Dave had always had a dry, mischievous sense of humor. He said things like “put that man down and come to lunch with me” whenever he called me at the office and heard a male voice nearby. Maybe this was one of those jokes. A lucky shot in the dark.
I tried to smile.
“No, dear. I’ve sent Mike and all the other men back to their rooms. The orgy is over for the night.”
Mike silently laughed behind the screen, delighted by the danger.
Dave did not smile.
That was the moment my blood turned cold.
He took a breath.
A slow one.
The kind a man takes when grief is trying to become anger.
“I wish I could say that was funny,” he said.
I swallowed.
“Dave, really?”
He did not answer me directly.
Instead, his arms moved toward the laptop, and the image on my screen tilted. The view swung away from his face and toward the enormous television on the wall behind him.
The television screen was split into two live views.
One showed the bed in my hotel room.
The other showed the area near the dressing table.
Both camera angles were high, looking down from near the ceiling.
I saw myself on one side of the screen, sitting on the hotel bed with my laptop open.
I saw Mike on the other side, standing exposed in the middle of the room, caught like an animal under a floodlight.
I gasped.
I could not stop myself.
My eyes shot upward toward the smoke detector in the ceiling.
That was my undoing.
The cameras were there.
Hidden in plain sight.
Watching everything.
Recording everything.
The screen seemed to pulse.
My heart was beating so hard I thought I might faint.
Mike moved toward me, still trying to stay out of the laptop camera’s view, then leaned around enough to see what was on my screen.
He saw himself.
He stopped breathing.
For once in his life, Mike Harding had nothing to say.
Dave, unfortunately for us, had plenty.
“Hi, Mike,” he said. “I must say, television is kinder to you than real life.”
Mike’s face went red.
Whether from being exposed, insulted, or finally understanding the scale of the trap, I did not know. His mouth opened, then closed.
Mine did the same.
Dave watched us both like a man who had already passed through the worst of the pain and arrived somewhere colder.
“Now do you believe me?” he said.
The question made no sense until he moved the laptop again.
The view swung back across the room at home.
This time, the screen showed more of the lounge.
Sitting beside Dave were my parents.
My father, Graham, sat rigidly upright, face dark with fury. His hands were clasped so tightly his knuckles had gone white. My mother, Patricia, had one hand pressed to her mouth. Her eyes were already full of tears.
Two words escaped me before I could stop them.
“Mum? Dad?”
My father shook his head slowly, not in anger at first, but disbelief. As if his mind refused to accept that the woman on the screen was his daughter.
My mother spoke in a voice I barely recognized.
“Oh, Camille. I thought we raised you better than this.”
Then she burst into tears and moved out of view.
Dad followed her, but before he disappeared, he looked directly at the screen.
“Your husband deserved better.”
The door closed somewhere in the background.
I sat frozen.
My parents’ marriage had been a second marriage for both of them. Family lore had always treated it as romantic. Two people who had survived betrayal, divorced unfaithful spouses, then found each other later in life and built something honest. My mother had once told me, “There is no loneliness worse than lying beside someone who is lying to you.”
And now she had watched me become exactly the kind of person she had escaped.
I could not look at the screen.
So I looked at Mike.
That was when I saw his mind begin working again.
His shock turned into calculation.
I knew him well enough to read the thoughts crossing his face.
Dave had known before tonight.
Dave had arranged cameras.
There might be recordings.
Recordings could destroy reputations.
Careers.
Marriages.
Power.
Mike grabbed a pillow from the bed, held it in front of himself, and sat beside me so he was finally visible on the laptop camera.
His voice came out low and hard.
“Now listen, Dave.”
Dave’s face appeared again on the screen.
Mike leaned closer.
“I’m sure you think you’ve been clever, but you need to be very careful with what you do next. One sniff of this reaching the party, the media, or my wife, and your business life becomes very difficult. You understand? Contracts disappear. Approvals slow down. People stop taking calls. You might feel righteous tonight, but righteousness won’t protect your little company.”
It was a mistake.
A terrible one.
The kind only an arrogant man makes when he mistakes exposure for negotiation.
Dave’s expression did not change.
Then someone stepped into view behind the couch.
At first, only a torso appeared.
A woman’s torso.
Elegant cream blouse.
Pearl necklace.
Then Dave tilted the laptop slightly upward.
Mary Harding stood behind him.
Mike’s wife.
She did not look furious.
That was somehow more frightening.
She wore a soft smile, her silver-blonde hair swept neatly back, her posture relaxed, almost graceful. She looked like a woman standing exactly where she had planned to stand.
“Hello, Michael,” she said.
Mike went pale.
“Mary.”
She looked around the room through the screen, as if confirming who was present and who had already seen enough.
Then she placed one hand gently on Dave’s shoulder.
“Thank you, David. You were right. Seeing it for myself does make the decision easier.”
Mike began stammering.