Deception: A Stalker's Twisted Game

Tom Ross had no idea that his wife was withholding secrets, and this entire episode had been choreographed by the very man he'd identified as a serial-rapist and murderer, who now sat on a hilltop three hundred feet away, watching the performance and snapping pictures. Further material to use against Lila, or Tom for that matter. The stalker had chuckled aloud as he'd contemplated the idea of emailing the images to the authorities and having the Detective himself accused of rape. For wasn't that what he was doing to his wife?

And if Tom had known, would he have stopped? If Lila uttered the safe-word, would he have heard it? Possibly, for even as he spat insults at his spouse, with words drawn from his subconscious jealousy of the attention and reputation she received in her profession, he intuitively sensed all was not quite right with the scene. The pleading tone of her voice, and expression on her face, appeared real, not faked, or a performance that she was putting on to please him. Had Lila, too, slipped on a mask for the show, or was it something else?

He had an out, what he had at the station when a suspect accused him of abuse, and he and his fellow officers called plausible deniability. There were no witnesses to deny his story that the criminal had resisted arrest, or fallen down the stairs, and in this case, Lila had taken the initiative, sent him the items in the box, along with the safe-word, and requested that he use her. If, the next morning, she regretted it, then his wife, and only his wife, was to blame. All the man had done is what she'd