The Gideon Affair

Balls. It looked like their off-the-radar adventure was dead in the water.

Hurrying back to Ass-Gard, she’d be alone ‘cause Edward was off riding ATVs with a bunch of snowbirds getting their rocky mountain fun times on. She stowed her purchases and then studied the plain brown mailer. The To/From addresses were on labels, so there was no handwriting to examine. Besides the obvious fiction of the return address, nothing was amiss.

Carefully slicing it open, she peered inside then upended the pouch on the table. A piece of paper and a flash drive fell out. Unease slithered along her spine.

She eyed the flash drive with suspicion. That couldn’t be good.

Snatching the paper, she unfolded it and started reading.

All of the blood rushed from her head to her feet. The notepaper drifted to the floor when her fingers got numb. There was a sound in her head and she had a hard time breathing.

Quick to recover—fury had a way of doing that—she grabbed the flash drive, stomped to her laptop, and sat down to watch.

By the end, she was speechless. Starting, freezing, stopping, and rewinding over and over, she memorized with a hypercritical eye every vile second, swiftly and decisively coming to a few conclusions of her own.

Rummaging about till she found her phone, she texted Edward and told him to get his butt back to the camper.

They needed to talk.

More than an hour had passed before she heard him coming through the door. Stomping the dirt off his boots outside, he climbed the stairs and sca

“Are you all right?”

Always his first question; he checked to see how she was. He didn’t wait for an answer. The tension radiating from every wall and furnishing did that for her.

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

A huge sigh ripped from her chest. She must have been holding her breath. Tell him what was wrong. Lord. She had so much to say about so many things that all those thoughts were falling all over each other making her mind a seesawing, jumbled pile of crap.

Wringing her hands, she pointed at her open laptop. “It’s not you.”

His face registered confusion. When he glanced at the computer, a menacing hiss was his only response. And then he slammed the lid on her laptop grumbling, “What the fuck are you watching that for?”

Bah. Paige was messing up big time. She was wound so tight that making sense was a challenge. She grabbed for the paper and handed it over. That’d explain a lot.

He was ashen after reading it. She knew how he felt.

“Edward, it’s not you. I don’t understand.” She shook her head trying to grasp the ramifications of what she knew. “Why haven’t you, I mean … that tattoo. Yeah, it’s similar but … it’s not you.”

“What am I supposed to do, Paige? Go on Entertainment Tonight and give the world a detailed tour of my junk? Point out all the finer aspects of whiskey-inspired genital ink?”

She snorted. This had been the problem all along. He was wrapped up in that one thing, knew there was no way to go public, and assumed a defensive posture because what else could he do.

But that was the thing. They could do plenty. Whoever went to the trouble of checking the code to find a time date stamp only proved the point. If it was really Phae in that reflection, she had some fast-talking to do.

“Sweetie, I’ve got this, okay?”

He exploded. “Oh, for god’s sake, Paige, this is a fucking nightmare. If this gets out, everyone will believe I was sleeping with a teenager and I got her a job in my next movie. Phae’s career will implode, and I’ll probably be looking at charges. That’s how this shit goes these days, right?”

It wouldn’t help if he blew a fuse. She cautiously pushed him onto the sofa, murmuring, “Edward, Edward, Edward … listen to me.”

He looked so … wounded. She’d been a fool for not watching the sex tape before now. The obvious had always been there—it just took till now to see it.

His face contorted with the emotions tearing him up. She snapped her fingers two inches from his nose. “Edward! Are you listening?” His answer was a hoarse grunt. Good enough.

“The tape isn’t a fake,” she a

“Excuse me?”

She suspected that anyone else would have just had their head ripped off.

“Okay, first of all … we need to get this thing to someone who knows about this stuff. Date markers and whatever else. I just watched that damn thing half a dozen times, and it’s definitely Phae in the reflection.”

“Do you hear what you’re saying?”

She chuckled. He glared. He still didn’t see.

“Sweetie, if the time date thing is for real, and it is Phae, there won’t be any need for the Ba

She hummed lightly and crossed her arms, waiting. In a minute, he leaped to his feet.

“You’re a genius!”

Paige giggled. “That bonus check just keeps getting bigger and bigger. We were in New Zealand for months. And where did Phae grow up? Cinci

He wrapped her in a huge hug. “Thank you.”

She would have liked that embrace to linger, but there were still issues to address. “I think someone might be following us.”

“I know. After that kid and the selfie thing happened, it was only a matter of time. Last night, when I stopped at the general store, I got a lot of looks and whispers.”

“We should stop dicking around then and head to your parents’ place.”

“I thought you wanted to fly to Texas first and do a quick turnaround with your folks?”

“True, but they’ll understand. Dad was looking forward to Padre Island. He’d much rather go on vacation than almost anything else.”

Edward’s expression shuttered. Why?

“Anyway,” she hurried on, “I’ll touch base with Mickey and put him on the forensic angle. He’ll dig that we found a way to shut this rumor down with facts.”

He asked the question that addressed the four-hundred-pound rotting corpse in the room. “Do you think Joa

She’d already picked that train of thought to death. “Probably. Throwing an underage girl scandal your way seems a great duck and cover. Push some of the pressure she and Markus must be feeling with Alan in jail and the FBI breathing fire over everything.”

Edward looked around at their Ass-Gard chariot and got kind of melancholy. “This has been fun. I’ll be sorry to give our temporary home up.”

“Me, too.”’

“Well, come on then, my little mystery solver. You’ve made Velma proud with your mad skills of deduction. Let’s organize our stuff and make ready to engage the warp drive.”

She groaned. “Oy, Mr. Ba

It was good to laugh after the high emotion of the last two hours. Maybe by the time they got to Steven and Miriam’s, M would have found a way to shut this thing down for good and things could get back to normal.

“Ah-ha, ha-ha. Did you see that sign? Trespassers will be forced to sit for a portrait. Good one, Dad.” Edward chuckled.

Paige’s smile was amazing as they drove the last way to his parents’ sprawling home. The ranch-style arch at the head of the driveway featured a wrought iron B, and the minute it came into view, their excitement went supersonic.