Distracted isn’t a word often used in the same sentence with the name Derek Wiley. The forty-year-old attorney had the focus of a laser beam. However, tonight he heard it uttered as a one-word question.
“Don’t feel like you have to finish, if you’re not in the mood.” Liz added. She stifled a yawn, her hand crooked over Derek’s shoulder to cover her mouth.
Wiley abruptly rolled off Liz and dropped into the tan chair next to the window, irritated by her comments. Pleasing as she was to the eye, he didn’t feel the need to justify his performance.
Liz, his new secretary and latest conquest was indeed a bragging chip. Her soft features and sculpted body screamed youth and vigor. He saw how the younger guys at the office drooled over her.
Derek had been screwing her for a month, or was it two? The lawyer couldn’t remember. He suspected that Liz didn’t enjoy having sex with him. Her reluctance added to his excitement. Her submission validated his prowess.
She was another notch in his briefcase, a trophy. He enjoyed the pursuit and the power he had over her more than her company.
Derek Wiley was a senior partner of one of the most prestigious law firms on the West Side. His name alone on court papers could bring the word settlement to the lips of the smuggest legal badger.
He sat naked, hunched forward, staring at the closed-circuit TV screen, watching with great anticipation as the camera panned the nicely decorated bedroom in the condominium, his wife had purchased without telling him.
Her secret was short lived. Derek wasn’t in the business of letting things slip past him. Sherry Clayton-Wiley, his wife of fifteen years, was a city council member with a promising future in politics. She was also suing him for divorce. The settlement she sought for herself and their two teen-aged boys seriously threatened the indulgent lifestyle Derek enjoyed.
He was sharp enough to realize that her requests fell within the state’s guidelines for fair division of assets and property. His courtroom theatrics weren’t going to sway the judge in a disputed divorce case.
When he’d caught wind that she was having an affair, his nose went up like an infield fly. Wiley had no idea who her lover might be. He’d had her followed and found that she didn’t attend council meetings on Wednesday nights as he’d thought. Instead, she’d spent the last four Wednesday evenings at her new condominium on Lake Shore Drive. Each time she left her office, on Sixteenth Street, around six and drove alone to the condo where she stayed for several hours. In each instance she returned to her Jaguar, alone and drove straight home.
Last week while Sherry was in Boston, Derek had a closed circuit camera installed in the condo’s bedroom. The lens was small and so well hidden that its location eluded him for some time after the job was completed.
He then rented a suite in the same building, where the reluctant technician installed the monitor Derek watched so intently tonight.
“Where could that bitch be?” he said aloud.
Liz got up and stretched. She opened her overnight bag and regarded her boss. “Maybe she’s not going to show. You think of that, Mr. Wiley?”
The lawyer grunted and tugged at his new hair implants. He turned to say something, but Liz had already disappeared into the bathroom.
The shower ran for a few minutes, then Derek heard the glass door slide open, a sweet soapy smell drifted through the sparsely furnished room.
He watched Liz walk to the dresser, pull a barrette from her damp hair and brush it forward, watched it spill across her breasts. Her pale skin glowed in the flickering blue light from the monitor.
“You hate her that much?” she asked.
Derek didn’t answer right away. He turned in his chair, watched Liz zip her dress. “Sherry has her own money, lots of it. The settlement I offered would keep her in Jaguars and diamonds from now on. The bitch is just trying to ruin me out of spite, she doesn’t deserve half of what I’ve worked my whole life for.”
“Maybe she didn’t approve of your affairs, Derek, any chance of that?”
The lawyer scalded her with a glare. “It pales to insignificance,” he said with the tone of a closing statement.
Liz leaned toward the mirror over the dresser and drew a thin dark line across her eyelids.
“Derek, you have more money than most banks. Why go to all this trouble?”
Derek still hadn’t dressed. He ran his hands across his thin white thighs then looked at his secretary with a pious smirk.
“It’s no trouble, Liz. Besides I’m rather curious who’s fucking her. Once I get a little footage on tape and offer to put it on the Internet, I think my little wifey-poo will have a sudden and dramatic change of heart as far as what constitutes a prudent settlement. Then, as soon as the papers are signed, I cash out for an early retirement and you and I are off to Barbados. Sound good?”
Liz curled a lock of fire-colored hair around a slender finger. “You have it all figured out, don’t you, Mr. Wiley?”
“I didn’t get where I am today by wishing on a star, Liz.”
Derek returned his attention to the flickering screen. He was suddenly aware of another odor in the room, a metallic oily smell. It mixed oddly with the perfume Liz dabbed on her wrists. His curiosity evaporated as quickly as the scent, his mind returned to his scheme.
“I just hope the bitch doesn’t notice the camera lens,” he said a moment later.
Liz chuckled. “You didn’t.”
Derek Wiley jerked his head around so fast that his neck popped. Liz stood next to the bed smiling. A small derringer in her right hand met his eyes. She waved it toward the dresser.
The lawyer’s eyes traced the motion of the gun to a speck of red light barely visible above the mirror on the dresser.
He stood too quickly, the blood rushed from his head and he thought for a moment he would faint. He took a clumsy step toward the woman.
“Easy now, big boy, I’m good with this little sucker.”
The lawyer swallowed hard. “Who put you up to this?”
“Your wife,” she said sweetly.
Derek looked back at the monitor. Sherry Wiley now stood in the center of the bedroom. She faced the camera, holding up a videotape cassette.
Liz waved and a second later Sherry waved back.
The lawyer’s face flushed, he felt his knees tremble and beads of perspiration trail down the back of his neck. “Why, Liz?”
“Sherry pays me better than you do, Mr. Wiley.” Liz ran her fingers through her thick red hair and pushed it behind her shoulder.
Ice water coursed through Derek’s veins as she lowered her aim from his head to his genitals.
Liz opened the door and slipped the pistol into her purse. “Besides,” she said, stepping into the carpeted hall. “She’s lots more fun in bed.”
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