Cruel and Unusual Punishment

He grabbed her hand and began walking quickly back into the mall. Her clothes felt strange as she followed him. They were almost at the opposite end of the huge mall before he walked out of an exit and scanned the parking lot. He began walking down one aisle, stopped, went back and took another aisle.

"There it is."

He walked up to a late-model car, bent down and took some keys that had been placed on a tire. He opened the passenger door for her to get in.

It was a beautiful late spring day. The sun was shining warmly as they drove. He focused on the road. She suddenly realized that he was driving without a license. What if they were stopped?

At a light, he turned to her and spoke

"I'm sorry for the hurry, but the clock is ticking. We do a lot of business with one car rental company, so when I called them using the department store phone, they dropped this car off without any paperwork. I don't know how soon they'll enter the information into their computer."

He drove to a campground about fifteen minutes away. When they parked, he took the large bags from the back seat. When she got out, he locked the rental car and began walking through the thick woods that bordered the parking lot. She followed him on a narrow path. Tree branches brushed her as she walked quickly. He stopped a few times to let her catch up.

When they reached a small clearing, he stopped. She reached for her phone to see what time it was and then remembered her phone was locked in the trunk of his ar in the parking lot. She remembered when Bennett had told her she was self-aware. What was she feeling now? Not fear. Not sexual excitement. Mostly curiosity.

Bennett began pulling things from the bags.

"This one looked similar to the one I have at home," he said as began working. He instructed her how to help him as he set up a large tent. She wondered why he didn't bring his own tent instead of buying a new one.

The tent had heavy canvas walls when it was up. He asked her to stay outside while he took the bags inside. It wasn't long before he came out and stood at the tent's flap. He motioned to her to come closer.

"Try to forget what we've done so far," he said, "and focus on the moment. I'm going to suggest something, but I'm not ordering you. I won't be angry if you decide to ignore this suggestion. Take off all your clothes."

She looked at him gazing at her. She wondered what he was thinking. Did he know what she would do? Of course. He was the master of seduction and intrigue. What words would he use to ensnare her once she was naked in front of him? She felt like the center of the universe. Everything revolved around her and her decision. She was trembling from excitement.

Yes, she would take off her clothes. She would do it slowly in a silent striptease while staring at him. She began unbuttoning her blouse. His voice stopped her.

"Raven! Raven! Wait! Please turn around first. I'm going to turn around and do the same thing. It will probably take you longer, so tell me when you're done."

She felt a sudden sense of relief. The striptease idea was stupid and common. This was much better. They would discover each other like Adam and Eve. She was the first woman in the world, and he was the first man.

She methodically took off her clothes, folded them and placed them on the grass by the tent.

"I'm ready," she whispered.

When he spoke, she noticed his voice didn't sound flustered. How often had he been here? With how many women?

"All right. Leave the clothes right by the entrance, and let's go into the tent."

He entered and held the flap back for her to follow him. The tent was large enough that she didn't need to bend down.

Inside, she looked first at his face and saw that his head was slowly going down her body. He was sizing her up. How did she compare to the others? Or his wife?

"You're beautiful," he said, and she could tell he meant it. She felt relief. His judgment made her feel important and validated.

She looked him over. He was in good shape, but Brian was in better shape. Without clothes on, he didn't seem as hypnotic, but his handsome face, fit body and air of melancholy still gave him a special allure.

As if he had read her thoughts, he spoke with assurance.

"As you can see, you have excited me. A man can't see a woman's excitement as easily."

His head jerked as Raven heard what sounded like a small bird outside the tent flapping its wings rapidly as it rose into the air.

"That was fast," he said. "Did you hear that?"

The tent's heavy canvas walls blocked out the hot afternoon sun and made the air inside cooler. With no clothes on, it felt good. Bennet had stretched out a blanket over the grass, and cushions were strewn over it.

He sat down on some cushions and motioned her to sit on some others a few feet away. She was surprised that he kept his distance. Was that part of his plan?

"Make yourself comfortable," he said. He handed her a water bottle and opened one himself.

"Please be patient with me because I'm not as good a storyteller as you are. I tend to bounce all over the place as things occur to me. You've told me a lot about yourself and your family. Today, I want to talk about myself.

"Before I start, I have a question for you. Has Brian ever cheated on you?"

Raven was so shocked she couldn't answer at first. Why had Bennett decided to destroy the mood he had so carefully created. Suddenly, Brian was there with them. He was the elephant in the tent. She fumbled for words but spoke the truth.

"Um, uh, no, absolutely not. Brian would never cheat on me."

"That's what I thought, but I wanted to be sure. Sloane cheated on me."

She reacted before she could stop herself.

"So that's it," she muttered to herself. In the quiet tent, he heard her.

"Yes, Raven, that's it. That's the reason that we're here. You've told me about Brian and your children. I am going to tell you about Sloane and our children. I hope it won't bore you too much."

Raven suddenly understood how Bennett had seduced the other women. He didn't need to lie and scheme. Telling them the truth was the most powerful strategy of all.

