Dan Kenner took a sip of bourbon and picked up his iPad. He had received a text from his wife telling him that she would be again working late and that he should get dinner on his own. Dan was a man who liked to plan. Since he had an evening to himself, Dan’s plan consisted of grabbing a cheeseburger at Whataburger and spending the evening with Lee Child’s latest Jack Reacher novel and a bottle of Milam and Greene 13-year-old bourbon that had been gifted to him by his father-in-law. He had been saving the bottle for the right time and this evening promised to be that time. Dan took another sip of bourbon and set his iPad down on the end table as he savored the 111-proof amber fluid while ruminating about his current situation.

Kendall, Dan’s wife of six years had been working a lot of overtime over the last six months. At the beginning of their marriage, they agreed to put an equal amount each month into their joint checking account to pay bills and fund their vacations, but personal savings, checking, and retirement accounts were kept completely separate and neither had access to each other’s accounts. As a salaried employee, Kendall’s income was not increased by the additional hours so whether Kendall worked forty hours a week or sixty hours a week, her income stayed the same. With separate personal accounts, Dan had not known whether Kendall was earning a little or a lot with her overtime hours. The amount they each contributed to their joint account was much more than needed for expenses and the balance had grown considerably.

This separation of accounts was something that Kendall had insisted upon before they were married. Dan’s business was struggling due to a poor overall economy when he and Kendall first met and there were weeks and months that Dan refused to pay himself. That’s the thing about owning a business; the garbage man gets paid before you do. Dan refused to lay off any employees and went further and further into his personal savings to keep the promise to himself that no one would lose their job. It was one step in front of the other; trudging through life and as he would close his shops as night fell, all he found was himself another day older and deeper in debt.

Kendall was decently paid as a staff accountant for a Fortune 500 business and kept herself removed from Dan’s business. She was afraid of his company failing during this time and kept it at arm’s distance. Dan had lived off savings during these lean years to not put a burden on Kendall and while he sometimes struggled to meet his obligations to fund their joint account, he always was able to put his share into the account knowing that the storm would eventually pass.

Dan was able to not only weather the storm but thrive. The collection of three auto repair shops that he had inherited from his father had grown into a small chain of twelve locations over the last couple of years. He had taken options on land that would see the chain grow to twenty locations over the next three years. The shops were all operating well in the black but Dan had deliberately kept his salary as low as possible and plowed the profits back into the business. Tire equipment that was able to mount and balance every size tire on every type of wheel, no matter how exotic had been purchased for every location. State-of-the-art diagnostic equipment meant that his technicians could diagnose and repair drivability concerns on almost every vehicle made in North America, Asia, and Europe. Except for France, because fuck a bunch of Peugeots.

So, Dan’s business was going balls out. Kendall’s job was going well. This should have been the happiest time of their lives. But cracks were appearing in their marriage.

This was the second marriage for both Dan and Kendall. Dan’s first wife had died when she was hit by an elderly driver while out on her usual early morning run. It was a clear, sunny morning with a bit of an October chill in the air. Due to the morning glare, the octogenarian driving to her doctor did not see Kendall running down the street. The city was repairing a damaged culvert and had torn up the sidewalk forcing Lizzie to run on the street for about twenty feet. That was all it took.

Twenty goddamned feet.

Five seconds of running time and two lives snuffed out. Lizzie did not yet know it, but she was four weeks pregnant when she was struck by the car. This was the second time that tragedy had struck the Kenner household. Dan’s mother had died of lung cancer when he was in high school. She had never smoked a cigarette in her life when she developed a persistent cough that she sought treatment for. Eight weeks after her diagnosis, she was gone.

It took Dan months before he could begin his recovery from Lizzie’s death. His father installed an acting manager at the shop that Dan managed. This allowed Dan time to grieve for his wife and the child he would never have. Dan might never have recovered if his father had not suffered a fatal coronary while driving home from his office shop one evening. This forced Dan to put aside his pain and focus on the business. People were depending on him for their livelihood.

It was due to a careless accident that Dan met Kendall.

An apprentice mechanic had removed a radiator cap without waiting for the engine to cool down as Dan happened to be walking by. Hot antifreeze sprayed over Dan’s chest, necessitating a visit to the emergency room. The emergency room waiting area was crowded with the assortment of ER visitors that most cities saw. Open head wounds, overdoses, withdrawals, and an assortment of injuries and wounds typical of what the ER staff termed, BRI’s, short for Beer Related Injuries. The seat next to Dan was empty and Dan himself looked non-threatening, although he looked like he had been doused in some sort of greenish fluid that had an odor that was faintly sweet and unpleasant at the same time. A tall, attractive brunette hopped and limped towards Dan before dropping into the empty seat next to him.

