The Monster

But that was fine with me! I took my time, savoring the feeling of her tight pussy clasping me, enjoying my hands on her hips, her ass, sliding them around to hold her lovely breasts. She is so damn beautiful, and I loved just looking at her while we fucked. It was relaxed and delicious, and I probably fucked her for twenty minutes before I let the sensations bring on my orgasm. I sped up for a couple of intense minutes, then jetted my semen into her. We were both asleep within another five minutes.

On Sunday we went our separate ways. I told Gina I needed to spend part of the day at the office, not an unusual occurrence. I asked her to drop me off, and then she headed to the club for some tennis. I used my throw-away cell to let Barry know, and he promised to have Vera get her operative into the locker room while Gina was playing.

I logged onto the web site, set up the software and let Carlyss do his stuff. It gave me plenty of time to think--in particular to wonder why I wasn't angrier. After all, my wife and my best friend seemed to be plotting to kill me! And Gina had apparently been fucking around on me, at least with Josh Daniels if not with others. So why wasn't I bursting with rage?

All I came up with was, first, that I didn't yet know for sure; and second, that revenge was a dish best served cold. (Out of pure curiosity I looked it up on-line: it turns out the phrase comes from some guy I'd never heard of, Pierre Ambroise Francois Choderlos de LaClos, back in the 18th century.) Somehow I had been able to put my anger and feelings of betrayal in a little box, off to one corner of my mind. I wouldn't have any trouble getting even—or spend even a minute feeling sorry for Gina or Dowdle—but until the proof was in front of me I wasn't going to let myself get crazy.

At around 5:30 Gina picked me up, fresh from her tennis game, a swim, and a shower, and we picked up some Indian food and had a quiet dinner at home. Neither of us seemed to want to make love, so we watched a couple of episodes of "The Sopranos" that we'd Tivoed and hadn't seen yet—then we went to sleep. As ordinary a weekend as we'd ever had.

****************

Nothing out of the ordinary happened on Monday, either. I pretended to work in my office, while setting up the software so David Carlyss could finish his downloads. But when I called Barry on Tuesday afternoon, while sitting in a back booth at a bar downtown, I found that his people had made a lot of progress.

"Several things to tell you, Alex. Starting with your car: it was arson, as we knew it would be. Done by people who knew what they were doing. Two guys, dressed in black with ski-masks, so we'll never identify them. They made a tiny hole in the Ford's gas tank, then splashed around some more gasoline they'd brought with them, making sure to get lots of it under your Lexus. Then they dropped a match and got the hell out of there."

"What about Dominic's photos and paperwork? Will that be incriminating?"

"I think it would convince the police that someone tried to kill you, absolutely—but it's hard to see how they can link it to Denham or your wife without some further evidence."

I thought for a moment. "Okay—thanks. What else has turned up?"

"David is finished with your computer, and his financial guys think they're onto something. They'll need another day or two to be sure. It looks as though somebody was skimming some money for about eight months, starting a little over a year ago, via some sort of dummy subsidiary. Maybe $2 million got stolen, no more than that. Then the thing was quietly shut down. David is pretty sure he'll be able to trace it back to a particular computer in your office, if you give him a bit more time."

"Any chance of recovering the money?"

"It's impossible to say for sure, but not likely. The best chance will be to find out who did it, take him to the cops, and demand that it be repaid. If whoever took it has already spent it, it's probably gone forever."

I didn't like the sound of this; but I knew that losing $2 million wouldn't break me, nor the company. It was the principle of the thing, and it pissed me off a lot. Still, compared to being murdered, losing the money clearly was a lot less serious.

"And is there any news about Gina? Did Vera's people get the bugs, and get into her computer files?"

He cleared his throat. "It looks bad, Alex. I won't shit you—it appears that she was probably involved with two of the three guys at Apex whose names you gave us: Josh Daniels and Eddie Kreitler. And she made a call on Sunday to Denham from her cell phone that makes it pretty clear she's sleeping with him."

"Jesus," I said. I realized I wasn't all that shocked—but it still felt like a blow to the head to have my suspicions so amply confirmed, all at once.

