19-03-2025, 03:14 AM
"Yes, she does."
"What kind? An iPhone or an Android phone?" she asked while taking a drag on the reefer.
"Android. I just got her a new Samsung a few months ago."
"Perfect. I can help you with that so you can read all of her text messages. I can even install a hidden app that will forward all of them to your own email account."
"What about the emails?" I asked.
"Those you can just forward to your own account. Just don't forget to delete them out of the 'sent' file when you're done. Otherwise, she'll know if anything got forwarded and who it went to."
"Pssh," I said. "She's so damned arrogant right now, along with Bud, that I doubt she'd even bother checking. They're both in a complete fog and think they've got me and the rest of the world by the balls."
"Question," Tonya said, taking another drag on her joint, "do you know where Bud is emailing and texting your wife from?"
"What do you mean? Like, from which computer or location?"
"Both, actually," she said, exhaling. "Do you know if he is emailing and texting her from work?"
"Oh, I see where you're going with this. If he's smart, he's probably emailing her from home and texting from his personal phone. That's where you'd expect. If he was using a work computer or phone to carry on inappropriate correspondence, then there could be hell to pay."
"Exactly," she said. "Every city organization has strict rules about internet and official email and phone usage. So understanding that, are you willing to entertain something that might be slightly outside the boundaries of the law?"
I couldn't help but smile. "I guess that depends on what it is," I replied, coyly.
"How about if I could guarantee that you'd never get caught at it?" Okay, now she DEFINITELY had my attention.
"Is she that good?" I asked Chris.
"Dude, she went to friggin' MIT for God's sake. Computer engineering. So, yes, she is that good."
"Actually," Tonya corrected, "I dropped out after my third year. I guess I got bored with college. But anyway, are you interested?"
"Go on," I invited.
"How would you like it if I could make every single email or text message that Bud ever sent your wife look as though it was sent from his work computer, work email account or his official work cell phone?"
"What? How the hell is that possible?"
"Easy. At least for me, anyway. Do you have any emails and texts that Bud has sent you?"
"Yeah, sure. He sends out general emails and stuff all the time."
"If you want, I can digitally imprint every one of those emails with the IP address of Bud's computer, as well as his actual email address. Furthermore, I can re-route those emails through the same official city servers and routers to make it look like it was originally sent that way. Same dates, times, IP addresses, protocols, you name it. It's a slightly different process with the phone and texts, but generally the same principle. No one will be able to tell the difference."
I let out a long whistle. "And you can really do that? You can make it really appear as though those emails and texts were sent by Bud from his work computer phone?"
"Bet your ass I can. I can help you make Bud feel like he got digitally gang bangd in the ass at San Quentin."
It didn't take me long to decide. "Let's do it."
"Consider it done, sugar." And with that, Tonya proceeded to stamp out the rest of her joint and throw the remainder in the small pellet stove. Then she proceeded to absolutely mouth bang Chris Hayes with the raunchiest kisses I'd ever seen. I couldn't help it as I started to sport a boner.
"Fuck, you look so hot in your uniform. I can't wait for you to use those cuffs on me tonight!" They continued to grope and kiss each other and I couldn't help but watch and be mesmerized. Tonya paused as she came up for air and said, "Um, will you excuse us for a while, Patrick? I'm about to unzip Christopher's pants and suck his cock until he blows his massive load down my throat."
I was too stunned to move until Chris said, "Hey, Pat. I really need you to leave for a while. Pat?"
"Huh? Oh, right. Yeah." I sheepishly turned and headed back to the front of the building and bided some time looking through some of the old vinyl records. To her credit, Tonya had managed to accumulate an extensive inventory of good music from every genre. All of the albums and records appeared to be in very good quality condition.
I was interrupted when one of the employees, another chubby Goth female, approached me. "Are you a cop?"
"Uh, actually I'm a Deputy Sheriff with the Mason County Sheriff's Department."
"Are we in trouble or something?" she asked, chomping her gum.
"Uh, no. Not that I'm aware of."
"Is Tonya in trouble or something?"
"No, Tonya's not in trouble, either."
"Good, 'Cuz my parole officer is gonna be pissed if I lose another job."
