The Mustang was good as new.

Doing some manual work was still the best recipe to clear one's mind. But of course it didn't really work in a hurricane. The moment I finished, I saw Dora running towards the main gates. I was too far to make out the details, but she seemed upset. I tried to rush after her, but met my campaign manager halfway through. She tried to stop me.

"What did you do to her?" I asked, rememebring what she said earlier.

"Just shared my research, and offered her some money." She said in the calmest of voices. "Let her go! That is the best possible outcome..."

"For fuck's sake, I told you to stay out of this!" I knew she wanted to help. I already had my suspicions! But I was mad. "She's just a kid!"

"That makes it a lot worse..." She noted, holding up Dora's phone. It was unloced, the gallery open with our latest pictures. "Erotic photoshoots.. Flashing on selfies with you... A kid, right? But the messages with her mother should interest you even more..."

"Wha... How did you got her phone?!" I shouted, feeling the ground slipping out under my feet. This was getting close to the worst case scenario I imagined. I grabbed the phone to close the gallery. The texts she mentioned were right underneath. She was giving status updates to Sue! About how her seduction efforts went, and how her advice was working...

"She got nervous that I found out her game. She dropped it, running away." She explained coldly. "Not the smartest. Not even a lockscreen set. When you have all the evidence against yourself in the world..."

"And where did she go? What if something's happening?!" I asked, still upset. "If she runs into a reporter right now, I'm screwed."

"No, this is actually best case scenario." She noted. "We have her phone and all the evidence. We delete the pictures and expose their texts! Now you'll be the victim of a scam. She didn't send them anyone yet. Not in the cloud either... This is the cleanest way to end it."

"I'm not ending anything! I'm going after her! And hopefully find her before something happens!" I claimed. It was better if I didn't think about how she got all this from her phone in less than a minute... I pocketed it for now, and rushed to the street. But I wasted too much time. She was off to somewhere. She wasn't even familiar with the area though!

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Good thing I fixed the car! I ran back, and jumped in. Disregarding Jen's protest, I was speeding after Dora, like my life depended on it. From a certain point of view, it did. But somehow, she literally vanished.

I drove around the block, but no sign of her. With no idea which way she went, all I could do is doing larger and larger circles, but no luck. I went back to the villa an hour later, but she wasn't there. Her phone didn't ring. Of course I couldn't call her either. I decided to continue on foot. Went down to the beach, following the path we walked together earlier. Still nothing. I was starting to panic, and decided to check her phone if it had any clue where she could have gone.

Didn't really find anything, but I ended up going through her messages. She barely had any contacts saved. Only a few school related texts. Most of the time she was calling her mother, or messaged her. Rarely her grandparents too. It felt like she didn't have friends at all. The pictures she took were mostly fresh. Before that, only a few from interesting places, or herself. Almost always alone!

I scrolled her messages up all the way before we met, and noticed a pattern. She met way more of those father candidates she told me about! One every few months... Spending a few days with them, until Sue got what she wanted. She often sent sensitive information about them to her mother. Their duo basically extorted money out of naive guys, using the pretense of Sue looking for Dora's fater. My case was barely any different! But since I made her sign that document at the start, seemed like she wanted Dora to do all the heavy lifting... Seduce me, and use it as a leverage... Parts of the messages were missing. But they were probaby talking more on the phone. I was able to find a lot of pointers regardless.

When we took the first images with the Mustang, it was her mother's suggestion. Well, it worked! The time when she came over to my bed at night? I thought it was a cliche, and indeed, she played being afraid... Sue's suggestion again. The topless sunbathing was also initiated by her. At least she kept saying in the messages too, that she never did such things before, and that she can't...

Well, she did it in the end... In fact, she did a great job! My world was pretty much shattered. I realised, she was way better at acting than me.

Even with all the red flags, I believed her! Looked like I'll have to pay for it dearly... Yet, I was still more concerned about where she could be. Was she was safe? I was looking for her in vain for the last few hours. It was way past lunchtime by now... She didn't have money or her phone with her. For all I knew, she ran off before even eating her breakfast! Without any better idea, I returned home again. Janice was busy on her phone, waving to me. She looked annoyed.

"I rented a few drones... Looks like they found her!" She said.