Single Lady Spy 01 - The End of Me

of control and burn the house to the ground. Ideas flashed through my head as I wondered if we could fake our deaths? I knew how, but I needed documents and passports and things I didn’t even know where to get anymore.
    I looked at my Lulu yoga pants crumpled on the floor in a pile, next to my PTA binder and laughed. Who was I kidding? I hadn’t worked in too long to remember how to do any of it. I grabbed his pillow and threw it across the room. The smell of him wafted in the air. I gagged but it turned into a sob. The ringing of the phone in the package never seemed to stop. It was trying to drive me insane.
    We had been partners once. How could he have kept secrets so serious that they endangered his kids and me? I wondered if the bad man knew about the mistresses? Did they know he had affairs? Were they tormenting those women too or just me ?
    I racked my brain to try to remember a moment from when James spoke of work to me. I needed to try to remember if any of it seemed out of place and would trigger a work memory.
    There was nothing. He had kept his work away from the house. I assumed, out of respect for me, the stay-at-home mom who had given up her dreams of being an intelligence officer. I could see that was not the case. Had he talked to me about the cases he was on, perhaps I would have seen the discrepancies in what he was doing. Then I would have known he was corrupt.
    The fear grew as I watched the package shudder with the vibration of the ringing phone.
    I mentally slapped myself. There was a very strong possibility this was a con. I could be about to be ripped off by hackers. I needed to go to the police like any civilian.
    I wasn't an idiot; I wasn't born yesterday. I was a strong ex-military, mother of two. Those traits were far more important than the fact I was now a widow or a cuckolded fool. Could women be cuckolded? It didn’t matter—the result was the same.
    I lay on my side of the bed and planned my next move. If I didn’t answer the constantly-ringing phone, I could pretend it hadn’t happened for the next little bit, while I planned. I wasn’t going to be the victim of a con artist, set on stealing from lonely widows. Before I could go to the police, I needed to know what I was dealing with. The military was amazing at creating the outcome they desired. If it was a prank, they were messing with the wrong widow. But then again, how did they know about Macy Green? I yawned and all the fight in me slipped away. The tired depression crept back in. I fell asleep with my face in my pillow and denial tucking me in.
    I woke to Jules crawling around on the bed, poking me.
    "What's this?" she asked. "Mommy." She shook me.
    I opened one crusty eye and noticed the phone in her hand. She held it to her face.
    "Helloooooooo," she spoke into it exaggeratedly.
    I sat up, swaying from the dizziness of the sudden wake up and shook my head, snatching the phone from her hands, "NO!" I shouted. I looked at the screen and jumped when I saw a face.
    A young man's face.
    He smiled pleasantly, "Hi."
    I panicked and wildly tapped at the red button on the bottom of the screen. I dropped the phone in my lap. The face… did I know it? Did I know him? He looked young and seemed polite even. Maybe it was a number she accidentally dialed. She had FaceTime on her iPad. She had done it before with my mom and James when he was off on mission.
    I lifted my face from the phone to see her eyes getting red. Her eyes watered but she refused to cry, like I always did when I was her age. The closer I got to forty, the more likely I was to cry at even a commercial.
    I pulled her in, "Sorry, Jules. It's not my phone. You can't touch it."
    I needed to get the phone to the police. I needed to report the whole thing, before they conned another woman who would buy the whole bullshit. But first, I needed to know if pounds of coke would be found in my underwear drawer, because I didn’t play ball. If they knew about Macy Green, they must have known about the things I’d done. If they could hack the system well enough to find out about my alias, then they could hack it for the other things and frame me.
    The house phone rang. I almost shouted not to answer it, but Mitch walked into my room, looking sleepy and tossed the phone at me. He turned and walked back out, no doubt going back to bed.
    I grabbed the phone and looked at the number before answering, "Hi, Mom," I sighed with relief.
    "Honey, I had to leave early this morning,