Third Degree: A Novel Read online

All she wanted was a chance to show what she could do.

  • • •

  Laurel’s hands were almost numb. She’d lost the sensation in her feet fifteen minutes ago. When she complained to Warren, he’d assured her that there was no real danger unless her skin turned black. She asked about blood clots in her legs, but he waved away her fears and went back to searching the hard drive in her laptop.

  Two improbable facts kept pinging around in Laurel’s brain. First, that someone had told Warren she was having an affair with Kyle Auster. And second, that Warren had believed it. Kyle’s interest in Laurel had been obvious years ago, when Warren entered practice with him. Auster was a well-known ladies’ man who got out of hand when he was drinking. She’d warned Warren about Kyle’s advances, and Warren had told her to be firm with him but not to make a big deal of it, so long as the incidents remained rare. This hadn’t been the answer Laurel was looking for, but they had a lot riding on the success of the partnership, not least the matter of paying back Warren’s school loans. Auster’s interest in her never faded, but he did stop making overt passes, which allowed everyone to settle down to a tolerable undercurrent of anxiety about the issue, if not to put it behind them altogether.

  Clearly, someone had resurrected the issue by lying to Warren about an affair. But why would he be willing to view her as Auster’s paramour, rather than a put-upon wife? It must have to do with the identity of the informer. That person must be someone in a position to know about such an affair, if it were really happening. But what reason could someone have for telling such a lie? The longer Laurel thought about it, the more confused she became. According to popular rumor, Auster (who was currently married to his second wife) was involved with a nurse at St. Raphael’s Hospital (blond and busty, naturally) and possibly someone in the office as well. Why anyone would believe that Laurel would waste time on him was beyond her.

  Then suddenly she saw the logic. If she was miserable at home, and she blamed Warren for her misery, might not she get involved with Auster simply to hurt Warren? To publicly embarrass him as profoundly as she could? Some wives she knew had played that game. But Danny’s “anonymous” letter hadn’t exactly bolstered this scenario. It had painted a picture of soul mates finding each other after years of searching. But considering Warren’s mental state when he’d discovered the letter, she could understand his glossing over the details.

  She thought back over what he’d said about the informer. Supposedly, it was someone who cared about his welfare more than Laurel did. Someone “offended by adultery.” But had that person told Warren to look specifically for a letter? The informer couldn’t have betrayed the existence of Danny’s letter, because no one—not even Danny—knew that she’d kept it. Warren claimed to be certain she was having an affair with Auster, yet how could he be certain without hard evidence? A photograph. Or a tape recording. But if he had seen such evidence, why would he care so much about the unsigned letter he had found in Pride and Prejudice? Instead of searching her computer, he’d be waving the evidence in her face.

  The facts didn’t add up. Not as she knew them, anyway. But if Warren had been told to search their house (and he had claimed to be looking for the letter, not anything to do with the IRS audit), then the informer’s warning must have been more general—

  Unless there was another letter waiting to be found. A planted letter, whose purpose she could not know. Or maybe it wasn’t a letter. Maybe some other incriminating piece of evidence had been planted in the house, one that Warren had been prompted to find. If so, he had stopped searching for it, because he had stumbled onto Danny’s letter instead.

  Laurel thought of voicing her reasoning to Warren, but there was no point. He’d only think she was trying to stop him from searching her computer. Rather than ponder what the planted evidence might be, she focused on who might have planted it. Who could possibly profit from Warren thinking his wife was screwing his partner? A woman who wanted Warren for herself? Laurel couldn’t believe that Warren had given any woman enough encouragement to take such drastic steps.

  As she watched him probing her computer, a flash of insight struck her. What if the source of the lie about Laurel and Kyle was Auster himself? If Kyle had committed crimes at work—crimes that had come to the attention of the authorities—he would desperately need to distract Warren while he tried to save his own skin. It would take a lot to distract Warren from an IRS investigation, but a bombshell like marital infidelity would do it. (Witness today’s freak-out.) And once Warren began to hate Kyle for something so personal as cuckolding him, he would be unlikely to see him straight in business matters. Moreover, any subsequent accusations of mismanagement that Warren might make about Auster would be viewed through a distorted lens.

