Switching it On

by Lexxie Couper

  Remembered and left the speakers where they were.

  Which is where they still were now.

  Up on the shelf.

  Where Mike was now looking.

  Lena frowned. In her chest, her heart did its best to turn into a crushing weight. Her stomach rolled again. “Mike?” she asked. “I don’t…”

  He crossed the shower stall. Studied the speakers.

  Reached up and inched one a fraction to the side.

  “Jesus!”

  At Mike’s mutter, Lena blinked. He swore like a trooper, but he was rarely blasphemous. She thought it had something to do with his mother and Catholic schooling. It took a lot for him to use the Lord’s name in any way. She did it all the time. One of those little quirks they’d often laughed about during their marriage.

  For him to say it now…

  A chill crept up her spine. The hair on her head, her arms, prickled. “What’s going on, Mike?”

  She didn’t know, and yet she did. She’d been in the media long enough to know. Long enough to understand the significance of Mike’s stunned rage.

  Hidden camera. He’d found a hidden camera beside the speaker. A camera that was perfectly placed to take a photo of whoever was in the shower.

  Like the photo Naomi had sent her of Mike…

  Had he been telling the truth all this time? Had their dog-walker…

  Images rushed through her head, all the images she remembered Naomi showing her. Images where it appeared Mike was smiling towards the camera, like the shower one, but images where he wasn’t. Images of him smiling at someone not in the photo. Images of him asleep without being aware the photo was being taken, like the ones Naomi had posted on Instagram.

  A cold fist closed around Lena’s heart. Oh God, what had she done?

  “Goober, you know any high-tech surveillance experts?”

  Mike’s blunt question sliced through the thick, sour guilt flooding Lena. She blinked, jerking her stare from the speakers to where he stood, phone pressed to his ear.

  Goober. RG. He’s called his sister.

  “Can you get to Lena’s apartment ASAP?”

  Lena swallowed. Guilt pummeled her. Flayed her. Strangled her. She stared at him, her mind a chaotic whirlwind.

  Surveillance.

  High-tech.

  Impossible angles.

  Images of Mike, but never Mike with Naomi. Never images of them together. None except the ones of him asleep, the ones he’d sworn he knew nothing about. Just photos of him, alone, or photos of Naomi in the places where he was, but never together. Never…

  Oh God, he’d been telling her the truth all this time. All this time he’d been innocent. She’d kicked him out, accused him of lying to her, cheating on her, hurting her, and all this time, she’d been the one hurting him.

  She’d been the one tearing them apart when she’d believed it was him. She’d let some little girl with a sick crush destroy them. She’d done that. Not Mike. Her.

  “Thanks, sis. See you in fifteen.”

  Bile coated the back of Lena’s throat. Her head roared. She tried to draw breath as Mike shoved his phone back into the pocket of his jeans and turned to her.

  “RG’s going to be here in a few minutes.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she burst out, staring at him. Her eyes seemed to burn. “I fucked everything up. I thought…I let Naomi convince me you were…I believed her…I…I let what Carl did to me before mess me…mess us up, and I believed everything Naomi said instead of trusting you like I should have.”

  A raw sob tore at her throat before she could stop it. She smacked her palm to her mouth, her stomach churning. Oh God, she was going to be sick. Scrunching up her face, she shook her head. Wrapped her other arm around her middle. Hunched over.

  “Hey—hey hey hey.”

  She jerked her head up at Mike’s low murmur, fresh guilt and bile rushing through her at the concern on his face. At the worry in his eyes.

  “I fucked us up, Mike,” she ground out. The room crushed down on her. The air vanished. “I thought…I should have known you wouldn’t…but I let what had happened with…with Carl…mess me up…let it make me not believe…”

  Another sob choked her.

  She staggered back a step. Clamped her arm tighter around her waist. “Oh, Mike, I’m so sorry. I’m so…”

  He came to her. Wordlessly. Smoothed his hands up her arms, over her shoulders. Cupped her face in their warmth. “We can fix this, Lena. I promise. But first, we need to find out if there are more cameras in the apartment. We need to find out just how far Naomi went.”