I couldn't help but chuckle as she turned and walked away to file some more records and CDs. Soon after, Chris Hayes came back from his rendezvous with Tonya looking flustered and out of breath. His hair was disheveled, as well.
"Wow," I said as we left the store. "Was it good for you, too?" I chuckled.
"Pat, let me as you a question; Have you ever had a blow job from a woman that was so fucking amazing that you blew a nut so goddamned hard that your testicles actually ached for an hour or two afterwards?"
I was pleasantly shocked. "Um, no, I can't say that I have, sadly."
"Yeah," he said as he put on his Stetson hat, "it was that fucking good. Here, Tonya wrote down some instructions for you to follow the next time you're out at your place. And she also gave you these." He handed me a regular sized USB thumb drive as well as another small external drive with a phone USB adapter on it. "The regular thumb drive is for your home computer. It has the key logger on it. The other one is for you to download onto your wife's phone when she isn't near it. They're both self-executing and will bypass anything that is password protected. All you gotta do is plug 'em in and you'll eventually find out everything you need to know."
"Thanks, Chris," I said. "And I won't forget this. If this all works out in my favor, I will make this right with you. I promise you that. I don't know how just yet, but I will make this worth your while some how."
"I know you will, Pat. Thanks again for breakfast." And with that, we got back into Chris' cruiser and headed back to the diner to my own vehicle. As we pulled away from the store, I saw Tonya at the front door. She coyly waved at me and blew me a kiss as I left. Chris was one lucky son of a bitch!
As I arrived back at the office, I felt my phone vibrating in my pocket. I pulled it out to see that I had a text message. It was from Shannon.
"Hey, Patrick! Just wanted to say hello and I hope that you are having a fantastic day. Please be safe and know that I'm thinking of you. -- Shannon"
Wow. No text message had ever caused my heart to race before but this one did. It was simple yet elegant, just like Shannon. She just wanted me to know that she was thinking of me. Suddenly, the grimness that enveloped me when I stepped back into the office disappeared. With the intel that I hoped to gather on Clarissa and Bud in the coming days and weeks, plus my new relationship with Shannon, everything seemed to brighten instantaneously. I wasn't even that bothered when I asked Karen Landingham if Bud was in his office. "No, he's gone to lunch now and won't be back in the office for the remainder of the day."
I had a feeling that I knew where Bud was right at the moment. And I'm pretty sure Bud knew where I was at all times, too, thanks to the GPS.
I called it a day right at four o'clock and headed straight for the house. The boys were outside playing in the snow and were ecstatic to see me when I pulled in the drive. For the next hour or so we had a blast playing in the snow fort they had built and proceeded to have a raucous snow ball fight. By the time we came in for supper all three of us were drenched from the wet snow. Clarissa had a minor hissy fit and ordered all of us to strip down and change clothes before we came to supper. Fortunately, I still had clothes upstairs in my old bedroom closet that I could change into and I made myself presentable for dinner.
Clarissa made meatballs for supper, which was always a family favorite. Afterwards, I offered to clear the table to do the dishes to which she eagerly agreed.
"I'm going to draw myself a hot bath," she said. The last I saw of her that evening she had gone into the bathroom and had taken her iPod with her. I crept up the stairs and looked in our bedroom. To my utter amazement, she hadn't taken her phone with her. I quickly retrieved the external drive and plugged in the USB cable. Immediately, Clarissa's phone came to life and I saw the app being downloaded on to her phone. Within seconds, my own phone buzzed indicating that I had a text message. The text identified Clarissa's user name and password for her phone. Damn! How the hell could Tonya do that??? There was no way it could be legal, but I didn't care. The app quickly finished loading and I unplugged the USB cable and set her phone back down on the nightstand where I had found it.
I repeated the same maneuver on our family computer and installed the key logger program. I would have to wait until tomorrow or some other time for Clarissa to actually log in on the computer. But when she did, I would have complete and unfettered access to all of her email, Facebook account and anything else important. I doubted that she had a Twitter account but if she did, I would have access to that, too.
