God alone knows how long it might have gone on if it hadn't been for the ants. I didn't know it was ants -- I thought it was termites.

There was a row of bushes across the front of the house and right up against it and for ten years I had done nothing to them but trim them. One day I noticed that the head patterns of the sprinkler heads in the front yard seemed to be weak and figuring that I had a leak in the system I went looking for it. There was one head under the bushes and I got down and pushed the bushes out of the way to look at it. I noticed that the wood trim around the base of the house looked rotten and I ran a fingernail across it and a large chunk just fell away exposing what looked like burrows or little tunnels. Shit! Termites!

I finished checking the sprinkler heads and found one that the ground seemed soft around and then I noticed the indentation in the head. It looked as if one of the tines on the machine they used to aerate the yard had hit on the head. I dug around it and found that the connection between the PVC pipe and the riser was cracked. I repaired it, tested the system and saw that I now had good spray patterns. I put my tools away, had lunch and then started checking out the rest of the house for termites.

I was down in the basement pulling down insulation and checking the sill plates when I found it. (Sill plates are what they call the wood on top of the concrete wall of the basement - it is the transition point between the basement and the framing of the house.) It was a little black box about six inches, by four inches and was about three inches thick. It had a small on/off switch on one side and a glowing green light on the front and it was attached to the phone line.

I stood there on the ladder and stared at it. I had read enough spy novels and seen enough movies and TV shows to suspect that what I was looking at was a phone tap, but the thought seemed ridiculous. Who in the hell would be taping my phone? Who would be interested in the phone conversations of an aircraft mechanic? Or those of a secretary which is what my wife Amanda was.

I carefully put everything back where I found it and then went upstairs to use the phone to call Terminex and set up an appointment for them to come out and look at my termite problem. Then I got in my car and drove to the 7-11 about eight miles from the house and used the pay phone to call a friend. Hal was an avionics tech I worked with and he ran a small electronics business on the side. I told him what I had found and he agreed to come look at it the next day.

Hat night when Mandy got home I had dinner ready and while we ate I debated telling her about what I'd found, but decided not to since she was by nature a worrier. I decided to wait until I had more information before telling her about it.

Another factor in my decision was that this was our hard time of the year. The airline I worked for had rotating shifts; four months of midnights, four months of afternoons and four months of days. I was in the last quarter of my graveyard turn, eleven-thirty at night until eight in the morning, and the grave shift was hard on us. Days was always good and swing shift - three to eleven-thirty - wasn't bad because I was always home at night to sleep with Mandy and be there in the morning when she woke up, but graves was the killer. We only saw each other from the time she got home around six-thirty until I had to leave for work at ten forty-five and she would already be gone to work when I got home in the morning. It was always a bad time for us, but the pay was very good, the benefits superb and you just could not beat the airline pass privileges. Still, she spent four months a year alone in bed and it wasn't easy on her. No sense in giving her something to worry about as she lay in that bed alone trying to sleep.

The next morning Hal followed me home and I showed him the small black box. He told me that it was a 'broadcast' sending unit and that it transmitted what it heard to a receiver.

"It only has a range of about three hundred yards."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that the unit it is sending to has to be fairly close to here. You seen any strange vans or vehicles parked close by lately?"

"None that I'm aware of."

"You get along okay with your neighbors?"

"No problems with any of them in the nine years I've been here. Why?"

"The receiving unit has to be somewhere close. If there are no strange cars in the neighborhood then it has to be either in a neighbor's house or garage or right here in this house. Any place in the house that you never go?"

"Not that I can think of. I don't spend a lot of time in either of the spare bedrooms, but I do occasionally go into them."

"Let's go look at them."

We were in the closet of one of the spare bedrooms when he pointed up at the ceiling and asked, "What's that?"

I looked up and saw the hatch into the attic and told him what it was.

"Go up much?"

"Last time was maybe six years ago. I went up and put insulation batts down on top of the blown in insulation and then planked over them. I was going to use the area for storage, but it was a pain trying to move things up through that two foot by two foot hole so I gave up on the idea."

"Let's take a look up there."

I kept an eight foot fiberglass ladder in the upstairs utility closet for changing light bulbs and cleaning the blades of the ceiling fan in the master bedroom and I went and got it and we went up into the attic. I saw it as soon as my head went through the hatch. It looked like a lap top computer sitting on the planking. I pulled myself up into the attic and Hal followed me. As soon as he saw the device he said:

"Sweet fucking Jesus!"

"You know what it is?"