  Lena swallowed. Nodded. Her head felt as if it was were from brittle wood. Her neck the same. “Okay. Okay.”

  He studied her. Something dark flickered in his eyes, something haunted.

  Seven and a half months. For seven and a half months you called him a liar; his reputation tarnished by your actions…because you didn’t believe him. Because you were too weak to—

  Her knees crumpled.

  He caught her.

  “Hey,” he said, his hands firm on her upper arms, his gaze holding hers. “We’ll fix it.”

  Lena nodded again. “I’m sorry, Mike,” she whispered, fighting the tears stinging her eyes.

  A sad smile pulled at his lips. “Me too,” he whispered back, before tugging her to his body and hugging her.

  They didn’t move for a long moment. There was nothing sexual about the embrace. It was simply one person comforting another.

  Finally, he slid his arms from around her and stepped back. “Can I see your phone again, please?”

  She handed it to him.

  Face unreadable, he studied the two images on it that Naomi had sent her.

  “Mike?” she said, her voice a husky rasp. “Naomi played me a message the day after the Instagram posts—a message that you’d left on her phone. In it, you tell her seven p.m. at the Mecure and remind her not to use your name. You say you’d be screwed if I found out. What was that about?”

  A stillness fell over his body. His shoulders stiffened. He raised his focus from the images and looked at her. “Seven p.m. at the Mecure?”

  “Yes.”

  The same sad smile played with his lips. “Your birthday. I was trying to organize a surprise dinner for you for your birthday and I asked Naomi to check on the reservation. If I remember correctly, Instagate happened a week later.”

  Lena stared at him. Instagate. The term he’d used when the images first broke on Instagram. When he’d thought she was going to trust him. When he’d thought the worst that was going to happen was that they’d need to find a new dog-walker after firing Naomi, press charges of breaking and entering and deal with the media circus that would inevitably follow the situation.

  In the aftermath of Instagate, her birthday had come and gone. She’d ignored it. Told her friends to ignore it.

  Had sat at home alone, trying to pretend she wasn’t missing Mike. Had tried to pretend she was done with him. Had imagined him with Naomi, laughing…

  Her stomach lurched again. Christ, she really had messed everything up.

  Everything.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered again. Could she ever say that enough? Would he ever forgive her?

  Expression unreadable, he brushed the back of his knuckle over her cheek, his chuckle wry. “It’s—”

  Someone knocked on the apartment door.

  “That’ll be RG.” He turned and left the bathroom.

  Lena stood motionless, her stare sliding to the speakers in the shower before she could stop them.

  Was the camera still taking photos? Video?

  Naomi hadn’t been back in the apartment since Lena had kicked Mike out. She’d insisted Naomi hand over the spare key she’d had on the day after the Instagram posts, and the young woman had done so with triumphant smugness.

  What had happened to the feed after Mike left? After she was deported?

  Was it still transmitting? Was that even the term f
or something like this? Was Naomi still receiving the feed wherever she was now? Or was some complete stranger…

  Throat thick, pulse a pounding rhythm in her ears, stomach a sick ocean, Lena crossed to the far wall.

  The speakers sat there on the shallow shelf, too high for her to see directly.

  Rising onto her tiptoes, she stretched her spine and neck as much as she could, in an attempt to see what Mike had seen.

  Was that it? That small black ball beside one of the speakers? It was hard to tell.

  If it’s still recording, it’s getting a great shot up your nostril right now, I bet.

  The absurd thought tore a grunt from her. And tempered her rising panic. Turned it into something colder and steely.

  If it was a camera, she was coming after Naomi with everything she had.

  Jaw set, she grabbed the edge of the tiled shelf and pulled herself up onto the very tips of her toes.

  A shiver rippled up her spin, swept over her scalp at what looked like a tiny glass lens encased in thin matte-black plastic.

  Jesus.