When I finished I shut down the computer and returned to the family room to play some more video games with the boys. As I looked at the Christmas tree in the corner of the room, I realized that Christmas was only a few days away and I needed to get my ass in gear and get some presents for the boys.
Clarissa still wasn't out of the tub yet by the time I tucked the boys into bed. I decided to quit while I was ahead and snuck out of the house so I didn't have to have another confrontation with her. But before I left I made sure to grab all of my old work uniforms from the closet and took them all with me to the motel.
The next day I called in to work and told Karen Landingham I would be using some comp time in the morning. I decided to take a drive downtown to the local Army/Navy surplus store. I snooped around until I found what I was looking for. I bought several sets and returned to my motel room. I had laid out a freshly cleaned and perfectly pressed uniform shirt and pants. I took what I had purchased at the surplus store, which was several sets of US Army Captain's rank, which consisted of two vertical silver bars side-by-side. I pinned one set of rank on the left collar of my shirt and a silver MCSD pin on the right collars, which was the abbreviation for Mason County Sheriff's Department. I then pinned a set of Captain's rank on the left and right shoulder epaulets of my uniform shirt. I finished off my ensemble to fastening my old equipment belt in place, complete with my Taser and my Smith and Wesson .40 caliber sidearm. For the first time in months, I actually felt like a law enforcement officer again.
I turned a lot of heads when I walked into work after lunch. Chris Hayes was sitting at his desk doing his paperwork from a domestic assault arrest he had made. He looked up at me as I walked by his desk and just nodded and smiled.
No sooner had I sat down when my desk phone buzzed and Karen Landingham told me that Bud wanted to see me. So, I thought, the old bastard is actually in his office.
"What the hell are you dressed like that for?"
"I'm a deputy. Chief Deputy, to be exact. And a captain. I'm wearing a uniform that reflects that."
"I don't remember authorizing any uniform like that."
"I don't remember you authorizing any uniform for this position, period," I replied coolly.
Bud walked toward me from behind his desk and chuckled. "I think I get it. You want to distance yourself from me and get back into the good graces of your fellow deputies, is that it? Sorry, Patrick. A leopard can't change his spots that quickly."
"My spots never changed, Bud. This is who I am and this is how I want to represent this position."
"Go ahead, Patrick. Keep challenging my authority. Every time you do, you just make me feel a little bit less guilty."
"Funny, Bud. I didn't think you had it in you to feel guilty, period." I turned around and left. I decided I wasn't going to let Bud ruin the rest of my day.
As fate would have it, I got a text message at that exact moment from Shannon.
"Just wanted to wish you a Happy Tuesday. For no particular reason. And to let you know you are thought of today. Be safe. -- Shannon"
I wrote back:
"Know that I think of you, as well. Your slightest touch could heal me in the hospital and your words can lift my spirit when I'm down. -- Patrick"
I looked up from my phone to see Bud Roberts glaring at me from his office door. I smiled and held up my phone for him to see. He immediately came charging into my office and asked me what the hell I was so cheery about.
"Because I finally decided that I'm not going to get all fucked up over you and Clarissa, Bud. Because I have finally figured out that you can only ruin me if I let you. And I'm not going to allow you to destroy me, Bud."
"Oh, yeah?" he chuckled. "And just exactly how do you think you're going to do that?"
"I have my ways, Bud, I have my ways. And I also have someone in my corner who has given me the strength to deal with this. I'm not going down without a fight."
"You'll lose, Patrick. Clarissa is mine now. You need to get used to that fact."
"Maybe I'm not even talking about Clarissa, Bud. Maybe I've accepted the fact that Clarissa and I are history. But just because I've accepted that fact doesn't mean that I've accepted the idea of you and Clarissa just riding off into the sunset, Bud."
"You need to stop jerking her around, Patrick. This whole stupid façade of you going home at night to play Daddy and husband just to keep up pretenses with your kids has got to end. I've been patient with you to a fault, Patrick. But my patience is wearing thin. Just remember one thing, Patrick -- inevitability. Whatever I decide to do is inevitable. I've got a hell of a lot of ammo I can still throw at you to bring your house of cards tumbling to the ground, Patrick. I haven't even begun to scratch the surface yet."
