Plan B

"Unfortunately no. She couldn't get away from work, she's got some financial reporting deadline, so she's gotta stay behind. But there's something else, we're going undercover on this trip." More big eyes.

"You guys know I'm in the security business and sometimes we have to hide our identities in order to get the job done. This is one of those times. So we'll be travelling under assumed names. I have all the proper identification for each of you; you'll just have to keep your wits about you, not slip up and use your real names."

"In fact, that's one of the reasons we all got new phones. They have new numbers and are loaded with security software. We're essentially under cover as of right now. So here's what we're going to do next. We can't just get on a plane with no luggage, that would arouse suspicion. We're going to go to the department store here in the mall and get some clothes and stuff for our trip. While we're there I'll get us some lightweight luggage for each of us. Then we'll go to a motel next to the airport and grab a room. We can all get cleaned up and then pack for our trip. Then go to the airport check in and grab some dinner. That should put us close to boarding time."

"Why can't we just go home and get ready there?" Jared always was a worrier.

"It's all part of being undercover. Nobody knows what's going on, nobody is tracking us. We'll just kinda disappear from town today. We've left no trail, heck nobody will think twice until we've gotten to where we're going. So, what do you think? Just like in the movies!" I gave Julia a wink and a nod, she didn't disappoint.

"Papa, this is going to be so cool. We get to pretend to be somebody else for a few days and enjoy a fancy vacation. Where are we going by the way? And what are the undercover names you got for us?"

"I'll explain everything once we're at the motel. Right now let's go clothes shopping."

= = =

I guess two questions must be on your mind dear reader: Was I not even going to give Susanna a chance to explain? Why do you think you can pull this off?

As to the first, I had begun to suspect Susanna about a year ago. It was the usual stuff, less frequent sex, a slowly growing distance, impatient with me, lots more away time for her. I was watching and noticing, but I hadn't gotten to the point of being actually suspicious. I truly didn't think she'd ever cheat on me. I don't know how much longer it would have taken for me to get a clue, but Julia solved that for me. So it was not even that hard to adopt a 'one and done' attitude. No explaining could erase what was on the video Julia took.

Like I said, I'm a manger. But I've been immersed in the cybersecurity field for many years. Stuff that we do, talk about, and defend against would turn your hair gray. We in the profession have an array of tools we use to protect our employers assets. And those very same tools were what I was using to enable us to get away cleanly.

I already mentioned the new documents. The 'security software' I installed on the phones is actually pretty common in my world. Basically it allows one to inspect, block or allow, internet traffic based on the content of the message or data. A disgruntled employee tries to send a copy of the company's crown jewels to a bad guy - we got tools to stop that in its tracks. The Company wants to prevent anybody from visiting questionable web sites - we got tools to stop that.

So what our new phones got installed was exactly that, software that would allow me to completely control who, what, and where those phones connected to. Those tools were configured to not allow any traffic to anybody back home, especially to Susanna. I won't bore you with the details, but there was now an 'allow list' on those phones that was very short.

My work laptop couldn't be traced by any but the most sophisticated hacker. Anything I did would be encrypted end to end, inside a secure tunnel connection, through several relays. Don't try to understand it, just believe me - I was invisible.

= = =

The airport motel was clean and bright, the desk clerk didn't even blink when we checked in. Of course I used my alternate identity ID and credit card. Once in the room I set up my laptop on the desk and got everybody moving.

"Jared you're first in the shower, go. Jason, start taking all the tags of the clothes we bought for you. Here's some scissors I picked up while we were at the store. Julia you do the same to the cool new duds you bought."

That done I got to work on my laptop. You've read this part a million times in other stories. Move my money thru several offshore accounts until they landed where I wanted - untraceable. The only noteworthy thing about this is that I took half the value of our house from the savings and checking accounts Susanna and I held jointly. Since we were never coming back, she could keep the house as it was free and clear. But I was taking my half with me in cash. Susanna would be a bit strapped for a while, but she made a decent living. Since the house was paid for, she wouldn't have a mortgage to pay; just upkeep and maintenance. Fair is fair.