  How many showers had she taken while being observed?

  Before and after Instagate?

  How many times had she and Mike made love in here during the time Naomi was employed by them?

  Had the girl recorded all those times? Was that footage—

  “Watch it, it’ll bite.”

  Lena let out a yelp and stumbled backward at the unfamiliar male voice booming around the bathroom.

  She spun around, her heart racing, to find a tall man with a shaved head, startling blue eyes, broad shoulders, and tattoos covering arms that spoke of a latent strength Lena somehow doubted was forged in an air-conditioned gym.

  The man flashed a mischievous grin and strode towards her. “Just joshing, darl’n.”

  There was a slight accent to his voice. American? Canadian?

  Lena stepped backwards.

  “Enough, Ruckus.”

  Mike’s sister strode into the bathroom, snagging Lena’s attention for a second.

  As always, RG defied expectation. Her dark-sable hair cascaded over just one shoulder and down only one side of her chest, thanks to the fact half her head was shaved. She’d added two more earrings to the exposed ear and a nose piercing since Lena had seen her last, along with what looked like tattoos of a sperm whale and a bowl of flowers falling through space on her shoulder.

  She wore thick black eyeliner and mascara, black leather shorts, and a T-shirt bearing the words “I am a leaf on the wind”. Knee-high, red-and-black Converse One-Stars completed the look.

  In Lena’s opinion, she was the poster-child for the sexy geek chick. The whole look, Lena suspected, hid a world of mistrust and pain.

  It dawned on Lena for the first time just how broken Mike and RG’s parents had left them.

  I’ve told you how messed up my childhood was. Mike’s earlier words came back, spoken to her closed door when he’d thought she was inside refusing to open it to him. That day, when I first saw you, all of the crap I’d been through faded away.

  A cold fist twisted in her belly. She’d been so wrapped up in her own pain, her own mistrust, she’d completely ignored Mike’s. The woman he loved had treated him with disdain and contempt, had put herself before him without regard for what he was feeling.

  Just like his mother.

  Lena’s stomach rolled again.

  “We’ll fix this, Lenny.”

  RG’s statement—so like her brother’s—pulled her back from a sickening chasm of guilt. She met RG’s eyes, unable to miss a guarded sympathy in their direct depths.

  “Thanks, RG,” she said, voice a husky scratch.

  RG dipped her head in a nod and then joined Ruckus at the wall.

  “What’s the bitch-cow’s poison?” RG asked the tattooed man.

  Ruckus, Lena noticed, was holding the tiny camera lens in his fingers, studying it through an outrageous pair of bright-green horned-rimmed glasses. He handled the small lens as if it was the most fragile, delicate thing in the world. And the most fascinating.

  “RG tells me he’s the best in Australia at this kind of thing.”

  Lena jumped at Mike’s low murmur at her side. She jerked around to face him, feeling brittle and—strangely—excited.

  Her journalist instincts kicking in, maybe? The hunt of an unfolding story?

  A story she was a starring part of.

  “We’ll fix this, babe,” he said, smoothing his hand up her back.

  A dry laugh fell from her. “Your sister just said the exact same thing. Of course, she added Lenny at the end, not babe.”

  Mike’s lips twisted. “Well, she knows how much you hate that name.”

  “It’s going to take a shit-ton of years before I forgive you for what you did to the doofus there, Lenny,” RG threw over her shoulder without making any eye contact at all.

  Lena let out a shaky sigh, studying RG’s back as she stood inspecting the surveillance camera with Ruckus.

  “I messed everything up, didn’t I?” she asked, turning back to Mike.

  His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Let’s go with, you made things more…interesting.”

  Chapter Eight

  Lena snorted. “More interesting. You missed your true calling, Mike. You should have gone into politics.”

  He grinned, even as a dull thumping pressure filled his head. “Well, I do know Jeremy Craig quite well. At least, I played tennis against him in that charity match, remember? Television’s Sexiest Star versus Australia’s Sexiest Politician. We talked a few times as we swapped ends. If the Deputy Prime Minister can’t get me a leg-up, I don’t know who could.”