He walked over to it, knelt down and took a close look at it. "I've never seen one before, but I've read about them. Completely digital, lithium battery operated and stores up to one hundred and twenty hours of digital audio and visual. The battery is supposed to last three hundred hours. It has a small screen for viewing and has USB ports you can connect to to download audio and video onto CDs or DVDs. This brings up a major question. What kind of serious shit are you and your wife into?"

"Nothing that I know of. Why?"

"Because this thing costs around twenty thousand dollars and to the best of my knowledge only the government has them. But even more serious is what this means to you."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Who knows that you never come up here? Who knows you keep a ladder in the utility closet? Who has access when you aren't home?"

I was stunned by the implications of what he'd just said. There was only one answer and that was my wife Mandy. Hal saw it sink in and said:

"Sorry Rob."

All I could do was shrug my shoulders as I tried to get my mind around all that it meant.

"Let's take a look through the rest of the house, but first let me see if I can disable this thing."

He picked it up, took a real close look at it and pushed on something and the battery pack slid out. He set it aside and said:

"Now it won't record everything we do."

It took a little over two hours to go through the house and Hal found eight battery operated mini cams that recorded audio and visual. He kept saying "Wow" every time he found one.

"These are state of the art Rob. There is a good thirty to thirty-five grand worth of stuff here."

There were two in the living room, one each in the dining room and family room, one in my basement workshop and three in the master bedroom. I asked him if he could help me try and find out what was going on and he said he would try.

The next morning while Hal was doing some work in the house the man from Terminex showed up and checked out the house. Turns out that it was carpenter ants instead of termites. He outlined a program for getting rid of them and keeping them away and I signed up and he left.

The first thing that Hal did when he got to the house was go up into the attic and take the battery out of the receiving unit so none of the cameras would record him as he went to work. He put a recorder on the phone lines and then set up voice activated tape recorders and mini cams in the bedroom and living room. Then he placed a mini cam in a corner of the attic and aimed it to cover the receiver.

The last thing he did was check out my pick up truck. He found a GPS locator inside the rear frame in a place where I would never spot it unless I happened to walk under it while it was up on a hoist getting a grease job or an oil change and even then it wasn't likely that I would spot it unless I was looking for it.

He also found a voice activated tape recorder under my seat. It was up in the spring wires so I wouldn't notice it when I was cleaning the truck interior.

"Heavy shit Rob! I think you are going to need some professional help. Let's wait and see what we can find out from what we planted today. You need to be careful man. Anything you say or do in the house is being watched and listened to and everything you say in your truck is being recorded."

That night when Mandy got home from work I had dinner ready and on the table, but it was a quiet meal. All I had were questions I couldn't ask and I was actually afraid to open my mouth for fear of what might come out. I sat there thinking, "What the hell are you into Mandy? What the hell is going on?" Sitting and eating quietly is not the way I usually am and Mandy of course noticed it.

"Something wrong honey? You seem like your mind might be somewhere else."

"Just got the grave shift blues. I can't wait for the change to swings."

"I know what you mean lover. I need to get back to where you are cuddled up to me in bed at night."

"Only two more weeks."

"I have an idea lover. Why don't we let the dishes set and go on up to the bedroom for dessert? Then you can take a short nap before you have to go in to work."

"Lead the way."

I watched Mandy strip and marveled at the fact that I had managed to land a woman like her. She had been one hundred and ten pounds when I met her ten years before and she hadn't gained a pound. I never got tired of looking at her. She smiled as she looked at my erection and said:

"I see that you still seem to like what you see. The only thing is that it is so hard and I like my baby soft and cuddly. I guess I'll have to make the hardness go away."

She knelt in front of me, gave me a state of the art blow job and then pulled me onto the bed. I never did get to take the short nap and in fact I was almost late for work.

Work was a bitch that night. All I thought about were mini-cams, the tap on our telephone and the receiver in the attic and what they all meant. I wondered about what I would find when I got home. The receiver in the attic could only be checked when I wasn't at home and during grave turn I was around all the time except when I was at work. That meant that the only time it could be checked was after ten forty-five when I left for work and before I got home at eight. That meant that unless someone was sneaking into the house after Mandy left for work and before I got home the checker had to be Mandy - or someone Mandy let in after I was gone. Hal's theory was that if it was me being watched they would be checking the receiver almost every day.

The first thing I did when I got home was go up into the attic. The mini-cam that Hal had installed fed into a compact VCR that he had hidden under the attic insulation. I got the tape out of it, put a fresh one in, and then headed down into the basement. There was a spy cam watching my workshop area, but nothing in the rest of the basement so Hal had rigged up a small TV, VCR and audio cassette player back behind the stored Christmas decorations.