A wave of sympathy had swept over her when he had made his revelation. He was no longer only dashing. His air of melancholy wasn't fake. He was wounded. She wanted to take him into her arms, comfort him and make him forget the bitch he was married to. He probably only stayed with her for the sake of their children.

She would let him unburden himself and then give him her body as a balm for his wounds. She felt powerful and munificent. She was a sexual Florence Nightingale.

When she had woken that morning, she had felt uneasy. That was unusual for her because most of the time she liked herself and thought of herself as a shining example for others. Not today. Not until now. At last, she felt good about herself again like she usually did.

Bennett took a deep breath before beginning.

**************

The email to his office inbox was from an address he didn't recognize. He was surprised that the two sentences he would never forget got through all the systems he had set up to prevent spam and unknown senders.

"Your wife is cheating on you. If you want proof, let me know."

There was no signature.

Although he was sure it was a joke or hoax, he couldn't get it out of his mind during the busy afternoon at work.

He got home before Sloane and poured himself a Scotch, although he never drank hard liquor except at a party. As he heard her pull into the garage, he thought of something disturbing. The simple question he was about to ask her would have to be changed to something more complex. He became tense as he tried to come up with the right words. He heard the door from the garage open.

"Sloane, would you come here a minute."

She walked into the room as she asked, "What is it?"

"Are you cheating on me or are you following orders?"

He waited for her to deny both, but she paused too long. Although she was trained in deception, his question had blindsided her. Looking into her eyes, he saw at once the email was true.

As he walked to the garage, he heard her voice behind him.

"Bennett! The Children!"

Those were the last words he heard her say for nearly two years. He got in his car, opened the garage door and drove away.

For an hour, he drove around in a daze as crazy thoughts came into his mind. Once he calmed down, he realized that he had to get to his office at once.

When he got there, the first thing he did was send her a text.

"I don't ever want to see you or hear from you again. You can confess to the kids and make yourself feel good while you destroy them. I would prefer if you make me the bad guy, because that will be better for them. Just tell my sister what story you decide to tell them so I can match it."

After he sent the text, he methodically went to work to try to save someone's life. Not his. His was over. If her lover had sent the email, there was also nothing he could do to save him. He would be dead within days. He went on the assumption it was someone else.

First, he smashed his phone to smithereens with a hammer on a workbench. He wiped clean every possible backup at his office that might contain the email message and then swapped out every hard drive on the office servers and destroyed the ones he removed with the hammer.

He deleted all his email from the cloud and changed his email password to the maximum number of jumbled letters and numbers allowed. Then he migrated all the company's email to a new system and destroyed the old system completely. On Monday, he would begin training classes for the new system, but there would be a lot of angry employees without their email until they learned it.

He worked at the office all weekend, with an occasional nap with his head on his desk. Sunday night, he gave up. He had done everything in his power to make sure that Sloane would never find out who sent him the email. Would that be good enough? He would never know.

He never went back to what had been his home because nothing in it mattered anymore except the children. He bought a house in a desolate area far outside of town.

He saw the children as often as he could, always picking them up from his parents' house. When he wasn't with them, he preferred to be at work. Nothing else mattered to him.

When the children asked him if he was feeling better, he told them he was. They told him they hoped his head would get well so he could come home to Mommy. He lied and told them, "I hope so, too."

Sloane tried everything she could to get him to talk to her. She used all of their friends and many of his co-workers.

After nearly a year, she seemed to give up. Everyone he came in contact with knew better than to ever mention her name, so he had no idea what she was doing. He sometimes thought about her anyway, and when he did, his pain and anger were as intense as they were on the day he found out she had betrayed him.

One day when he came home, Sloane was waiting for him in his living room. He wondered how she got there. He had spent thousands of dollars securing the house. It was set back from the road on a large piece of property with no trees. State-of-the-art detectors of every kind signaled him wherever he was, usually with video on his phone, when something as small as a worm moved a fraction of an inch on his ground. The house itself had more concrete, steel and tech security than any prison or border wall ever built.

She couldn't have breached all that by herself. She must have conned her colleagues into helping her.

She asked him to sit down because they needed to talk. He told her he didn't want to hear anything she said.

She said she understood, but this was too important. She hoped it wouldn't get ugly.

When she said that, he knew it was a threat, so he might as well give in. He sat down across from her and listened.

She said she was under treatment by one of her company's psychologists. The woman finally helped her understand why she cheated.

Though the man was a colleague, the affair had nothing to do with her job. She had declined numerous assignments that might have involved sex, including one that she knew would earn her a major promotion.

She said that from the time she was a teenager, she thrived on attention and excitement. To get it she devoted a lot of time to exercise, clothing, makeup, hair styling and manipulating people. When she was recruited for a division of No Such Agency, she jumped at the opportunity.

She led the typical lifestyle of her fellow employees: rootless, brief relationships, no intimacy, self-centered. Like the others, she lived for the occasional thrill of being connected with something dangerous although they were usually only involved in mission support.

When she met him, she liked him. To her, that meant he'd probably be good for six months. As she got to know him, he made her rethink her life. She realized she wanted him forever and wanted his children. She thought she had the best of both worlds because he was as much in love with her as she was with him. Also, he went along with everything, including unexplained absences that were usually only a day or two but once lasted more than a month. Her bosses couldn't believe he never questioned her. Their successful marriage was the exception to the rule in her company.

