Cheater Read online

  He looked down in his right hand, which still gripped the bouquet of flowers as if it was a club. It occurred to him that he should probably be crying right now. He could feel tendrils of hurt burrowing deeply into his heart and mind. He knew that this was the sort of emotional tragedy that left lasting scars.

  I probably should cry , he thought. It would be better if I cried.

  Instead he returned to his plan and took comfort in it. Step one , he thought: Give the flowers away to the first woman I see who doesn’t look like she’s betraying her husband.

  The first thing he needed was time and space. He got that by calling his boss at home and telling him that there was a family emergency. His boss wasn’t happy, but when Josh made it clear how close he was to walking away from his job altogether, they agreed he would work from home for as long as necessary.

  Josh calculated that he’d need a week or two. Of course, his plan didn’t have a lot to do with actually working at home. He was looking forward to the solitude. Feeling the way he was, it would be nice to go for a while without having to smile and make small talk at the coffee machine.

  Step two was to hop in his car and drive to a run-down electronics store he knew. When he was a kid, going to Radio Shack felt like a visit to Santa’s Workshop. He’d come in with his weekly allowance and geek out over the latest cool and useless things he could buy: remote-controlled cars, walkie-talkies, and video equipment that got smaller every time he came in.

  He knew what he wanted, but it wasn’t the sort of thing that a store would just put out on the shelves. He had to talk with the pudgy guy behind the counter for a while before he made it clear what he was looking for. Then it took some more talking before the guy stopped squirming in discomfort and went into the back for the equipment he needed. It wasn’t cheap, but Josh was beyond worrying about things like his credit card balance. His life had bigger issues now.

  When he got home he left his new equipment in the trunk, but his heart sank at the thought of walking into their apartment and seeing his cheating wife’s face. Stalling, he sat in the car and did some research with his laptop tethered to the data signal from his phone. Emily had an iPhone, which wouldn’t be easy to tamper with, but a little bit of clicking around on the internet told him how to root the phone and install software. It looked like it would take a couple hours. That part would be easy, he estimated. Emily was a heavy sleeper.

  Taking a deep breath, he swung the car door open and stepped out into the cool night air. Here we go.

  4

  OUTSIDE the front door, Josh’s heart was hammering and his palms were wet with nervous sweat. He fought his emotions down. Everything depended on what Emily would see the moment he came through the door. It had to look like he was coming back from one more boring day at the office.

  He took a deep breath and forced himself to think about baseball. Josh actually hated the act of watching baseball, but he loved the statistics behind the game. He thought about Billy Beane, how much worse the “Moneyball” movie had been than the book was, and the challenges of measuring defensive performance. Finally his heartbeat had returned to normal and he inserted his key into the lock.

  When he came through the door, Emily was standing in the hallway. Her eyes were wide, as if he had startled her. His stomach gave a lurch at the sight of her—she was naked beneath him she had his cock inside her they weren’t using a condom they probably make fun of me —but he managed a smile.

  “Hey,” he said, and was pleased that his voice didn’t crack. “How was your day?”

  She stepped forward and hugged him harder than usual. After a moment’s pause he hugged her back.

  “That good, huh?” he asked.

  “I’m just glad you’re home,” she said.

  The sting of the lie cut deeply and he was grateful that she couldn’t see his face in that moment. On another day, back when she hadn’t yet betrayed everything he had placed his trust in, he would have held her for as long as it took for her to let go first, but on this day that was more than he could handle. He pulled away and slipped out of his jacket.

  “Did you get any writing done today?”

  There was a dark look on her face. “No. Not really.”

  “Something else came up?” He knew he was trying to play it cool, but he couldn’t resist the double entendre.

  Her eyes widened slightly before she glanced away. “No,” she said quickly, then moved off down the hallway. “Dinner’s ready. I hope you’re hungry.”

  Josh trailed after her. His eyes went to the skirt that hugged her ass. He hadn’t seen this skirt on the floor of Miguel’s apartment. Idly he wondered where it had been. It seemed like they had undressed in a hurry. Maybe it was hanging from the ceiling fan.

  Dinner was awkward. Emily had made tacos, which on a normal day was one of Josh’s favorites but after everything he’d seen he had to wonder whether she was mocking him. He had trouble swallowing the food. Meanwhile, Emily was unusually silent. She usually chatted happily through their meals together, and sometimes she was so busy sharing stories from her day that he’d be done eating before she took more than one or two bites. Tonight, though, she spent most of the meal staring at her food. The sound of forks scraping against plates filled the room.

  Bitterness and hurt sat like a heavy stone in Josh’s gut. He wanted to go off some place where he could be alone with his thoughts, but his plan required that he act as if everything was normal. He knew he had to say something or she would be on to him. She would ask what was wrong, and eventually he would tell her, and then everything would come in a rush and he’d lose his chance at revenge.

  “Work’s going to be crazy the next few weeks,” he lied. The truth was that he’d recently finished a big project at the firm where he worked and things were actually pretty slow. He needed advance cover, though, for anything he might carelessly say or do that struck Emily as unusual.