I pushed the tape into the VCR and hit 'play'. There was about two seconds of black and then the screen showed the hatch into the attic being pushed up and moved to the side. The time stamp said 10:58 PM which was just a little time after I left for work. Then Mandy's head came up through the hatch. Until then, even though I knew it highly unlikely, I had hoped that whatever was going on that Mandy wasn't part of it. But there she was!

I watched as she walked over to the receiving unit and pushed buttons. She watched and listened to what was on the machine for about ten minutes and then left the attic. I checked the phone tap that Hal had put in. It was a voice activated cassette recorder and the counter read 217 so I popped out the tape and put a fresh one in and reset the counter. I was using headphones in case the spy cam in my workshop was sensitive enough to pick out other sounds in the basement so I put them on and rewound the tape and then hit the 'play' button. A man's voice said:

"Yes?"

"Good morning."

"Good morning to you. Everything normal at your end?"

"Everything seems normal. Nothing out of the ordinary>"

"That's good. We don't need any complications. You know the plan for the day?"

"Of course."

"Just checking. Never hurts to check."

"It will get done. He reminded me last night so I need to make sure that you don't forget. He is off grave shift in two weeks and will be on afternoons for four months."

"That will of course be a big help and it can't happen soon enough."

"Have you figured out yet how you are going to work around it when he does his day shift turn?"

"No, not yet, but I'm sure that we will come up with something workable. Call me this afternoon."

"It won't be until after four."

"Doesn't matter; just be sure and call me and let me know how it went. Goodbye."

"Bye."

I sat there staring at the tape player and thinking, "What the hell is going on? What are you doing Mandy?"

Hal wasn't surprised when I told him that it was Mandy who checked on the receiver in the attic. Unlike me he wasn't in denial and he had known all along who it had to be. He listened to the phone conversation and shook his head.

"I said it already Rob, but this sounds bad. At the very least she is doing something that they do not want you to know about and it has got to be some heavy shit if they are using over thirty grand just to keep an eye on you. I think you need some professional help on this Rob."

"You said that once before. What do you mean by "professional" help?"

"I mean that you need a private detective to look into what Mandy is up to."

"I can't afford the kind of money that it would take to do something like that."

"Not necessarily true. You may be able to make it happen without money."

"How?"

"This guy I'm thinking of has a private plane. I think he said it was a Beechcraft Bonanza. Maybe you could work on his plane in exchange for him checking up on Mandy. He doesn't really need the money anyway. Being a private detective is more like a hobby with him."

"A hobby?"

"Yeah. He used to be a stockbroker or some other kind of financial whiz and he either made or came into a bunch of bucks and he retired and started a detective agency because he'd always had a fantasy about being a private eye. Turns out that he had a feel for it and has done well at it. But I would wait two weeks if I were you."

"Why?"

"Because you will be off midnights and on afternoons. Right now whatever she is doing has to be done during the day while she is at work, or supposed to be at work. When you go on swings she will have the evenings as well as the days to work with. It will give Glen a better shot at quickly finding out what is going on."

"I don't know if I can hold it in that long."

"Only you can be the judge of that. I'll call Glen today and ask him if he would be willing to do a deal with you."

"I'm going to get one of those prepaid cell phones today and not let Mandy know. I'll call you with the number when I get it. I don't want to use my regular cell. As high tech as all this stuff they are using is I don't want to gamble that my cell phone isn't bugged."

"Good thinking. I should have thought of that myself."

I called Hal at four and gave him the number of the pre-paid phone and he told me he had called his private eye friend and that the friend was interested in working out a deal and he gave me the man's name and phone number. I called Glen Hawthorne as soon as I disconnected from Hal and made an appointment to see him the next morning at eleven.

That evening I pretended that everything was fine and as far as I could tell Mandy accepted it. The next morning when I got home from work I didn't bother to check the attic cam since it had already shown me what I had needed to find out - who was checking the remote receiver - and I went right to the telephone tap.

"Good morning."

"Good morning. Everything okay?"

"He's been a little moody lately, but that isn't uncommon. He usually gets that way around the end of his grave shift turn."

"Did you get the message yesterday afternoon?"

"About being cancelled? Yes, I heard."

"Friday is still a go so check in with me tomorrow. Goodbye."

"Bye."

At eleven I walked in the door to the offices of the Hawthorne Investigative Agency and met Glen Hawthorne, owner and only employee. He already knew some of the story from Hal and I handed him the cassettes from the phone tap. He listened and raised an eye brow.

"They don't tell you anything that you can use, but they speak volumes as far as letting you know that something very sneaky is going on. Just what is it you want?"