"Well," I said, "fortunately for me, I actually HAVE begun to scratch the surface, Bud. It's been like peeling an onion one layer at a time, one day at a time. It might take a while to get to the center, but eventually I'm gonna get there. And at the center of it all, is the truth. And I've made it my mission to see that people get the truth -- about me, about you, about everything."
Bud stood up and grew even sterner. "Don't make me do it, Patrick. I can really, really hurt you in ways you don't even know about. Think of your kids in the long term and what they'll think of you. They see you as a hero now. But if you piss me and Clarissa off any more, I will make them so damned ashamed of you they'll never want to leave the house again. They will absolutely dread showing their faces in college."
I rose from behind my desk. "And you, Bud, really need to think about how far you're willing to push me and whether threatening me over my children is a good idea. You told me to remember and accept what is inevitable. I'm telling you, Bud, to remember the unexpected. You just never know when a cornered animal will strike and you never know when something comes out of left field to bite you right in the ass."
Bud turned to leave my office. "It all ends, Patrick. The games with Clarissa. Everything ends right now. You and her are officially separating. Get it through your skull and get your boys to deal with it. Because, if you don't, then I will."
I really wanted to flip him off before he left but I could see others watching us. It was becoming increasingly apparent that the tension between me and Bud was palpable and visible and people were starting to wonder why.
I didn't worry about it much as I went to the house that afternoon. But judging from the surprised look on Clarissa's face it was obvious that she had spoken with Bud. Clarissa told me that she didn't have dinner prepared for tonight and that she would need to run to the store to pick up a few things. I told her that it was fine and that I could manage with the boys if she wanted to head to town to the store.
As she pulled out of the driveway I immediately logged on to our home computer. I activated the key logger system and, in no time at all, quickly obtained her email username and password. I also got her username and password for her Facebook account and for another one called Snapchat, which I had heard of but didn't know much about.
Soon, I was perusing literally months and years worth of emails between Clarissa and Bud. I continuously clicked on all of them and forwarded them to my own email account. I then quickly erased my activity by emptying out the "Sent" folder on her account as Tonya had instructed me. The sheer number of emails was overwhelming and I had no idea how I would go through them all. There were probably 600 or more emails over the last two years.
When I logged onto my own email account, I saw a massive amount of text messages that Tonya's program had forwarded directly to my account. I was still amazed that she could do that but she seemed incredibly smart. There were over 11,000 text messages from the last two years.
The texts started out fairly innocuous but I was amazed at how more and more brazen and flirtatious they became quickly into the affair. Soon, they were downright pornographic in nature and they began talking about taking their affair from the cyber world into the real one. Within a month of when they started texting, it appeared they had. It made me wonder exactly when Clarissa got her prescription of her Low-T treatment from her physician and how long she had been lying to me about it.
The emails didn't turn up nearly as much evidence as I would have hoped. And what little there was turned out to be mostly mundane. Oh, there was some flirty stuff but not nearly enough to be a smoking gun. The only juicy emails between the two of them occurred between Clarissa's email and Bud's personal email account, not his work-related one. But Tonya had assured me she would have a fix for that and so I saved each of them and forwarded them on to my personal account.
The overwhelming bulk of their correspondence was via text. I stayed up the rest of the night reading through text after text. I skipped most of the texts from the first year or so and picked up again from about six months ago, just shortly before I got shot during the kidnapping. Bud became both brazen and cryptic about what he had planned for me. From the sounds of it, I had been exactly right -- Bud had indeed planned on me going down for the count and going down hard.
I called in sick to work the next morning and decided to just stay at the hotel going over as many of the texts and emails as I possibly could. It hurt like hell to do so, reading a chronological timeline of my wife's affair with my boss. But I determined to steel through it and find some way to completely fuck both of them in the ass.
One text in particular caught my eye. Bud had mentioned to Clarissa that he had all the "evidence" he would need. He had typed it in quotes to highlight it. Clarissa responded to the text asking what he meant by that and Bud had elaborated some more. He told Clarissa that he had a "sure winner in Jeff" and that I would never appreciate the irony of it. He further went on to say that he had a "chain of evidence" that would ensure that I would never be able to challenge his authority in this entire fucked up situation.