Barry's voice pulled me away from my dark thoughts. "Listen, give us a couple more days to pull this all together. Vera's people are monitoring Gina's cell phone, the bug in her purse, and the bugs in your house. Plus they're still working on her phone records and credit cards. It turns out she had two cards in her maiden name, and the monthly bills get mailed to a post-office box—did you know anything about that?"

"Hell no," I answered, still feeling a little stunned.

"Alex, I know this really sucks. Do you think you can hang in there a little longer, and keep your cool while we wrap this up?"

"I know I have to, Barry, so I guess I will. Do you think they'll make another run at me?"

There was a brief pause; then he said, "they might. But they'll be very very careful, with the news about your car still so fresh. They won't want anyone to put 2 and 2 together. So if you take reasonable precautions—stay out of dark lonely places and things like that—you should be fine. Do you want me to put a couple of people on you?"

"No—there's too much chance that Denham's guys would pick that up. No, I'll just have to take care of myself. I'll call you on Thursday."

"I'm sorry, Alex," he said, in a surprisingly gentle voice.

"Yeah, me too," I replied, and hung up.

*****************

Wednesday may have been the least fun day of my adult life. I knew that my marriage was over. I knew that my best friend, a guy I'd known since junior high school, someone I trusted more than anyone else, had been banging my wife. And I knew that one or the other of them—or both!—was looking to kill me.

That's what I was carrying around inside me, and there wasn't a thing I could do about it—yet—or anyone I trusted to tell.

So I wandered around the office aimlessly, pretending to work, chatting from time to time with Meredith, while my mind chewed on the problem of how I was going to avenge myself. The details obviously depended on exactly what Barry and his team could find out, but the broad outlines of what I wanted to do were already clear in my mind.

And as my anger started to grow, the sense of outrage and betrayal, the cold fury, I found that I was very much looking forward to what was about to happen.

*****************

On Thursday I waited until late afternoon to call Asimove, wanting to give his people as much time as possible. At 4pm I went to my usual place for a haircut, then instead of heading back to the office I strolled down the street into a diner, settled at a table in the back with a cup of coffee, and made the call.

Barry and I were on the phone for nearly an hour. I asked a lot of questions, made sure I understood everything he was telling me, and discussed various options with him. When we were finally done, he wished me luck and we said our goodbyes. I had what I needed, and I would take it from here.

That evening, like the previous few, I earned an Academy Award at home, treating Gina with the same affection and exhibiting the same sexual desire as I usually did. I won't claim I'm a better liar or actor than she is, but I think I was just as good! We dined on a roast chicken that Carmelita had prepared, watched a movie on TV, and fucked before we went to bed.

It crossed my mind that this would surely be the last time I ever had sex with Gina—probably the last time I'd ever touch her. But I hadn't the slightest desire to "make it special". Now that I knew what she was, the physical attraction I still had for her was mixed with such loathing and repulsion that it was a little hard to get excited, at least at first.

But, not to my surprise, Gina's gorgeous body and her talented mouth solved that problem without difficulty, and we did the energetic, sweaty things we usually did. Then we said good night and fell asleep. The end of my marriage: not with a whimper, but a bang....

*****************

I left early on Friday, not wanting to speak to Gina again, and had a quick breakfast on the way to the office. I took Gina's car, a BMW convertible. I was pretty sure her car wouldn't have been tampered with, and I wanted to make it to work alive today. When she discovered her car was gone she'd undoubtedly be annoyed—but that was going to be the least of her worries by the time today was over.

When Meredith came in around 9:00 I called her into my office, said good morning, and handed her a list I'd written out.

"I'm going to need to change my schedule around today," I said. "Would you take care of setting all of this up for me, please?"

She scanned my list, and I saw her eyes grow wide. She looked up at me in surprise, clearly waiting for an explanation, but when I remained silent she just nodded her head and said, "okay, boss, I'll take care of it." I smiled at her and she left the office.

My morning I had left pretty wide-open, with the exception of a 10:00 meeting with Nancy Leggett. She was one of the principals of Leggett & Hyne, the PR firm that had worked for Apex for about six years, and she'd become a good friend. Nancy was an attractive, businesslike woman of about my age. She was very sharp and had a great sense of humor; in fact she was one of the few women I could imagine dating, if I hadn't been married to Gina.