"I want to know just what the hell is going on."

We struck a deal. He would do his detecting and I would do his one hundred hour and annual inspections on his Beechcraft until I had worked off his fee. In addition to the inspections I would do all the maintenance, but he would have to pay for the parts.

I gave him all the information on Mandy - her schedule (as I knew it) and where she worked, her cell number and the information on the car she drove. I told him about Hal's idea of waiting until I started on swing shift and he agreed that it was a good idea. He did want to do one thing as soon as possible though. He wanted a spy cam in my kitchen.

"That's where most people end up. They sit, talk, have coffee or a drink and they have a flat surface between them to write or draw on."

I made arrangements for him to have it done the next day.

I wasn't at all surprised when Hal showed up the next day to place the spy cam in the kitchen. He told me that he did all the electronic surveillance for Glen. I played that mornings tape for him. It was basically the same as the ones from the two previous days. A "Good morning" and an "Is everything okay on your end" and the information that nothing was scheduled for that day.

Mandy brought some work home with her that night so I went down into my basement workshop and worked on the bookcase I was making. In a way it was a relief because I didn't have to face her. If I didn't face her she wouldn't see that I was bothered by something. The last thing I needed right then was to make her worry and think she needed to be even more careful about what she was doing.

On Friday morning the man on the other end of the line said, "Have a nice weekend" and that told me that whatever Mandy was involved in was a Monday through Friday thing only. Trying to figure out what was going on was driving me nuts. Mandy's behavior towards me was the same as it had been since we started dating. She was loving, affectionate and our love life was great. We hadn't had an argument in years. I could not spot anything wrong in our relationship. What the hell could she be doing that she and whoever she was doing it with had to be so afraid of letting me find out? Well I'd start to maybe get some answers on Monday when I started working afternoons and Glen got to work on the problem.

I think I managed to get through the weekend without tipping Mandy off that all was not well. She didn't get a morning phone call because for the next four months I would be home in the mornings. She would either need to talk to the man on the phone in her office, on her cell or after I had gone to work. I made a mental note to ask Hal if we could put a voice activated tape recorder in her car like the one she had put into mine.

Tuesday morning after Mandy had left for work I reviewed the audio and video from Monday. There was nothing of interest on the video, but the audio tap had something.

"Hi. Just checking in. Is it still a go for tomorrow night?"

"As of two hours ago. I don't really expect that it will be cancelled. You sure that everything is cool on your end?"

"Should be no problems."

"There had better not be any problems. We are not paying you to have problems."

"And you won't have any!" Mandy snapped at him

They said their goodbyes, hung up and left me with something else to think about. Mandy was being paid? Did it have something to do with her job?

Wednesday morning at 8:13 is when my marriage ended. It turned out that we didn't need Glen to find out what Mandy was up to. Just the stuff that Hal planted in the house did the trick.

As soon as Mandy had left for work and I'd eaten breakfast I went to check the audio and video from Tuesday. The attic video showed Mandy downloading the receiver in what looked like a portable CD player. The camera in the living room captured Mandy coming into the room with a man I didn't recognize and they went over and sat on the couch. The man took Mandy in his arms and kissed her and then he asked her how much time he had. She told him that he needed to be gone by eleven and he said that he didn't think that would give him enough time. She giggled and said:

"You mean you still have something left after four hours in your hotel room?"

"I can never get enough of you and you know it."

"I just don't understand why you insist on making love to me here in my home and on my bed."

"Of course you do Mandy. You're mine and the best way to prove it is to have you here in your home, on your bed, your kitchen table, the washer and dryer, whatever."

"My husband just might have something to say about who I belong to."

"Fuck him! If he was strong enough to hold onto you I wouldn't be here."

"Would you like something to drink why I try and get you ready?"

"Scotch if you have it."

"Of course I have it sweetie. I knew you would be here so I made sure that I'd have your brand of scotch on hand."

"You knew I would be here?"

"Of course I did lover. I know what kind of man you are and I knew that sooner or later you would want me here. And don't give me any of that "I want you on your own bed" nonsense. You want me in my husband's house and on my husband's bed. You want to leave your smell in his house; take his wife in his own territory and don't you even try to deny it. Spread out and get comfy while I get you your scotch."

Mandy left the room and the man stood up, took off his trousers and briefs and then sat back down. He was stroking his cock when Mandy came back and handed him his drink. As he took a sip of his scotch Mandy went to her knees in front of him, leaned her head down and kissed the head of his cock. Then she licked the head and the shaft and took him in her mouth. She worked on him for several minutes and then he said:

"We need to take this to the bedroom baby."