  Laurel could admire the logic of the scheme, if she removed herself sufficiently from the reality. As she thought it through from various angles, excitement began to build inside her. If she was right, her salvation might still be waiting in the house for Warren to discover it.

  What might Kyle have planted? she wondered. An article of clothing? Underwear? A cuff link? (Auster actually wore French cuffs whenever he went out.) A nude photo of himself? What about a love letter in his own handwriting? A crudely sexy letter, knowing Kyle. Laurel thought back over the past couple of weeks, trying to remember if Auster had visited their house. She didn’t think so, but the house usually stood empty for most of the day, and she wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Kyle had a key of his own. If they had ever lent him a key—and she was pretty sure they had, early on, during a Disney World vacation—then he still had a copy in his possession. Kyle was that kind of guy. Laurel counted herself lucky that he hadn’t simply let himself in one day when Warren was off at a bike race and climbed into the shower with her.

  Regardless of how it had happened, the odds were that someone—possibly Kyle Auster—had planted something far more damaging than Danny’s letter in the house, and it was still waiting to be found. Whatever that something was, there was a good chance that it might not jibe with Danny’s letter, since the person who planted it had known nothing of that letter. A strange pair of underwear or a used condom wouldn’t help her case, but a different letter written in a different hand—and outlining a different scenario—might sell Warren on her frame-up theory. Going in that direction was certainly less risky than letting him continue to dig through her computer.

  “Warren?” she said evenly. “We need to talk.”

  He glanced up, then returned his attention to the screen.

  “I think I have an idea what’s really going on here.”

  No response.

  “I think I know who’s sent you on this wild-goose chase.”

  Warren seemed to have frozen in his chair.

  “What is it?” she asked, panic fluttering in her chest.

  “Well, well!” he crowed. “Isn’t this special. A hidden folder, under the Windows System folder. It’s labeled ROPN. Any idea what this could be?”

  Her belly knotted. She wished she could twitch her nose like Samantha Stephens and delete the folder in question. “Look and see,” she said, trying not to sound defensive.

  Warren stared at her for several seconds, then clicked on the folder. She didn’t know what he’d expected to find, but his eyes quickly widened as he scrolled through the images and video clips she kept in that folder.

  “Where did you get this stuff?” he asked without looking up.

  “The Internet.”

  “Did you pay for it?”

  “No. I downloaded it off LimeWire. And it’s not really hidden, you know. I made the folder invisible so Grant or Beth wouldn’t stumble onto it if they booted up my computer. By next year, Grant will know how to find that kind of folder.”

  Warren’s eyes jerked right and left; he was probably scanning thumbnail images of her explicit video clips. He bit his upper lip, looking angry and disturbed. “Why haven’t you ever told me you look at this stuff?”

  “I don
’t know. I didn’t think you’d be interested.”

  He snorted. “You know that’s not true.”

  “Look . . . I know you, okay? I didn’t think you’d like me looking at that kind of thing by myself.”

  His eyes remained riveted to the screen. “Why do you look at it by yourself?”

  “Why do you look at porn by yourself?”

  He shrugged as though the answer were self-evident. “That’s different.”

  “How?”

  “I’m a guy.”

  She couldn’t believe it. “So?”

  “So I just use it to masturbate.”

  “I see.” She waited a few moments. “What do you think I do with it?”

  His eyes opened wider. “Are you serious?”

  “What else would I do with it?”

  Warren wrestled silently with this for a while. “How long have you been doing this?”

  “Since it got easy to get video clips like those online.”

  “So you’ve been unsatisfied for that long.”

  Of course I have, for God’s sake, she replied in the silence of her head. And you should have known that long before you found my porn cache. You would have known, if you’d paid any attention at all. But what she said aloud, considering the gun and Warren’s fragile mental state, was “Haven’t you always masturbated?”

  He nodded rigidly.

  “Have you been unsatisfied with me all that time?”

  “No. But I’m a guy.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I mean, of course I’d like to do it more often. I just . . . you don’t seem like you want to, so I don’t push it.”