Since the ER was crowded, they knew they were in for a wait. They told each other about their injuries (Kendall had twisted her ankle while going for an after-work run) and gave each other a synopsis of their lives. There was an immediate attraction between Dan and Kendall. Dan had asked her out to dinner and she accepted. They gelled and very quickly became an item. Kendall had divorced her first husband due to his emotional abuse and cheating and from their first date, had told Dan that she had zero tolerance for cheaters. They married fifteen months after meeting.

Dan took a sip of his whiskey and thought about his marriage. What was the old joke? ‘We’ve had a happy marriage for five years. Unfortunately, we got married six years ago.’

For the first few years of their marriage, Dan and Kendall were ecstatically happy. They laughed together. They danced. They made love all the time. They were good together.

The problems started after Kendall completed her MBA and was poached from the bank that had employed her out of college, to work as an accountant for the Fortune 500 corporation for whom she now worked. Dan was supportive of this. He wanted Kendall to be happy and successful.

There came a point that one of the senior vice-presidents was due to retire and the senior director to whom she reported was up for the position. That would leave the SD’s position open and Kendall felt that she had a very good chance of being promoted. She just had to show that she really wanted the job.

After a few months, Dan noticed that Kendal was becoming short with him. Nothing he did seemed correct. Kendall started disrespecting his job. To her, he was now just a mechanic. A grease monkey. She started disrespecting him during every conversation. Her constant anger and irritation with her husband were a divisive force in their marriage. Kendall started working overtime to stay away from Dan. When she was home, she was texting on her phone.

Her phone. God how he hated her phone. She was always on her phone. Secretly laughing at the texts coming through. She turned her screen so that her husband could not see who she was texting or what the texts were about. Sleeping with her phone under her pillow.

And then things turned violent.

Kendall had always had a bit of a temper and was quick to anger. This usually resulted in a cutting remark or a pointed barb thrown at the target of her ire. She had always been quick to calm down and make amends when her temper had gotten the best of her and when Dan was the focus of her anger, her contrition resulted in a night of great sex. However, Dan had noticed that her flashes of temper were increasing and lasting longer but without the makeup sex that, in the past had made her temper somewhat tolerable.

A month ago, during an argument that Kendall had manufactured for no good reason, she slapped him. In over six years of marriage, neither Dan nor Kendall had ever raised their hand to each other. But she had slapped him. And it had shocked Dan to his core. The slap had surprised Kendall as well because she immediately apologized and begged forgiveness. But then came the coffee cup incident.

A week after the slap, Kendall was yelling at Dan because the oil change light on her BMW had come on and he had not changed the oil. Dan had explained to Kendall (again) that her BMW came with free oil changes for the first three years so it made absolutely no sense for him to change the oil when the BMW dealer would do it for free. Kendall had yelled at Dan, “Just fucking change the oil, asshole!”

That was enough of that bullshit for Dan. “I told you not to buy that car but you just had to have that overpriced, unreliable piece of German crap. So now that you have it, it’s up to you to maintain it. You schedule your own service appointment at the BMW dealer. This is on you.”

Kendall had become enraged. She picked up her coffee cup and hurled it at Dan’s head. If he had not ducked, the cup would have hit him dead center of his forehead. He stared at Kendall in shock. She stared back at him with no expression on her face before turning on her heel and walking away without saying a word.

Dan took another sip of his whiskey. He could hear the garage door opening signaling Kendall’s return home. Dan picked up his cell phone and sent the text and the email he had queued up. They were redundant and going to the same person and contained the same packet of information so it did not matter which one was received first or if one of them failed to get through. Dan was a firm believer in backup plans. As Tennessee Ernie Ford had sung so long ago, “If the right one don’t get you, then the left one will.”

As Kendall walked through the living room, she glanced over at Dan, comfortable in his easy chair with a glass of whiskey in his hand.

“I’m going to change and then I need to ask you about some strange activity on the joint account.” Kendall did not wait for Dan to acknowledge her statement as she marched to the bedroom. A couple of minutes later, Dan heard the shower turn on.

Both Dan and Kendall had configured notifications on their bank apps to notify them of unusual activity. Dan had received the same text notifications that Kendall was no doubt concerned about. He sighed, took a sip of his bourbon, and set his iPad aside as he waited for Kendall’s return.