We spoke in my office for nearly an hour, in quiet voices, with my radio turned up quite loud in case anyone might have been eavesdropping. All they would have heard was a Beethoven symphony and some Strauss waltzes.

At my request Meredith had ordered me in a sandwich and a soda, which I ate at my desk while reading the paper. The real fun was going to begin this afternoon, around 1:00.

Meredith buzzed to say that Jeff Denham was calling—he'd like to see me right away.

I smiled to myself and said, "tell him I can't see him or talk to him right now, Meredith. He can meet with me at 4, just the way I asked you to set it up."

Did this mean that Denham had a bug in my office? If he did, an hour of loud music while I met with Nancy Leggett would surely have put him on edge. But something else might have tipped him off—perhaps he'd bugged Meredith's phone or her office, and heard her making the arrangements for today that I'd asked her to take care of.

In either case, I knew he was going batshit, and the thought pleased me greatly. Just wait, you fucker—it's going to get a lot worse!

*****************

At a few minutes before 1:00 I strolled into the conference room and found it set up just as I requested. The big conference table was bare except for a company laptop at one end, which was open and running. At the far end of the room was a video camera on a tripod, with one of our tech people standing behind it ready to do the filming.

"Hi," I said, "it's Arthur, isn't it?"

He smiled broadly at being remembered. "Yes, Mr. Macmillan, Arthur Wendtner. All set up and ready to go. Would you like me to stay and run it, or shall I just show you how it works?"

"Just show me please, Arthur. I want it to run all afternoon, just filming the meetings I'm going to have in here."

He set it up to cover the part of the room I and my "guests" would be sitting in, and we did a quick 30-second test. It worked fine.

"The film cartridge holds 6 hours, so you should be all set, Mr. Macmillan."

I thanked Arthur and he left. I fiddled with the laptop for a minute, then clicked it into screensaver mode and sat back in my chair. Not more than two minutes later, Josh Daniels knocked on the door and came in tentatively. At last it was beginning!

"Josh, come in and sit down please," I said with an affable smile. "You don't mind if we record the meeting, do you?"

He looked worried and confused. "Alex, I'm...what is this about?"

"We'll get to that in a minute. You understood what I asked Meredith to tell you? This meeting is absolutely confidential—you agree not to speak about any aspect of it with anyone at Apex, now or in the future."

He shrugged, still looking uncomfortable. "Yes, of course Alex, you're the boss."

"And the filming is okay?"

"I guess so. But why all the..."

I interrupted him. "Just hang on a sec, Josh, it will all make sense in a few minutes."

I sat back in my chair, looking at him with a bland expression on my face, watching his discomfiture. Then finally I spoke.

"Josh, I know all about you and my wife."

He started visibly, trying in vain to appear calm. He couldn't keep his eyes on mine, as they bored steadily at him; they kept slipping away from my face.

"Alex, uh, I don't know...what...what you're talking about."

"No need to pretend, Josh—I've got the pictures right here." I spoke this lie with complete assurance, patting a thick manila folder sitting next to me on the table.

"But now I'd like to hear all about it from you, please. You are in some pretty deep shit, and if you aren't completely honest with me it's only going to get deeper."

I've been in some pretty hard-nosed negotiations during my business career, but I've never seen a man look more miserable than Josh did at that moment. And I savored every instant of his misery, as I waited for him to try to squirm out of what he'd been caught at.

After a minute he said, "Alex, I'm...can we turn the camera off?"

"No we can't. Just go ahead, Josh, I'm waiting. When did it start, and how? And how were you able to justify fucking the boss's wife for months behind his back?"

He kept his eyes on the table. "Christ, Alex. It...started about four years ago, and went on for about three months. I guess you know all that.

"Gina seduced me. That's what it was, pure and simple. Linda and I had known you and her for years, and she'd always been a little flirtatious. God, who wouldn't be, with that body?"

He stopped suddenly, cringing a little at the thought of how that sounded. I just waited, and finally he went on.

"Anyway, she flirted heavily with me one year at the Christmas party, the one we had at that old ballroom. It was pretty obvious she was coming on to me, but I couldn't really believe she meant it. Then two weeks later she called me one day while you were in Chicago and asked me to come out to the house.