  She wasn’t sure how to respond. For the past three or four months, Warren had hardly touched her, yet he seemed to be speaking as though this sexual dry spell had not occurred. She decided to take a chance. It was a risk, but if she played doormat and acquiesced to everything he said, he wouldn’t believe she was telling the truth about anything. “That’s not very perceptive. Haven’t you ever noticed that after you finish, I still want more?”

  “Not really. You never come out and say that.”

  “That’s because I don’t want to hurt your feelings, in case you can’t perform again right away. But I’ve tried to show you.”

  “Well, no guy can do it again right away.”

  She nodded, though she knew this assertion to be untrue. “I’m sure you’re right.”

  Warren’s eyes hardened with suspicion. “Are you?”

  “I don’t have much to compare you to, as you know.”

  “So you told me. To tell you the truth, I never really believed the number you gave me. Not deep down. How many people did you really sleep with before me?”

  Here we go. “Warren . . . do you see why I don’t talk to you about these things? I’m trying to be honest with you, and the first thing you do is accuse me of lying even before we got married.”

  He stared at her a long time before replying, “This isn’t spontaneous honesty. You’re caught in a lie already. And you’re trying to sell me a bill of goods.”

  “Two men before you,” she said flatly. “Two boys, actually.” God, don’t strike me dead, she thought, as Warren looked down and clicked the mouse again. Cries and groans came from the laptop’s tiny speakers, as though miniature humans were copulating inside the carbon-fiber case.

  Warren would have freaked out at any number higher than two, and even that made him nervous. It bothered him no end that he hadn’t taken her virginity, but at least he understood that. Everyone had to lose it to somebody, and that wasn’t usually the best sexual experience anyway. But the “second guy” had always worried him. Warren wanted to know exactly how many times she’d had sex with him, and every act she’d ever tried with him. Laurel had strained her imagination to invent a bland physical relationship with a college boyfriend of six months, someone from a Northern state whom they would never run into in the future. After seeing Warren’s reaction to even this small “revelation,” it hadn’t taken a brain surgeon to figure out that it was best to banish her other partners to the female Bermuda Triangle of “never happened.” After all, it wasn’t as if she’d slutted around or anything. She’d held on to her virginity until eighteen, which was a record in her high school class. But during college she’d had a couple of inebriated hookups that went further than she’d initially planned. Handsome boys she had screwed on the first date, for no reason other than she was lonely and they’d made her feel good and she just by God wanted sex.

  Then there was the architecture professor she’d slept with for eight months, all on the DL because he was married. Warren would have lost it over that. The affair had been Laurel’s real initiation into sex, and if she had left any corner of her body or psyche unexplored, it wasn’t for lack of trying. She’d actually tried a few things she learned in that relationship on Warren, and sometimes they’d worked, after a fashion. But anything really edgy always brought probing postcoital questions, so she’d stopped experimenting. She had mistakenly thought he’d be glad for the variety, but Warren was different from most men. Or maybe most men were more like Warren than she knew. Twelve years of faithful marriage had effectively removed her from the research pool.

  She’d had no trouble telling Danny about her sexual past. He wouldn’t have minded if she’d slept with a half dozen or more men before him, so long as she ended up with him. In that relationship, she was the insecure one. Danny had made love with women all over the world, and no matter how much he said to boost her confidence, Laurel felt that she could never outdo the exotic courtesans who now populated her mind. But then trying to was half the fun.

  “God,” Warren exclaimed, breaking her reverie, “some of this stuff is sick.”

  Laurel felt herself blush. “I’m human, okay?”

  “This stuff turns you on?”

  “Some of it wasn’t what I thought, based on the file names. But most of it does, yes.”

  Warren looked at his wife as though seeing her for the first time. “Do it right now, then.”

  “What?”

  “Masturbate.”

  She searched his face for sarcasm but found none. “You’re joking, right?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I’m dead serious, Laurel. We’ve been married twelve years, and I’ve never seen you do that. Not for real. Today seems as good a day as any.”