"What kind? An iPhone or an Android phone?" she asked while taking a drag on the reefer.
"Android. I just got her a new Samsung a few months ago."
"Perfect. I can help you with that so you can read all of her text messages. I can even install a hidden app that will forward all of them to your own email account."
"What about the emails?" I asked.
"Those you can just forward to your own account. Just don't forget to delete them out of the 'sent' file when you're done. Otherwise, she'll know if anything got forwarded and who it went to."
"Pssh," I said. "She's so damned arrogant right now, along with Bud, that I doubt she'd even bother checking. They're both in a complete fog and think they've got me and the rest of the world by the balls."
"Question," Tonya said, taking another drag on her joint, "do you know where Bud is emailing and texting your wife from?"
"What do you mean? Like, from which computer or location?"
"Both, actually," she said, exhaling. "Do you know if he is emailing and texting her from work?"
"Oh, I see where you're going with this. If he's smart, he's probably emailing her from home and texting from his personal phone. That's where you'd expect. If he was using a work computer or phone to carry on inappropriate correspondence, then there could be hell to pay."
"Exactly," she said. "Every city organization has strict rules about internet and official email and phone usage. So understanding that, are you willing to entertain something that might be slightly outside the boundaries of the law?"
I couldn't help but smile. "I guess that depends on what it is," I replied, coyly.
"How about if I could guarantee that you'd never get caught at it?" Okay, now she DEFINITELY had my attention.
"Is she that good?" I asked Chris.
"Dude, she went to friggin' MIT for God's sake. Computer engineering. So, yes, she is that good."
"Actually," Tonya corrected, "I dropped out after my third year. I guess I got bored with college. But anyway, are you interested?"
"Go on," I invited.
"How would you like it if I could make every single email or text message that Bud ever sent your wife look as though it was sent from his work computer, work email account or his official work cell phone?"
"What? How the hell is that possible?"
"Easy. At least for me, anyway. Do you have any emails and texts that Bud has sent you?"
"Yeah, sure. He sends out general emails and stuff all the time."
"If you want, I can digitally imprint every one of those emails with the IP address of Bud's computer, as well as his actual email address. Furthermore, I can re-route those emails through the same official city servers and routers to make it look like it was originally sent that way. Same dates, times, IP addresses, protocols, you name it. It's a slightly different process with the phone and texts, but generally the same principle. No one will be able to tell the difference."
I let out a long whistle. "And you can really do that? You can make it really appear as though those emails and texts were sent by Bud from his work computer phone?"
"Bet your ass I can. I can help you make Bud feel like he got digitally gang bangd in the ass at San Quentin."
It didn't take me long to decide. "Let's do it."
"Consider it done, sugar." And with that, Tonya proceeded to stamp out the rest of her joint and throw the remainder in the small pellet stove. Then she proceeded to absolutely mouth bang Chris Hayes with the raunchiest kisses I'd ever seen. I couldn't help it as I started to sport a boner.
"Fuck, you look so hot in your uniform. I can't wait for you to use those cuffs on me tonight!" They continued to grope and kiss each other and I couldn't help but watch and be mesmerized. Tonya paused as she came up for air and said, "Um, will you excuse us for a while, Patrick? I'm about to unzip Christopher's pants and suck his cock until he blows his massive load down my throat."
I was too stunned to move until Chris said, "Hey, Pat. I really need you to leave for a while. Pat?"
"Huh? Oh, right. Yeah." I sheepishly turned and headed back to the front of the building and bided some time looking through some of the old vinyl records. To her credit, Tonya had managed to accumulate an extensive inventory of good music from every genre. All of the albums and records appeared to be in very good quality condition.
I was interrupted when one of the employees, another chubby Goth female, approached me. "Are you a cop?"
"Uh, actually I'm a Deputy Sheriff with the Mason County Sheriff's Department."
"Are we in trouble or something?" she asked, chomping her gum.
"Uh, no. Not that I'm aware of."
"Is Tonya in trouble or something?"
"No, Tonya's not in trouble, either."
"Good, 'Cuz my parole officer is gonna be pissed if I lose another job."