Just as I was finishing up Jared came out of the bathroom freshly showered. "OK Jason, you're next in the shower. Jared, put all your dirty clothes in your school backpack. We'll be leaving those behind in the trunk of my car. That way any stuff that might be used to identify you will be safely back here."

So that's how it went. We had a nice little system going, and in about an hour we'd all had showers and were dressed in our new clothes. Yes, I'd bought some for me too.

"So guys, now that you've got all the tags off, each of you pack the duffel bags we got. When we go through bag inspection I want everything to look natural. Give me the name cards from each of your bags and I'll put your new names on them. Jared, Jason who wants to be Steven and who wants to be Scott? And you young miss are now Estrella."

"Papa, that means star right?"

Another hour and we were back in the car, the boys dirty clothes in their backpacks stowed in the trunk. Mine and Julia's went into generic bags we got from the closet you're supposed to use for sending dry cleaning out. Our old phones went into the pouch, and then into the one of the shopping bags with all the tags and other plastic shopping bags. It was a simple thing to drop that garbage in the bin in one of the maid's carts as we walked out. All that would be in the landfill within 24 hours.

We drove to long term parking and left the car; from there it was a short walk to the terminal. Checked in without incident, bags tagged and boarding passes in hand we made our way to one of the restaurants inside. The boys never even looked up from their new phones.

The rest of the evening went without incident. We hung out at the burger place for a bit and I made sure the kids all got big burgers and lots of fries, and diet cokes. I wanted to make sure they were stuffed with meat and carbs so that they'd sleep on the plane. And they did, with all the excitement of travel and the food I had three comatose kids snoring away.

I could now get some more work done. I had still not processed everything myself; I'd been on automatic pilot since mid-day. But first I needed to watch that video, so with my earbuds in I hit play. Yup, pretty boring amateur porn stuff. Although I found clues in Susanna's comments - 'I really needed your cock', 'you fill me up so good', 'pound your pussy, harder', 'you're the best'. She was clearly enjoying the fucking, and she seemed sincere in her comments. I didn't think she was just pumping up his ego. For his part Colin was giving her a 'good Rogering' as the Brits say.

I let out a shuddering sigh, and let the tears flow. All the tension from today, and all that had been building up in the background this last year poured down my cheeks in my tears. I was going to miss my old life, my wife, and my brother. Eighteen years with Susanna down the drain, I was really feeling sorry for myself. But the video ultimately had the desired effect; it made me angry enough to keep to the Plan.

So back on my laptop I went over my Plan B checklist, ensuring that every last item was dealt with. After that was done I got an evil idea. I'd leave Susanna a clue. So I remote logged into my computer at home and scheduled a print job for noon the next day. 18 copies of a screen shot from the video; one for each year of our marriage. Then I set a command to execute 15 minutes after the print job that would do a factory reset of my home computer, and since I ran backups into the cloud every day all my stuff would still be available to me.

Shutting my laptop I called for the stewardess and ordered a rum and coke. You know - a Cuba Libre ;)

= = =

It was now Wednesday of the following week, we had been 'on the run' for 5 days. I reasoned it was time to move to a new destination lest the kids get too comfortable, or slip up, or a million other things that could go wrong.

Every day we ate breakfast together in the hotel restaurant and then off to the pool. I was pretending to work on my laptop at one of the tables while the kids splashed in the water or played games on their phones. I was actually catching up on my reading, and I kept the security console open so I could see if the kids tried to connect back home. There was really nothing for me to do; although I had re-activated my alternate profile on several job sites. Did I forget to mention that all those side jobs I mentioned earlier were done under my alternate identity  In the evenings, we had done a little sightseeing, a couple of movies, and we even ate out at nearby bistro's.

It was the third day when we had a bit of a kerfuffle - Jason complained he couldn't log into a gaming server he'd been frequenting with his online buddies.