"When I got there she had nothing on but a long nightie, completely see-through. I couldn't believe it! And I tried to leave, I swear to God, but she pulled me in, locked the door, and just stood against it, gazing at me with a smile on her face.

"Then she said something crazy like 'I've wanted you for a long time, Josh—and now I'm going to have you.'

"I'm sorry, Alex...truly I am. I feel like the world's worst asshole right now. But I was 38 years old, and never in my life had I ever even kissed a woman as amazing as Gina. I knew it was wrong, but I let it happen. A team of guys with flamethrowers couldn't have gotten me out of there.

"She took me by the hand and led me to the bedroom, and she...we...had sex for two hours. It was unbelievable, like nothing that had ever happened to me in my life. After that I was pretty much her puppet. All she had to do was call, and I was there."

Josh sat with his head in his hands, looking at the floor, totally defeated.

"How long did it go on, and what ended it?"

"She did. Suddenly one day she said she'd had enough—she wasn't even particularly nice about it, either. I'm pretty sure it was because I wasn't willing to do what she wanted."

"And what was that?" I asked.

He looked up at me for the first time since beginning his confession—now he was able to face me.

"She wanted me to set up some phony accounts to siphon money out of Apex. It was about money, Alex, nothing more. She said you had all these millions, and she wanted a larger piece for herself. She asked me a lot of questions...in bed, I mean, after we...afterwards. About how our accounting systems worked, whether one could set up fake accounts in some way, how dangerous it would be, and so on.

"At first I thought it was just a joke, but she brought it up over and over. Finally I just said I wouldn't do it."

He straightened in his chair. "I won't lie to you, Alex—not anymore. I didn't refuse out of morality, or loyalty to you or Apex. By that time I would have done anything to keep...being with Gina. But I didn't see any way to do what she wanted without running a substantial risk of being caught, and I wasn't willing to go to jail—not even for her.

"So when Gina realized that I really wouldn't do it, she just dropped me. And it was a good thing, too, because Linda was sure I was having an affair. But it ended before she could ever get proof. I denied it over and over, just lied and lied and lied, swore it was nothing more than a lot of extra projects at work.

"I don't think she ever really believed me, but she sort of let it die down. And I did everything I could to make it up to her, and thank God we're still together."

We sat for several minutes in silence. Much of what Josh had said was new to me. Barry's people had been able to find evidence of the affair—lots of phone calls between Josh and Gina, as well as some steamy email messages from her to him—and they pinpointed the dates. But Josh's story about Gina being the instigator was new information, as well as her hopes of stealing money from the company.

I stood up. "Okay Josh, we're done for today. Go home for the weekend—don't go back to your office, and don't say a word about this conversation to anyone, whether inside or outside the company. Is that completely clear?"

I spoke in a neutral, cold tone.

"Yes, Alex." He sounded submissive, and frightened. "Am I, that is, do I...?"

"We'll talk on Monday, Josh. Until then, just go home to Linda and the kids."

*****************

My conversation with Eddie Kreitler at 1:30 went much the same way. Eddie had risen through the ranks at Apex; he managed international sales and marketing, then became the number two operating officer (under me, of course).

Gina had targeted him a few months after she broke it off with Josh, judging from the phone and email records, and it went on for more than six months. He was single, so the two of them didn't have to be quite as careful. And the way Eddie told it, Gina had raised the prospect of stealing from the company a bit at a time, probably not wanting to spook him.

He said it began as a joke between them, and only very gradually turned into something serious she wanted him to do. He said he went as far as to draw up some possible ways to do it—but he never found one that wouldn't expose him to too much risk.

"Frankly, Alex, it was because the company is well-run; the oversight of our financials is tight, and I didn't see how I could pull it off. And when I finally confessed that to Gina, poof! She was done with me."

My conversation with Bernard Eisenhart, Apex's Treasurer, took a very different turn. When I said, "Bernie, I know all about you and my wife," he looked at me blankly, his expression startled but not in the least upset.

"What do you mean, Alex?"

"Bernie, I've got the photos right here," as I patted the manila folder. "There's not much point in denying it."