I couldn't help but chuckle as she turned and walked away to file some more records and CDs. Soon after, Chris Hayes came back from his rendezvous with Tonya looking flustered and out of breath. His hair was disheveled, as well.
"Wow," I said as we left the store. "Was it good for you, too?" I chuckled.
"Pat, let me as you a question; Have you ever had a blow job from a woman that was so fucking amazing that you blew a nut so goddamned hard that your testicles actually ached for an hour or two afterwards?"
I was pleasantly shocked. "Um, no, I can't say that I have, sadly."
"Yeah," he said as he put on his Stetson hat, "it was that fucking good. Here, Tonya wrote down some instructions for you to follow the next time you're out at your place. And she also gave you these." He handed me a regular sized USB thumb drive as well as another small external drive with a phone USB adapter on it. "The regular thumb drive is for your home computer. It has the key logger on it. The other one is for you to download onto your wife's phone when she isn't near it. They're both self-executing and will bypass anything that is password protected. All you gotta do is plug 'em in and you'll eventually find out everything you need to know."
"Thanks, Chris," I said. "And I won't forget this. If this all works out in my favor, I will make this right with you. I promise you that. I don't know how just yet, but I will make this worth your while some how."
"I know you will, Pat. Thanks again for breakfast." And with that, we got back into Chris' cruiser and headed back to the diner to my own vehicle. As we pulled away from the store, I saw Tonya at the front door. She coyly waved at me and blew me a kiss as I left. Chris was one lucky son of a bitch!
As I arrived back at the office, I felt my phone vibrating in my pocket. I pulled it out to see that I had a text message. It was from Shannon.
"Hey, Patrick! Just wanted to say hello and I hope that you are having a fantastic day. Please be safe and know that I'm thinking of you. -- Shannon"
Wow. No text message had ever caused my heart to race before but this one did. It was simple yet elegant, just like Shannon. She just wanted me to know that she was thinking of me. Suddenly, the grimness that enveloped me when I stepped back into the office disappeared. With the intel that I hoped to gather on Clarissa and Bud in the coming days and weeks, plus my new relationship with Shannon, everything seemed to brighten instantaneously. I wasn't even that bothered when I asked Karen Landingham if Bud was in his office. "No, he's gone to lunch now and won't be back in the office for the remainder of the day."
I had a feeling that I knew where Bud was right at the moment. And I'm pretty sure Bud knew where I was at all times, too, thanks to the GPS.
I called it a day right at four o'clock and headed straight for the house. The boys were outside playing in the snow and were ecstatic to see me when I pulled in the drive. For the next hour or so we had a blast playing in the snow fort they had built and proceeded to have a raucous snow ball fight. By the time we came in for supper all three of us were drenched from the wet snow. Clarissa had a minor hissy fit and ordered all of us to strip down and change clothes before we came to supper. Fortunately, I still had clothes upstairs in my old bedroom closet that I could change into and I made myself presentable for dinner.
Clarissa made meatballs for supper, which was always a family favorite. Afterwards, I offered to clear the table to do the dishes to which she eagerly agreed.
"I'm going to draw myself a hot bath," she said. The last I saw of her that evening she had gone into the bathroom and had taken her iPod with her. I crept up the stairs and looked in our bedroom. To my utter amazement, she hadn't taken her phone with her. I quickly retrieved the external drive and plugged in the USB cable. Immediately, Clarissa's phone came to life and I saw the app being downloaded on to her phone. Within seconds, my own phone buzzed indicating that I had a text message. The text identified Clarissa's user name and password for her phone. Damn! How the hell could Tonya do that??? There was no way it could be legal, but I didn't care. The app quickly finished loading and I unplugged the USB cable and set her phone back down on the nightstand where I had found it.
I repeated the same maneuver on our family computer and installed the key logger program. I would have to wait until tomorrow or some other time for Clarissa to actually log in on the computer. But when she did, I would have complete and unfettered access to all of her email, Facebook account and anything else important. I doubted that she had a Twitter account but if she did, I would have access to that, too.
When I finished I shut down the computer and returned to the family room to play some more video games with the boys. As I looked at the Christmas tree in the corner of the room, I realized that Christmas was only a few days away and I needed to get my ass in gear and get some presents for the boys.
