“What is it?” I ask, hoping some overzealous news outlet hasn’t already posted photos of my spat with President Tao online and put me in a position where I have to explain what happened and why I minimized it.
Neither of them appears upset or murderous as they look at me, but I still approach with caution, taking the phone from Beck when he holds it out for me. The screen is open to an article in the New York Times, and the headline reads as follows:
BREAKING NEWS: PRESIDENT’S MISTRESS FOUND DEAD, MORE DETAILS TO COME
10
SELENE
“Was he still fucking her?”
Monique slams her hands on my desk, open palms landing with a slap that makes me jump. I close my laptop with a heavy sigh that’s meant to relieve some of the tightness in my muscles but somehow only adds to the tension that’s been building in my shoulders and neck since she entered my office five minutes ago. In that small amount of time, my best friend has subjected me to an interrogation that has left me with the distinct feeling that I’m sitting in front of a congressional committee.
There have been a lot of questions aimed in my direction in the two weeks since the news of Sutton Ellsworth’s death broke. I should probably be grateful to the former speechwriter for succumbing to her severe peanut allergy when she did. Her going into anaphylactic shock in the middle of her parents’ anniversary dinner on the night of the State Dinner ensured that the abrupt end of my dance with President Tao barely registered on the press’ radar. They were much more interested in dredging up the affair and analyzing every photo taken of Aubrey since to try and answer the question Monique just asked me.
“I don’t know.”
She squints like there’s a problem with her vision when really the issue is with my answer. It doesn’t mesh with the lies I’ve been telling her for months about the state of my marriage.
“You. Don’t.Know?” She drops into the chair opposite me. “How can you not know, Selene?”
“Because I don’t spend my days monitoring Aubrey’s dick, Mo. He could be fucking someone right now, and I wouldn’t have any idea.”
“Oh, no, don’t do that technicality bullshit with me, Selene!” The excess fabric of her lavender wide-leg trousers swishes through the air as she crosses her legs and then her arms. “I know you’ve asked him. I know that after the first affair you can smell his bullshit a mile away, so tell me the truth even if you won’t tell anyone else.”
“There’s no truth to tell. I don’t know if the affair was still happening, and to be frank, I don’t care.”
“You don’t care?” She twists her lips to the side. “You don’t care if your husband, who you are supposedly happily married to, was fucking someone else? Did you open up your marriage without telling me because you know making that decision just because your partner has cheated isn’t always the smartest thing.”
“Are you done?”
I trace the lines of the nondescript black computer in front of me, anxious to get back to the many, many articles and photos I’ve compiled related to Sutton’s death. Monique follows my fingers, watching absently at first and then more intently. With her brows knitted together, she leans forward.
“What’s that?”
On instinct, my hands spread over the laptop protectively, but it’s too late. I’ve already drawn her attention to it, and just like everything else today, she’s not letting it go.
“A computer.”
“No shit, Sel.” She reaches for it, and I pull it back, which of course makes her more suspicious. “When did you get a new laptop?”
“I didn’t.”
The computer is almost as old as AJ would be today, and it doesn’t take long for Monique’s eyes to go wide with recognition. “You’re working on a project?”
“Yes, I guess you could say that.”
“And you’re far enough along on it to need that?” She nods her head in the direction of the computer. Air-gapped and as immune to hacking as anything in this world can be, it’s the device I use when I’m working on a project that needs to be protected from any and all outside influences. When the initial framework for Smart Sight was done, I put everything on an encrypted USB and moved it to this old beater, writing and workshopping everything on the worn out keys, only allowing it back onto networked computers once the patents and copyrights were in place.
Precautions like this aren’t uncommon in my line of work, and knowing how to take them is coming in especially handy now that I need to find out if my husband killed his mistress. While everyone else in the world, including Monique, is preoccupied with questions like whether Aubrey was still fucking Sutton, I’ve been wondering if she’s the key to my freedom. At first I wasn’t convinced her untimely demise was an unfortunate accident.
A sous chef who mistook peanut butter for tahini.
An Epi-Pen missing from Sutton’s purse.
A delayed ambulance response because of traffic caused by construction.
So many small things that when looked at separately seem like lethal coincidence. But when you put them together, andcombine them with Cordelia’s stressful phone call and the tension between her and Jordan minutes later, it feels like it could be something more.