  “I’m not going to do that, Warren. I couldn’t anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  She closed her eyes, then screamed her answer at nearly full volume: “Because I’m duct-taped like a fucking Al Qaeda terrorist and you’re holding a gun on me! How about that for starters?”

  Warren remained unmoved. “From what I see in these videos, you ought to like the idea.”

  “Sorry, wrong girl.”

  “Maybe so,” he said softly. “I don’t know you at all, do I? You’ve never really been honest with me.”

  She looked hard into his eyes. “You never wanted me to be honest. Not really.”

  He drew back, then looked away. “How often do you do it? Play with yourself, I mean.”

  In Laurel’s experience, if she wasn’t having much sex, she felt little need to masturbate. She would have thought the opposite would be true, that during dry spells she would need to do it more, but she’d found that the reverse applied to her. It was when she was being well looked after that she needed constant release, whether she had access to her lover or not. After she became involved with Danny, masturbation had become as important a part of her sex life as intercourse. On days they couldn’t meet, it was essential, and when they could meet, she sometimes did it just to warm up for the rendezvous, so that he wouldn’t be ahead of her on the arousal curve. Then they could share everything equally from the beginning.

  “Laurel?”

  She looked up. For the first time today, Warren looked as vulnerable and confused as Grant sometimes did.

  “So,
I guess this guy you’re seeing is some kind of sex god or something, huh?”

  “Warren. I’m not having an affair.”

  He grunted in stubborn disbelief.

  “Besides,” she said, “what do you mean ‘this guy’? I thought you said you know it’s Kyle.”

  He laid his hand on the letter beside the computer. “This doesn’t really sound like Kyle. I know he’d fuck you without a second’s hesitation. And I don’t know what you might do to hurt me. But this letter . . .” Warren shook his head. “This really hurt.”

  Even sitting duct-taped like a prisoner awaiting execution, Laurel felt guilt surge within her. Had getting involved with Danny been the only answer to her marital problems? Of course not. She simply hadn’t been brave enough to confront them directly, or to face what leaving Warren might mean. She’d waited for an emotional parachute, and only by chance had she found real love.

  “Tell me what it’s like,” Warren said dully. “With the guy who wrote this, I mean. Tell me what you feel when he does it to you.”

  You mean with me, she thought. Not to me.

  Warren’s transition from fury to depression had been almost instantaneous. Laurel felt as if someone had slammed on the brakes of a speeding car, and she hadn’t yet recovered. All she knew was that she wasn’t about to tell her husband one detail about how being with Danny compared to her conjugal sex. Warren was like the boys she had known in high school; he had a powerful biological urge that needed release, and her body was the vehicle for that release. His sexual routine hadn’t varied significantly in years. The tension would build in him for a few days, or even a couple of weeks, and then he would come to her and spend himself. She occasionally managed a vaginal orgasm by sitting astride him. But the only reliable orgasms she got were from his licking her, and as the years passed, he had become less and less willing to devote the time required to bring her off this way. She was always left wanting more, and the few times he’d been able to go back inside her, she’d been unable to reach the peak she sensed just beyond the horizon.

  Danny, on the other hand, instinctively understood the dynamics of female arousal and release. Some days Laurel wanted hours of foreplay punctuated by staggered moments of release, and other days she wanted to be stormed like a city under siege, plundered until nothing remained but a faint pulse of life and dreamless sleep. Danny knew within moments of seeing her which kind of day it was, and he could often tell by the timbre of her telephone voice as they arranged their rendezvous. Laurel had once arrived at a hotel room only to have a gloved hand clapped over her mouth from behind, her skirt hiked up, and her body ravished from behind without ever seeing the man’s face. Only after he had ejaculated and let her fall to the bed had she been positive it was Danny. She didn’t want that kind of adventure regularly, but to know that it might happen at any time . . . that was the thing. Warren could pound violently at her in a fit of drunken passion and still leave her unsatisfied, while Danny might force her to lie absolutely still while he moved at a glacial pace within her, yet by the time he finished, her body felt like a desiccated husk of fruit, sucked dry of all moisture.