"Jason, answer me this. If you log into that server you would have to use your login credentials? I thought so, and the administrators or their monitoring software would be able to detect your machine id and where you were logging in from, right? Therefore if you log into that game server you'd be giving away where we are. That would put this mission in jeopardy." I could practically see the wheels turning in that adolescent noggin'. No more was said about that.

But that did put me on alert that we'd need to be moving on soon. But to where? Certainly not our final destination yet. I thought it prudent to make one more hop. It needed to be somewhere that we would be safe, a nice tourist destination. I didn't want to be flashing dollars around, but I did want somewhere that would allow me to pay for everything with my credit card.

So I chatted up some of the other tourists we ran into for ideas. I was intrigued by Costa Rica; some nice time on the ocean would do us good. I looked up some destinations and found just what I was looking for in the Tamarindo Diria hotel.

Turns out the best way to get there was to fly into Liberia and then taxi from there. Cool, that adds another hop that will help obscure our trail. So I made reservations for us to leave Mexico Friday morning on our way to the beach in Costa Rica.

= = =

Alfred here, my brother Alan, or Don Stefano, asked me to fill in what happened back home all those years ago. You've heard his side of things now let me talk about what I know. Although I got some of this second hand.

But first some observations. Alan had always strongly taken after our mother. When our father died leaving just the three of us my mom had to step up. She was only 29, and had only been in the US for 5 years after marrying our father when he died. So all of a sudden she was a single mother. Mom was a person of humble beginnings, and as the oldest daughter had been practically a slave to my grandmother. She got the short end of the stick in most things. While her brothers and sisters got educations, my mother got household chores. So when my 'rich American' father came to town looking for a wife, she was all in.

Anyway, the main thing Alan resembled my mother in was his total devotion to his kids. He was the one who took them to their practices for the boys and girl stuff with Julia. His job in high-tech gave him lots of flexibility that other jobs wouldn't afford; like Susanna's. So he planned just like mom different aspects of their lives as best he could. Which school, homework, chores, activities? He was a very involved parent. And since he worked in high-tech, in cybersecurity, he was kinda a cool dad to have.

Susanna was a different story. She was not a great mom, just a decent mom. Remember I was raised by my mom too, so the bar was set pretty high. Her job in Finance meant that her schedule was quite rigid, it moved to the beat of the monthly close, Finance reporting deadlines, and the stock market. Being in a less flexible role meant that she didn't have the opportunity to be there for her kids like Alan could. For the most part the kids turned to Alan when things got tough, he was the rock; always there for them at any hour of the day.

So on that awful Thursday when Julia caught her mom with that tennis guy, it wasn't hard for Alan to convince the kids to go on the run with him. He was the one they trusted most, especially the boys. If their Papa was proposing an adventure, especially undercover spy stuff, they were going along.

At that time I only knew about Plan B in outline. Alan had done some private cybersecurity work over the years and saved that money. He had bought property in another country, I didn't know where at that time. He said he had alternate ID's for the kids, and ready cash. But he never told me any of the details, so that when questioned, I could truthfully say I didn't know. Yes, I was his lawyer, but there were many things he didn't confide in me. Not even as his brother.

At that time I had known about the Plans since just after the boys were born. Plan A was what Alan was working towards; a retirement of leisure for him and Susanna in a wonderful villa. Plan B came about because of Alan's job; he was beyond suspicious of everybody. I actually think I was the only adult he trusted completely. He crafted Plan A was built on hope for happiness, Plan B was grounded in the reality he had seen with his own eyes.

Back to that Thursday - Susanna had gotten an unexpected day off, something about systems being down at work. So she called her boyfriend and invited him over for an afternoon romp. I believe they had been seeing each other for about a year at that time. Previous to that they had met at various places around town, and Colin's apartment. But this was an unexpected opportunity to do it in her own bed.