Clarissa still wasn't out of the tub yet by the time I tucked the boys into bed. I decided to quit while I was ahead and snuck out of the house so I didn't have to have another confrontation with her. But before I left I made sure to grab all of my old work uniforms from the closet and took them all with me to the motel.
The next day I called in to work and told Karen Landingham I would be using some comp time in the morning. I decided to take a drive downtown to the local Army/Navy surplus store. I snooped around until I found what I was looking for. I bought several sets and returned to my motel room. I had laid out a freshly cleaned and perfectly pressed uniform shirt and pants. I took what I had purchased at the surplus store, which was several sets of US Army Captain's rank, which consisted of two vertical silver bars side-by-side. I pinned one set of rank on the left collar of my shirt and a silver MCSD pin on the right collars, which was the abbreviation for Mason County Sheriff's Department. I then pinned a set of Captain's rank on the left and right shoulder epaulets of my uniform shirt. I finished off my ensemble to fastening my old equipment belt in place, complete with my Taser and my Smith and Wesson .40 caliber sidearm. For the first time in months, I actually felt like a law enforcement officer again.
I turned a lot of heads when I walked into work after lunch. Chris Hayes was sitting at his desk doing his paperwork from a domestic assault arrest he had made. He looked up at me as I walked by his desk and just nodded and smiled.
No sooner had I sat down when my desk phone buzzed and Karen Landingham told me that Bud wanted to see me. So, I thought, the old bastard is actually in his office.
"What the hell are you dressed like that for?"
"I'm a deputy. Chief Deputy, to be exact. And a captain. I'm wearing a uniform that reflects that."
"I don't remember authorizing any uniform like that."
"I don't remember you authorizing any uniform for this position, period," I replied coolly.
Bud walked toward me from behind his desk and chuckled. "I think I get it. You want to distance yourself from me and get back into the good graces of your fellow deputies, is that it? Sorry, Patrick. A leopard can't change his spots that quickly."
"My spots never changed, Bud. This is who I am and this is how I want to represent this position."
"Go ahead, Patrick. Keep challenging my authority. Every time you do, you just make me feel a little bit less guilty."
"Funny, Bud. I didn't think you had it in you to feel guilty, period." I turned around and left. I decided I wasn't going to let Bud ruin the rest of my day.
As fate would have it, I got a text message at that exact moment from Shannon.
"Just wanted to wish you a Happy Tuesday. For no particular reason. And to let you know you are thought of today. Be safe. -- Shannon"
I wrote back:
"Know that I think of you, as well. Your slightest touch could heal me in the hospital and your words can lift my spirit when I'm down. -- Patrick"
I looked up from my phone to see Bud Roberts glaring at me from his office door. I smiled and held up my phone for him to see. He immediately came charging into my office and asked me what the hell I was so cheery about.
"Because I finally decided that I'm not going to get all fucked up over you and Clarissa, Bud. Because I have finally figured out that you can only ruin me if I let you. And I'm not going to allow you to destroy me, Bud."
"Oh, yeah?" he chuckled. "And just exactly how do you think you're going to do that?"
"I have my ways, Bud, I have my ways. And I also have someone in my corner who has given me the strength to deal with this. I'm not going down without a fight."
"You'll lose, Patrick. Clarissa is mine now. You need to get used to that fact."
"Maybe I'm not even talking about Clarissa, Bud. Maybe I've accepted the fact that Clarissa and I are history. But just because I've accepted that fact doesn't mean that I've accepted the idea of you and Clarissa just riding off into the sunset, Bud."
"You need to stop jerking her around, Patrick. This whole stupid façade of you going home at night to play Daddy and husband just to keep up pretenses with your kids has got to end. I've been patient with you to a fault, Patrick. But my patience is wearing thin. Just remember one thing, Patrick -- inevitability. Whatever I decide to do is inevitable. I've got a hell of a lot of ammo I can still throw at you to bring your house of cards tumbling to the ground, Patrick. I haven't even begun to scratch the surface yet."
