir!"

As he looked at his boss then to his colleague. Daniel nodded slightly towards Steven.

"Morning," greeted his boss as he approached the two and took a seat on one of the makeshift seats on the boat.

"There's been a change of plan boys," eyeing the two young men.

Steven and Daniel briefly looked at each other then looked back at their boss.

"The Sydney lead is dead, however we got a new lead in Toronto and it looks promising," their boss said it with a low sturdy voice that gave authority to anyone listening.

"Shall we proceed as usual?" Daniel inquired.

"Yes, but take extra care since the other side is getting restless and they might spot us," their boss said as he pulled out a white envelope and handed it to Steven. "I want you to confirm about this Intel," while handing him the envelope.

"Get changed and alter your looks," his boss ordered while motioning him to open the envelope.

Steven knew what his boss wanted, he had done it numerous times before. He opened the envelope and found a folded sheet of paper pertaining information about his next mission.

He intently read it giving extra attention to the person's name and picture, while doing so he heard his boss giving orders to Daniel.

"Your job here is done! we can't expose you more than that or else they'll get suspicious and be onto us. What you dug up is good for now. Go back to New York tonight! And continue working on the leads from there. Hand him the current data."

Daniel obeyed and took off the black sunglasses with plastic frame that hung from his shirt collar and handed it to Steven.

Steven accepted the sunglasses and placed it on his collar. The sunglasses looked normal for anyone but contained a micro chip embedded in one of its temple tips.

The two men waited for Steven to finish folding back the sheet of paper and placing it back to its envelope.

Steven handed the envelope to his boss. His boss produced a lighter from his back pocket and started to burn the envelope. He let the remains fall to the water and then stood up and went back to the cockpit.

A few minutes later, they were back at the dock. Steven took off first and went straight to his car. Daniel waited few minutes then went on walking to where he parked his car. Their boss remained for awhile before leaving.

Steven was relieved that the meeting did not last for so long but sighed of the thought of his agenda for today was altered by this new instructions.

He detested cancelling plans he made ahead but, his line of work demanded him to be flexible. With that he called his dad while, driving towards the destination entailed in sheet of paper.

"Hi dad!" Steven said.

"Are you done with your meeting?" Frank asked.

"I'm done with my first meeting but I've to attend another, the client seems unsatisfied and would like to review the data personally," Steven replied.

"So you aren't going to spend the day with us!" Frank said.

"I'm sorry Dad, my boss wants to make sure everything is fine before I take my vacation," Steven said with a reassuring tone. "Don't worry I'll be joining you on the cruise."

"Ok son, I understand but don't work yourself up. Those papers and meetings will keep coming you need to give yourself some slack and spend some time away from your work," Frank said and added, "I know you love your work and enjoy computing and dealing with numbers but you must take it slow."

"I know dad, I will. I have to go now, see you."

"Bye son," Frank replied and ended the call.

Steven estimated that it would take him around two hours to reach his destination which would give him plenty of time to change from his dark blue jeans and white T-shirt to a suit and study the layout of the place.

It is not the first time for Steven to go on such missions but did not enjoy going on the field often. He  preferred analyzing data and other related work that required him to stay behind a screen which he enjoyed, overall he liked his job.

However, this case that they had been working on for months now, was starting to make him feel uneasy.

The closer they got to revealing the truth, the more complicated the matter became. They ended up stumbling on more secrets to unravel.

Previous cases took time to solve but this one seems to be the most tedious so far.

Another thing that made him more on edge than the usual is due to his boss warning  them to take extra precautions.

The intense look that his boss had while warning them hung in his mind.

Steven gave another sigh, and continued to drive.

*** *** ***

The following two days went by with Blythe doing surfing and avoiding her mother's attempts in taking her for another shopping spree.

While Steven had spent the remaining two days gathering more Intel and reviewing the data in the sunglasses.

*** *** ***

Daniel mulled about the data's content matching the new Intel that he received from Steven. Something was not right! The numbers did not add up with the data.

He was missing an important piece of the puzzle or had overlooked something, perhaps it was just in plain sight, and could not pieced it together.

Daniel had stayed up all night scrutinizing every file in the micro chip. He glanced at his wall clock and realized it was 8 a.m.

Daniel decided to call it for the day as he felt the strain on his neck as it was stiff. As he sat straight he felt his tense shoulders, the discomfort feeling went down towards his lower back.

He glanced over his cluttered desk. Papers and pictures scattered across the surface. He started gathering them into a bundle then lifted his mug of half finished coffee that was resting on top of one of the papers. The base of the mug left a circular coffee stain on the paper. Steven's eyes focused on the lines inside the circle. He froze for few seconds while his brain connected the dots to the new Intel.

He estimated that it would take him few hours to rearrange and match the data. With luck he would be able to decipher part of the inscriptions.

Although Steven and Daniel were colleagues each had their own specialty. Steven focused on numbers from tracking financial bank transactions to accounting while Daniel was the hacker. However, both were required to go into the field from time to time.

In this case Daniel's job was to hack a program through the data that his team  acquired, in which he already did. But, the difficult part was to decipher the inscriptions.

It was around noon when he was able to decipher a part of the inscriptions. He had a long way to go but was thrilled that he was finally making some progress, he was starting to give up because he had never did encountered such an intricate code before.

He sent what he deciphered to the rest of the team then went to bed in a new sense of relief that he might be able to solve the code.

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Author's notes:

I hope you enjoyed this chapter.

Here are some questions that you should look forward to finding out in the upcoming chapters:

What is Steven's job? For whom does he work for?

What was inside the circular coffee stain?

How will Blythe's fate cross with the men on the boat?

Thank you for reading this far :)

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