By four o'clock on that day she'd gotten rid of Colin and cleaned up. Which is when she began to wonder why the kids hadn't come home from school, and why they weren't answering her texts. That wasn't too unusual, so I guess she kept herself busy the rest of the afternoon. It was about seven PM when she called me asking if I'd talked to my brother and did I know where they were. So I answered truthfully that I had spoken to him earlier that afternoon as he was picking up the kids from school. And no, I didn't know where they went, but it sounded like Alan was planning some kind of adventure. I think that didn't arouse any suspicion as he was famous for his surprises.

Susanna made herself some dinner and had couple of glasses of wine. Basking in the glow from her afternoon tryst, and with the food and wine she fell asleep on the couch. And didn't wake up until the next morning in time to get ready for work. She was worried that her family hadn't come home, but she needed to get to work so she reasoned she'd try during the day to find out where they were.

She called me again from her car on the way home. Now she did sound worried, she told me she'd been trying all day to reach Alan and the kids. She hadn't heard from them at all. Had I spoken to them again after yesterday? I remember telling her that Alan would never do anything to harm the children, that he would do everything to keep them safe.

It was about an hour later that she called me back crying. Alan had left her and taken the children from her. He had left her a message, I didn't find out about the 18 pages she found on the floor near the printer until later. So I became concerned and asked her what the message said. She was beside herself and told me that it was a clear message that he was leaving her. With that another bout of crying shook her and I had no choice but to tell my wife that we needed to get over to my brother's house right away. We called our neighborhood babysitter to please come watch our kids and off we went.

We found a frantic Susanna crying on the couch. Alan had left her, he had taken her children. How could he do this to her. It didn't mean anything. She just needed something for herself. My wife and I just looked at each other; in that moment understanding what had happened. Alan had caught her cheating and chose the nuclear option. I had never told my wife, Caroline, of Alan's two Plans. Those were not my secrets to reveal; and I had always thought they'd make it to Plan A.

We did our best to try to console Susanna, to get her talking about what she meant with all her ravings. At some point I went into Alan's home office to look for clues when I spotted the printouts - pretty graphic. And a very clear message of what Alan knew. I brought one of the pages back into the living room and wordlessly handed it to Caroline.

"Oh Susanna, what have you done!?" Caroline's question and noticing the page in Caroline's hand started a whole new batch of wailing. At this point I felt we needed reinforcements so I called Susanna's sister Diane to come over. I told her briefly what we'd found and asked her to hurry. But it would still be at least an hour as she lived in Concord and the commute hour was still in full swing.

I knew that hour was going to be tough until Diane arrived. I called our house and spoke to the babysitter and then to the kids. I told them to order pizza for dinner and get their homework done. We would be home a bit later as there were some adult problems at Tio Alan's house. I called for takeout for us as our dinner plans had been interrupted too. Luckily the Thai place near Alan's house delivered quickly and in only 20 minutes we had food.

It was no use getting Susanna to eat anything, she was still so distraught. But Caroline and I took turns sitting with Susanna while the other grabbed a couple of bites. Caroline had stopped asking her questions, she was just hugging her while Susanna sobbed.

Eventually Diane rolled in, taking charge as usual - kicking ass and taking names. This started a whole new round of crying from Susanna, and explanations about how she and her boyfriend were not a threat to Alan or her marriage. Diane let her wind down a bit and then hit her between the eyes. By now of course Diane had seen the printout which had been left on the coffee table.

"What the hell were you thinking Suze, you cheated on Alan with some tennis bum!? How long has your little love affair been going on!? What did you think was going to happen when Alan found out!?" Which generated a whole new round of crying and pleading. Again with the it was only sex, she never took anything away from Alan; it was just a little something for herself.

Tonta! Tan intelligente y tan estupida! That phrase in my head was totally in my mother's voice. Susanna was in complete denial about what had happened; had not even begun to accept responsibility for the harm she'd caused to her family.

"My babies, he's taken my children to god knows where. You, Alfred, you know something. You must know where Alan is, your brother tells you everything; tell me you bastard. Tell me where my babies are!"