  “Oh?” she answered, looking up from the salad that she had been poking at for fifteen minutes.

  “Yeah. My hours might be a little strange. I may have to work late some nights.”

  “OK,” she said, sounding unhappy.

  He looked more closely at her. “Is that OK?” There was obviously something bothering her, and he was pretty sure he knew what it was. He didn’t know why she was pretending that she wanted him around.

  “Sure,” she said. “I just don’t like it when they work you so hard.”

  Yeah, right. As if you give a shit about my well-being. “It should be OK. As long as I get to bed on time. And it’s not forever, just a few weeks.”

  “OK,” she said, and went back to pushing Romaine leaves around her plate.

  Later that night, when Josh got into bed, Emily was right behind him. She cuddled up close, and he had to fight the urge to push her away. Instead he forced himself to put his arms around her. He could smell her hair. At first he was worried that he might smell another man on her, but all he noticed were aromas of soap and shampoo. Evidently she showered when she got home.

  Of course she took a shower. She had to wash another man’s cum off her skin.

  He kissed her quickly and rolled over on his side, facing away from her. Emily curled up behind him and put her hand on his chest, spooning him. He felt a quick wave of sadness, stronger than anything he’d felt since this afternoon’s revelations. For just a moment he wanted to turn back toward her, tell her everything, and get her explanation, but that feeling was quickly followed by a burst of red-hot anger. He wanted to push her arm away, but instead he closed his eyes and pretended to go to sleep.

  Eventually he did drift off, and at 3:00 a.m. his watch tapped his wrist, waking him. Emily was quietly snoring beside him. Slowly, ever so carefully, he snuck out of bed without waking her. Then he crept into the living room and found her phone on the couch where she had left it plugged in.

  He didn’t have any experience with rooting an iPhone, but the internet was full of explicit instructions and it was
n’t long before he had spyware installed on her phone. Then he installed the companion software on his laptop and verified the connection. He played around with the software, making sure that it worked as described. He saw that he could download her text and call history, as well as make copies of her photos and videos. There was a feature for listening in on her phone calls, but he had to wait for her to make a call before he’d be able to try that one out. The final feature, though, was the one he was really looking forward to.

  He switched off her phone and lay it on the couch cushion beside him. On his laptop, he turned on the eavesdropping function. He snapped his fingers next to the phone, and heard the snap come over the speakers on his laptop. He was pleased to see that the phone screen didn’t light up, and there were no other sign that the phone’s microphone had been activated. It was perfect.

  “What are you doing?”

  Josh looked up, startled, to see a very sleepy Emily peering at him from the hallway. She looked like she was on her way to the bathroom when she’d seen him sitting on the couch.

  “Nothing. I just woke up with an idea and wanted to jot it down before I forgot it. I’m done.” He closed his laptop and put it back in his bag, then headed for the bedroom. He wanted to be asleep before she got back so he wouldn’t have to feel her weight in the bed beside him and wonder whether she was thinking about another man.

  His plan was in motion, but there was still a lot of work to do. The next day was when the bulk of the work would get done.

  5

  IN the morning he went through his usual routine as if it was an ordinary day. Emily still seemed to be in the same funk as the night before, and for one bad moment Josh was convinced that she knew he had tampered with her phone and was on the point of confronting him. The moment passed, though, and he realized that what he’d imagined was an unlikely scenario. Technology was a complete mystery to Emily. She didn’t even know that her iPhone could be turned against her, let alone suspect that her husband had done it.

  He kissed her goodbye at the usual time and went out to his car, but instead of driving to the office he drove to the other side of the block, where he found a parking place under a tree. Then he pulled out his laptop, plugged an adapter into the car’s cigarette lighter, and started in on his work for the day.

  In one window he had his office workload. There was a bunch of legacy code that needed to be updated to work with his firm’s current systems. It was boring and detail-intensive work, but the sort of thing that Josh could do in his sleep.

  In the second window, he had opened the interface for the spyware on Emily’s phone. He needed to know the moment she left the apartment to go grocery shopping or head for the coffee shop where she did her writing. Even more, he needed to learn that fact without her knowing that he knew it. He flipped on the microphone on her phone and listened for a couple minutes. He could hear a low buzzing sound and was puzzled for a moment, until he realized that it was the sound of her electric toothbrush.

  He flipped off the microphone. Every time he turned her phone into a listening device it would drain her battery a little bit. He didn’t want her battery life to get so bad that she might start wondering if something was wrong with her phone. He planned to turn the microphone on and off at intervals until he heard what he was listening for.

  He spent the next two hours alternating between doing his job in one window and flipping to the other to check on what Emily was doing. It was a frustrating wait. Emily was a freelancer, and if for some reason she decided she wasn’t going to work today, there wasn’t anything that Josh could do about it but wait until tomorrow. He didn’t want to wait, though. He wanted to get this over with.

  Finally, after what seemed an interminable wait, he flipped on the microphone to hear unmistakable traffic sounds. Emily was walking along a city street, which meant she was headed to her favorite coffee shop. This was the opportunity Josh had been waiting for.

