If you’re scandalized about my callous behavior regarding privacy, just remember that some of these pretentious and self-righteous assholes are willing to withhold crucial federal dollars from life-saving government programs over a “principle” or “moral stand.” Some of them claim to be pro-life, but would happily force women back to the days of coat hangers and back-alley abortions, or kill free school lunch programs for poor kids.
I’m pro-life, but I’d rather lower abortion rates through education and contraception, not shaming people into abstinence. Because, hello, other countries have proved education and contraception work. And I’m also pro-life enough to value an adult woman’s life and health and safety over a clump of cells that can’t survive outside the womb. I’m not judging her for making that decision. That’s between her and God. I’m also for feeding the poor, because, hellooo, Jesus even said to take care of them. Besides, it’s the right thing to do.
Those same “pro-life” assholes, however, are also usually the ones yelling loudest to put people to death, even though DNA is exonerating more wrongly convicted people every year.
Yeah, I don’t get it, either, how they can live with that kind of hypocrisy floating around in their fuzzy little brains.
So if I can find something to use against one of those self-righteous pricks, I’ll obtain it however I have to.
What’s all this have to do with my situation right now, though? Beyond shamelessly using Ward to help me with that?
Oh, it’s me standing in a coffee shop at this very moment as I’m watching Olivia Madison Callahan canoodling in a back corner booth with a guy who is definitelynotWard.
Ward is currently down in Georgia until tomorrow.
She’s facing away from me. I don’t know who the guy is, but he’s maybe twenty-five, if that. I snap a couple of pics of him—including one of them kissing—and I pull up my friend, Facebook.
God bless facial recognition software. He’s an intern at the State Department.
Sloppy, buddy. Very sloppy.Fucking a senator’s wife will have consequences far beyond his ken. Not his fault. At this point, he’s simply another pawn for me to move around and sacrifice, if necessary.
In thirty seconds, I have his home address and other vital info.
Then I pick up my order, head out without Olivia ever having seen me, and I make a couple of phone calls.
I hang out across the street, sitting on a bench there and pretending to read on my phone, so I see exactly when they leave.
Together.
Of course I snap several pictures. Do I look like an amateur?
I make another phone call and then head the opposite direction, toward work. What will happen next doesn’t need my presence. In fact, it’s far better if I’m not there.
Will I tell Ward?
Uh, have you been paying the slightest bit of attention to a damn word I’ve said?
That’s a resounding hell, no, I’m not telling him, or Liam.
Plausible deniability.
I’m sitting at my desk when I receive a text on my secret burner cell three hours later, a link to a Dropbox account.
When I click through, I can view all the pictures and videos my associate took for me of the two lovebirds.
You’d think people in apartments would learn to close their freaking blinds, but apparently not. Even on the fourth floor, drones can obtain footage.
And the kinds of people I know have damned good drones, and can obtainreallygood footage.
I download everything onto the burner, because I know the link won’t be good for long. My contact and I have a quid pro quo arrangement exchanging information and favors like this.
My husband isn’t the only one who has a secret phone, but I’m smart enough not to keep mine where he can find it. Not that I’m hiding something about me from him. Nothing personal, anyway.
Until this latest development.
Unlike Liam needing his old phone for his emotional security blanket while he struggled for years on his own to work through his pain, I need mine for these types of tasks.
Things Liam cannot know about, because it would invoke all sorts of words being tossed around.