What she found out from the therapist was that despite the changes in her outlook, she was never challenged on her self-absorption. She trained more than was necessary, not because she might be sent on dangerous assignments, but out of vanity. Whenever she wasn't at work or with the children and him, she was clothes shopping or at a beauty spa.

Despite her efforts, she felt she was getting less notice than she used to. His love and the love of her children apparently weren't enough for her. When someone began paying special attention to her at work, she first hesitated, then responded.

The sex only happened when the two of them were assigned together. Much of their work involved long periods of waiting with nothing to do. Rather than amuse themselves with their smartphones, they sometimes had sex.

The therapist told her from the way she explained it, the affair was like a hobby that was separate from him and the children. It never took a minute away from work or from her family, unlike when he went fishing. Because of her training, she knew he would never find out, so it didn't have the thrill of danger for her.

She was going to continue seeing her therapist, maybe for the rest of her life, but now that she understood herself better, she wanted to help him move on. She loved him more than ever, but his happiness was now more important than hers, so if a divorce was better for him, she would help him get it quickly.

"I know it's wishful thinking, but I would do anything to have you back," she said at the end."

*************

Bennett's calm voice got emotional as he repeated his wife's words. He stopped and took a couple of gulps from his water bottle. He and Raven were turned away from each other, so he couldn't see the tears streaming down her face, but the tent was quiet and he could hear soft sniffling sounds.

She was desperately hoping for a happy ending to his tale of misery, but deep down, she knew that if there were, she wouldn't be sitting naked on some cushions in a tent with a naked man who wasn't her husband.

Bennett took another mouthful of water, cleared his throat and continued his story.

******************

His first reaction was admiration. Sloane must have spent a lot of time and effort on her story.

Almost immediately, he felt disgusted with himself, and he confessed to her.

"I'm ashamed to tell you what I was just thinking. I didn't believe a word you just said. That's what you've done to me.

"You've poisoned all my relationships. I used to be open and trusting. Now I'm always wondering whether someone is lying to me.

"I'm glad you forced me to listen because I don't want to be that person anymore. I'm going to stop living my life on guard. Nobody could hurt me any more than you have anyway.

"The reason I haven't responded to you before this is simple. I still love you deeply, but at the same time, I hate you just as deeply. I want to take you in my arms right now, but I also want to tear you to pieces. I'm scared to be in the same room as you. What if I attacked you and you easily killed me? The children would be without a father. What if you let me kill you? They would have no mother.

"I believe what you just told me. The trouble is that doesn't change my thirst for revenge. I don't think a therapist can help, but I'll look for one. Maybe I can get over this before I die."

"Do you want a divorce?" she asked.

"I thought of that, but it's irrelevant. A divorce won't change anything for me. But if you want one, I'll cooperate."

His answer seemed to please her.

"If you don't want a divorce, I'll wait for you on the slight chance we can be together again someday. I haven't been with another man since the last time I saw you, and if I can't be with you, I won't be with anyone."

"I haven't been with another woman," he said, almost to himself.

"I know."

He was silent for a while, thinking about what she had just said before he spoke again.

"I think we've said all there is to say for now. Thank you again for making me talk to you."

"I hope we can talk again," she said. "We can agree not to talk about anything except the children if you like."

"We'll see. I'm not promising anything."

As he closed the door behind her, his thoughts focused on two words. "I know," she had said a moment ago. The words repeated themselves in his mind.

"I know."

Those two words told him she had been watching him since he had walked out of their house. She had to report what had happened to her superiors, and she had probably put her spin on it. Did she make them believe he was a danger to himself and his death might bring inquiries? Or maybe she had made him out to be so distraught that he might accidentally blow her cover. She was a master at manipulating anyone, including her bosses. Obsessed with secrecy and security, her company had put him under preventive surveillance. She knew what he was doing every minute of the day.

He remembered something she had once mentioned when he told her about a colleague who was giving him a hard time at work. She told him how, during her training, she had learned a concept called "strength into weakness."

The idea was that when you needed to, you could analyze strengths and weaknesses to bring someone down. Instead of focusing on the weaknesses, which your adversary expected, you worked on the person's greatest strength. If you could find a way to turn that back against the opponent, your victory would be total, because you would completely humiliate and demoralize the enemy by making the person a participant in his or her destruction.

She had just reminded him of what her strength was. It didn't take him long to figure out how he could turn it against her to wreak devastating revenge. She would have to give him permission to do it. She had said she would do anything to have him back, but she would never imagine he was capable of revenge so sadistic and evil. Would she agree to something that cruel and perverse?

He waited for a few days before he called her and invited her back to his house. He had her favorite white wine chilled and attempted to be civil before he exploded his bomb.

"I've thought of a way for me to come back to you and the children."

"Oh, thank God!" she exclaimed.

"Better not thank God, me or anybody else until you hear what it is. Before I even tell you, there is a pre-condition that could be a deal-breaker."