  He hopped out of the car, shouldered his bag, and trotted back to their apartment. He slipped inside the building’s front door and took the stairs two at a time. He was breathing hard by the time he got to the door and fumbled with the key in the lock. He had rehearsed this step in his mind a dozen times. Still, now that it came to actually doing it, he was nervous.

  He up-ended the contents of his bag on the couch. A pile of miniature wireless cameras stared up at him. He had bought out the inventory in two different stores. There were enough cameras for every room in their apartment, with a few extras so that he could get multiple camera angles.

  He got to work. Three went into the bedroom, one in the lamp above the bed, the other two at eye level on either side of the room. One went in the bathroom, tucked into a hole in the wall that Emily had been bugging him to fill in with plaster. He was glad now he hadn’t fixed it, because it was the perfect size to conceal a miniature camera. He hid another one inside a glass flower pot on the kitchen counter, and he put another inside the television cabinet with a good view of the couch. Anywhere there was a spot in the apartment he could imagine two people having sex, he pointed one or more cameras at it, tucking them away in random corners that he hoped Emily wouldn’t notice. Then, with the handful of cameras that were left over, he set up an arrangement that covered the blind spots and gave him at least a partial view of every section of their apartment.

  He kept one camera in reserve. It had a very special role to play. He grabbed it and his bag and slipped out of the apartment, locking the door behind him. Then he hurried downstairs and, just outside the door, ducked behind the bush to the right of the door. He placed his final camera on the sill outside Miguel’s window, propped up on a pebble and angled so that it took in almost all of his tiny studio apartment. It didn’t have a view of the bathroom, but it would have to do.

  Then he jogged back to the car and climbed back into the driver’s seat. Opening his laptop, he fired up the software and got started configuring the connections and looping in the wireless signal from every camera. It took hours, and the sun was dipping to the horizon before he was finally done, but in the end he had a system on his laptop that allowed him to flip from camera to camera, only powering up the view that he needed while the others rested in standby mode to conserve their batteries. As he flipped from camera to camera, all he had to do was click a single button and the composite video feed would be dumped to his hard drive.

  The pieces were now in place. Josh permitted himself a few moments of satisfaction and inwardly steeled himself for the days to come. He would spend as long as it took, working out of his car and monitoring the cameras, spending as many days as he needed to catch his wife in adultery and record unmistakeable evidence of her betrayal. Then, when he was suing her for divorce, he would wait for the perfect moment to throw this evidence in her face. He would make her pay for what she had done. His wife—his beloved—had sent him to hell, and he would carve off a little piece of that feeling and return it to her as a going-away gift.

  He would have his revenge.

  6

  THE next few days were frustratingly uneventful. In the evenings, Emily acted far too cheerful in a way that grated on Josh’s nerves, since he knew that she was wearing that face like a mask in order to conceal something much worse. During the days, he checked the cameras to find her washing dishes, writing in her notebooks, watering the plants, or otherwise going about her business in an entirely ordinary way. He downloaded her call history and went through her texts and found nothing incriminating.

  It was infuriating.

  There was one thing that caught his eye. He saw one number that appeared in her incoming call history three times in the space of two days. Emily didn’t call back, and in response the caller switched to texts. They were too short to be really meaningful, sometimes no more than “hi” or “call me” or “what are you doing?” Josh might have overlooked it, except for the fact that Emily never replied. It made him curious about this mystery person who was trying so hard to connect with Emily
and kept getting so little in return.

  Finally things came to a head on a Saturday afternoon. Josh was playing a shooter on his Xbox. He wasn’t really paying attention to the game, but it gave him an excuse not to talk with his wife, who had been hovering over him all day. He would have preferred to make up some story about working over the weekend so that he didn’t need to spend so much time with her, but he didn’t want to risk making Emily suspicious. At first it was intolerable, being stuck in the apartment with someone who he had so much and so little to say to, but then he noticed something that took his mind off his troubles. Emily’s phone kept buzzing, and every time she looked at the screen and then put it away without responding. He was just about ready to surreptitiously boot up the spyware on his laptop when her phone rang.

  Emily picked it up and walked out of the room and into the hallway. Josh was wearing headphones, but he pulled them off so he could eavesdrop on the conversation.

  “Hey,” he heard Emily say. There was a pause, then she said: “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” After another pause, she said with what sounded like irritation, “OK, give me a few minutes,” and hung up.

  She came into the room. “I need to go out for a bit. When I get back, what do you say we go out to dinner?”

  “Sounds great,” he lied and forced himself to smile at her. Once he heard the front door close, he grabbed his laptop and flipped on the feed for where he was almost certain she was headed.

  There was a short delay while the camera booted up, but then an image flickered into life on his screen. He was impressed with the quality of the signal. He could see every corner of the apartment, and he could see Miguel preening in front of a mirror. He was spending a lot of time on his mustache, making sure that it looked just so, and Josh could see him talking to his reflection. The cameras did come with tiny microphones, but this one was positioned outside the window and so there was no audio from inside the room. Josh wasn’t concerned, though. He had an answer for that.