"Your wish is my command lover."

Mandy got up and headed for the bedroom. By that time I had tears in my eyes. I loved that woman. Mandy had been my life from the day I first met her and I had spent the years following thinking that she felt the same about me. "Your wish is my command?" I was crushed. I forced myself to watch what took place in the bedroom. I was going to need some steel in my backbone for what was to come and the more I watched her betray me the harder that steel would become.

I watched as she lay back, smiled up at him and spread her legs wide. I listened as she moaned when he pushed his cock into her. I heard the cries and sounds that I thought I had been the only one to ever hear. I saw him finish, pull out and then move into a sixty-nine. I watched them lick and suck each other and then I watched him fuck Mandy a second time. I heard her tell him he had to leave.

"But why? He doesn't get off until eleven-thirty and he won't get home until after twelve. We have time."

"No we don't. I need to get these sheets off the bed and clean ones on and then I need to shower and douche before he gets home."

"Don't douche. I want to think of him feeling my cum on his dick."

"Oh sure, and what do I tell him when he asks why my pussy feels like a swamp? "Oh that? It's nothing. Just what my lover left in me." I don't think so."

"Just tell him that you are hot and wet because you got horny waiting for him to get home."

"You really want me to do that?"

"Absolutely!"

She was silent for a bit and then said, "Okay, but if it goes bad you may have to support me when he throws me out."

"You will do it?"

"Anything for you lover, you know that."

"If he catches on and splits you know my standing offer. I'll put you up in your own condo."

"That's sweet lover, but you do need to go, but be ready for my call if he doesn't like the feel of you."

I thought back to the previous night. Mandy met me when I came in the door. She was wearing a black lace nightgown, high heels and her make-up had been freshly done.

"I need you baby. I'm as horny as a goat and I need you. Come on baby, hurry to bed."

She hadn't felt any different from the other times I'd made love to her, but not knowing how long she had been fucking around on me I had no way of knowing that I wasn't the second man of the day every time we had gone to bed together. I remembered her comment about "four hours in your hotel room and I wondered how many times a week she met some one in a hotel room when she was supposed to be working. That prompted another thought. She was supposed to be at work so how did she get out of it? Did her boss know what she was doing? Was he involved somehow? All things that I would have to ask Glen to find out.

After watching the video I listened to the telephone tap.

"Hello?

"He's gone."

"Everything go okay?"

"He still wants to set me up as his mistress."

"Too bad we can't make it happen. It would sure make things better."

"Well it can't happen and if you know what is good for you you will make sure that it doesn't happen."

"I don't think that I like the tone of your voice."

"Tough shit! I know you and it would be just your style to let my husband find out so he would kick me out and I'd be free to be Sam's mistress."

"I would never do something like that."

"Yes you would and the only thing stopping you is the sure and certain knowledge that I would blow the whistle on you and every one of the half dozen or so men you have made me take care of. You destroy my marriage and I'll destroy you and don't you forget it!"

"I won't forget it. I'll see you tomorrow evening" and he hung up.

Now I had even more to think about. It sounded like Mandy was doing what she was doing under protest, but that meant nothing to me. The fact is that she was doing it and that is all that counted to me. The man she had taken care of the previous evening was bad enough, but by her own words there were also "a half dozen or so" others. How long had it been going on and why hadn't I ever gotten an inkling?

I called Glen and brought him up to date and told him to concentrate on the man Mandy had spent the afternoon with. He'd already known about the man since he had been on Mandy since I started swing shift. He told me that the man, Samuel Billings according to the hotel register, had taken Mandy to lunch and then back to his hotel room for a little over four hours and then he had followed them to my house. I told him that Mandy was going to see the man who was behind things that night and I told him that I wanted everything on Samuel Billings that he could get me. I intended to find out who the "half dozen or so" were, who it was who was having Mandy do what she was doing and then I was going to ruin them all.

Mandy was waiting up for me again when I got home that night. We had sex twice (not "made love" but had sex) before she cuddled up next to me and went to sleep. I lay there staring at the ceiling and thinking back over the last couple of years. There had been no change in Mandy's attitude toward me that I could see. She was affectionate and loving (or was a superb actress) and our sex life was as good as ever. I could not for the life of me point to something and say:

"There - right there! That's when whatever she is doing started."

When I finally fell asleep it was with a head full of questions that I had no answers for.

I waited an hour after Mandy left for work before I checked the audio and video. I gave her the hour in case she had forgotten something and came back to get it. There was nothing on the phone tap and the only video came from the camera that Glen had suggested we put in the kitchen and from the camera in our bedroom.