  Another sigh, this one shakier than the first, slipped from Lena. She shook her head¸ a small smile curling her lips. “I could always count on you to crack a joke when I needed it the most.”

  Mike raised his eyebrows in mock shock. “You think I’m joking about asking the Deputy PM to give me a job?”

  Lena laughed.

  Mike suppressed his own chuckle. Who would have thought they’d been doing this? Joking with each other, laughing with each other, a few months ago. So much of the humour in his life since Instagate was ironic and borderline sarcastic. It was wonderful to laugh at something fun.

  It was even better to be sharing that fun moment with Lena.

  Will it last? Can it? Given what you’ve been through? Given she didn’t trust…

  “Well,” Lena said, her smile growing shy. Hesitant. “If you don’t get along with your new EP, maybe a career in politics is the way to go?”

  A thick lump filled Mike’s throat. He drew in a slow breath, a strange pressure wrapping his chest. “My new EP’s not that bad,” he said, returning her smile. “A few trust issues, serious addiction to high heels, woeful taste in music…apart from that, she’s okay.”

  Lena didn’t laugh.

  His chest tightened more.

  “Will we be able to fix this, Mike?” Damn, that uncertainty in her voice twisted his gut. “Fix us? Is there any chance?”

  A cold vise replaced the pressure on his chest and he turned his head away, dragging a hand through his hair to scrub at the back of his neck.

  He wanted to say yes. But the word wouldn’t come, imprisoned in the disgust, the shock of what Naomi had done to him, done to Lena.

  The dog-walker had been the catalyst for their marriage’s destruction, but Lena’s lack of trust, lack of faith in him…that’s what had ended it.

  Would they ever be able to rebuild that trust? Not just on her end, but on his? Would Lena swing the other way, would her guilt over not trusting him take away the feistiness in her he loved? Would she become a meek, hesitant wife out of fear he’d question her trust again?

  Or more worrying, would he become bitter about what she’d done? Would he become resentful? Angry? Ultimately contemptuous?

  Was there an argument in their future where she questioned something he was doing and he threw what she�
�d done back in her face?

  He loved her. He didn’t doubt that at all. He desired her on a level he couldn’t explain as well, but was that enough?

  Love and desire were everything when things were going well, but when things got rough, trust, belief, faith…those were the things that strengthened love and desire.

  Could those things be a part of their relationship again? After all this?

  Could they?

  Fuck. He’d thought his mother’s mind-fuck had been bad. This one…

  “Okay!”

  Ruckus’s booming voice shattered the silence. To Mike’s embarrassment, he flinched in startled surprise.

  Swinging his attention to the man standing beside his sister, Mike frowned.

  Lena drew closer to him. He wanted to pull her into his body and hold her there. Something dark, something wary and broken inside him, stayed his hand.

  “What you’ve got here,” Ruckus went on, holding up the small round black thing Mike had discovered next to the speaker, “is a wireless Wi-Fi monitoring pod. It’s a funky little wide-angle lens camera that allows the user’s smartphone to be their remote access point for the footage captured. I suspect, and I’m usually correct about these kinds of things, that your stalker has wirelessly connected the pod to your home internet connection. It’s high-def quality, infrared sensors so it’ll still work in complete darkness, just in case you’re partial to showering without the lights on, which can be serious amounts of fun when done with someone—”

  “Ruckus.” RG dragged out his name in a warning.

  Mike hiccupped out a chuckle. If his head wasn’t such a mess of conflicted emotions, he’d like this guy a lot.

  Ruckus threw RG a smirk that said very clearly something Mike did not want think about when it came to his sister.

  Maybe he didn’t like this guy after all…

  “The thing is,” Ruckus continued, returning his attention to the small camera, “movement activated, and has a two-way radio, so it will record audio as well as visual.”

  “So every time I farted in the shower, our dog-walker recorded it all?” Mike asked, heart thumping fast in his ears.