"Well," I said, "fortunately for me, I actually HAVE begun to scratch the surface, Bud. It's been like peeling an onion one layer at a time, one day at a time. It might take a while to get to the center, but eventually I'm gonna get there. And at the center of it all, is the truth. And I've made it my mission to see that people get the truth -- about me, about you, about everything."
Bud stood up and grew even sterner. "Don't make me do it, Patrick. I can really, really hurt you in ways you don't even know about. Think of your kids in the long term and what they'll think of you. They see you as a hero now. But if you piss me and Clarissa off any more, I will make them so damned ashamed of you they'll never want to leave the house again. They will absolutely dread showing their faces in college."
I rose from behind my desk. "And you, Bud, really need to think about how far you're willing to push me and whether threatening me over my children is a good idea. You told me to remember and accept what is inevitable. I'm telling you, Bud, to remember the unexpected. You just never know when a cornered animal will strike and you never know when something comes out of left field to bite you right in the ass."
Bud turned to leave my office. "It all ends, Patrick. The games with Clarissa. Everything ends right now. You and her are officially separating. Get it through your skull and get your boys to deal with it. Because, if you don't, then I will."
I really wanted to flip him off before he left but I could see others watching us. It was becoming increasingly apparent that the tension between me and Bud was palpable and visible and people were starting to wonder why.
I didn't worry about it much as I went to the house that afternoon. But judging from the surprised look on Clarissa's face it was obvious that she had spoken with Bud. Clarissa told me that she didn't have dinner prepared for tonight and that she would need to run to the store to pick up a few things. I told her that it was fine and that I could manage with the boys if she wanted to head to town to the store.
As she pulled out of the driveway I immediately logged on to our home computer. I activated the key logger system and, in no time at all, quickly obtained her email username and password. I also got her username and password for her Facebook account and for another one called Snapchat, which I had heard of but didn't know much about.
Soon, I was perusing literally months and years worth of emails between Clarissa and Bud. I continuously clicked on all of them and forwarded them to my own email account. I then quickly erased my activity by emptying out the "Sent" folder on her account as Tonya had instructed me. The sheer number of emails was overwhelming and I had no idea how I would go through them all. There were probably 600 or more emails over the last two years.
When I logged onto my own email account, I saw a massive amount of text messages that Tonya's program had forwarded directly to my account. I was still amazed that she could do that but she seemed incredibly smart. There were over 11,000 text messages from the last two years.
The texts started out fairly innocuous but I was amazed at how more and more brazen and flirtatious they became quickly into the affair. Soon, they were downright pornographic in nature and they began talking about taking their affair from the cyber world into the real one. Within a month of when they started texting, it appeared they had. It made me wonder exactly when Clarissa got her prescription of her Low-T treatment from her physician and how long she had been lying to me about it.
The emails didn't turn up nearly as much evidence as I would have hoped. And what little there was turned out to be mostly mundane. Oh, there was some flirty stuff but not nearly enough to be a smoking gun. The only juicy emails between the two of them occurred between Clarissa's email and Bud's personal email account, not his work-related one. But Tonya had assured me she would have a fix for that and so I saved each of them and forwarded them on to my personal account.
The overwhelming bulk of their correspondence was via text. I stayed up the rest of the night reading through text after text. I skipped most of the texts from the first year or so and picked up again from about six months ago, just shortly before I got shot during the kidnapping. Bud became both brazen and cryptic about what he had planned for me. From the sounds of it, I had been exactly right -- Bud had indeed planned on me going down for the count and going down hard.
I called in sick to work the next morning and decided to just stay at the hotel going over as many of the texts and emails as I possibly could. It hurt like hell to do so, reading a chronological timeline of my wife's affair with my boss. But I determined to steel through it and find some way to completely fuck both of them in the ass.
One text in particular caught my eye. Bud had mentioned to Clarissa that he had all the "evidence" he would need. He had typed it in quotes to highlight it. Clarissa responded to the text asking what he meant by that and Bud had elaborated some more. He told Clarissa that he had a "sure winner in Jeff" and that I would never appreciate the irony of it. He further went on to say that he had a "chain of evidence" that would ensure that I would never be able to challenge his authority in this entire fucked up situation.
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