The Affair by Colette Freedman Read Free Book Online Page B

up in the center of the floor and let him come home to an unholy mess. She wanted to pin the speeding ticket and the Visa bill to the bulletin board above the computer.
    She wanted to pick up the phone and scream at him.
    But not yet.
    Not yet.
    She would confront him, but in her own time and on her own terms. The last time she’d raised the subject of his relationship with Stephanie Burroughs, he had managed to convince her that she was obviously going out of her mind. She’d had no real evidence last time, only a woman’s intuition that something was amiss. She would not make that mistake again.
    It gave her a certain small pleasure to use the scanner—his scanner—to make copies of the speeding ticket and the Visa bill. When she did confront him this time, she would have the hard evidence in her hands.
    Kathy carefully replaced the papers in the wire basket and turned to the desktop computer. Robert loved his technology. If he were conducting a relationship with anyone, she would certainly find the evidence in his computer. The only problem was, it was password protected. “In case it was ever stolen,” he had told her, “or the kids get into it.” She realized now that he’d never volunteered the password.
    Kathy remembered the last time she’d watched Robert turn on the machine. She had been standing against a filing cabinet looking for a copy of the most recent letter they had sent out to their accountant. The IRS was claiming they had never received a tax return for the previous year. Robert had sworn he’d written to the accountant and then had sat down at his desk and booted up his computer.
    Kathy now crossed the room to stand against the filing cabinet, in the same position she’d held when she’d spoken to him. She closed her eyes, remembering. Robert had been sitting directly in front of her, facing his computer screen. The log-on screen had appeared, and his fingers had rattled in the password. Except . . . except only the fingers on his right hand had moved, and they had been positioned at the right top of the keyboard.
    Kathy stepped up to the computer and looked at the keyboard. The possible keys he could have used were P, O, I, U, Y, H, J, K, L, 7,8,9,0.
    Pulling out his ergonomic Herman Miller Aeron chair, she sat at his desk and looked around for a combination of letters or numbers, just in case he had left the password scribbled somewhere. But there was nothing.
    She closed her eyes and concentrated again, remembering. She hadn’t really been looking at him . . . but she had heard eight distinct taps, hard and definite. She opened her eyes and grinned, scanning the potential letters. Robert was nothing if not predictable. Most people used combinations of letters or figures that were familiar to them. Or that had some emotional meaning. She’d lay money that Robert’s password was the name of his beloved childhood beagle. A dog whose framed picture he kept alongside the family pictures on the mantle. He had been a silly little dog with an even sillier name.
    Kathy brought the machine to whirring life and then waited while the screen flickered, blinked, and then cleared again.
    Please Enter Password
    She hesitated, wondering whether, if she were wrong, the machine would lock up and Robert would somehow know that she’d been into it. Then she discovered that she simply didn’t care what he thought.
    Please Enter Password
    She tapped the letters in carefully, Poppykoo, then hesitated a moment before hitting Enter. Kathy nodded. She was right; she knew she was. Her little finger brushed the Enter key.
    A light on the front panel of the computer flickered yellow, indicating that the hard disk was working, then the machine chimed musically and opened up to a desktop of icons.
    She was in.

CHAPTER 8

    T wo hours later, Kathy stepped away from the computer. There was a tightness across her shoulders, and her eyes felt gritty and tired. She had been convinced—absolutely certain—that she would