Which she did fifteen minutes later, wearing black yoga pants and a white midriff-baring t-shirt as she plopped down on the sofa facing Dan. Her hair was wet and slicked back from her shower and although she had not reapplied any makeup, she was a stunningly beautiful woman. Her body was lean and athletic, topped by a pair of c-cup breasts that were at present, unencumbered by a bra.

“Do you know about these deductions from the joint account?” she asked. There was a slight accusatory tone in her voice. She held up her cell phone to Dan. Their bank’s app was open to the check activity of their joint checking account. The balance displayed was twelve dollars whereas earlier in the day it had shown over thirty-thousand dollars.

Dan nodded his head. “The twelve thousand ACH debit to PDSC? That’s Pendragon Security Consultants. That was to pay them to follow you around for a month and document your affair with your boss. The eighteen thousand ACH to SKD? That was the retainer to Solomon, Klein, and Davis; my divorce attorneys.” He took a sip of his bourbon and watched for Kendall’s reaction.

Tears came to her eyes and her mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water trying to find oxygen. Her face reddened and for a moment, Kendall seemed at a loss for words.

Dan watched as her emotions played across her face. Fear morphing into sadness which turned to anger and then back to fear. She seemed stuck and it was only when Dan picked up his glass to take a sip of his bourbon that she seemed to make up her mind on what to say.

“It didn’t mean anything,” Kendall said. “I just got caught up in something I couldn’t control. I’ll end it right now. I don’t want a divorce.”

“Weren’t you the one that said she had zero tolerance for cheaters? What did that mean to you?”

“If you ever cheated on me, I would divorce you,” Kendall said, looking down at her hands which were clenched together in her lap.

“That sounds like a smart plan,” Dan said.

“I don’t want a divorce,” Kendall repeated.

“What did you think would happen when I found out?” Dan asked.

“I didn’t think you would find out,” Kendall said honestly. “I thought that our fling would run its course and you and I would get back to normal.”

“And the disrespect? The anger and the abuse? Was I supposed to just let that go?”

“I never disrespected you. And there wasn’t any abuse!” Kendall said, her voice level increasing slightly as she denied Dan’s accusation.

“Did you fuck him in our bed?” Dan asked.

Kendall gasped and the blood drained from her face. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to disrespect you though.”

“Oh, well that’s all right then. As long as you didn’t MEAN to show me disrespect, then it’s all good,” Dan said with a hint of anger. “You fucked your lover in our marital bed, in our marital home and you don’t think that was disrespectful to me?

“And you said there wasn’t any abuse?” Dan gave a sardonic laugh. “You slapped me and threw a coffee cup at my head; so yeah, there was abuse.”

“We can get past this. I don’t want a divorce,” Kendall insisted. “We can work this out. I’ll make an appointment for us to see a marriage counselor.”

Dan shook her head. “Our marriage wasn’t the problem; your cheating was the problem. I do agree that counseling is needed, but not to fix our marriage. You need to fix whatever is in you that’s broken. If your boyfriend was single, you’d be out of here on the first thing smoking. He’s not getting divorced, so I’m your Plan B. Well fuck that noise.”

“I do not want a divorce,” Kendall repeated, emphatically.

“You’ll change your mind,” Dan said with a wry smile.

Kendall’s phone had been buzzing with incoming notifications all the while she and Dan were talking but she had been ignoring the notifications as she appealed to Dan. As an incoming call came in, she glanced down in annoyance.

“You should probably take that,” Dan said.

Kendall rose from the sofa and walked towards the main bedroom for privacy. As she walked away, Dan picked up his cell phone, tapped a couple of apps he had pre-opened, and then tapped the POST button. Dan could hear Kendall’s muffled voice but could not understand her until she said loudly, “He did what!”

A few minutes later Kendall came back into the living room. Her face was red and her eyes were pinched and angry.

“You told his wife? You fucking told his wife?” she screamed. “How dare you try to destroy his marriage. You had no right! They have two little boys. How could you be so hateful to her? You miserable asshole! You sorry piece of shit! I will never forgive you for hurting her like that!”

Dan looked at Kendall bemusedly. “So, in your mind, he’s not a miserable asshole for cheating on his wife. I’m the miserable asshole for telling her that he’s cheating? That’s some fucked up logic you’ve got going on there, babe. You don’t consider you and your boyfriend sorry pieces of shit for lying and cheating on your spouses but I’m the bad guy for bringing it to light?” Dan shook his head and chuckled. In his quest to understand infidelity, he had recently read about the twisted logic of cheaters but to see it play out in his own wife was crazy.

“This is between you and me! You had no business interfering in their marriage!” Kendall shouted; her face crimson with anger.

“Your boyfriend had no problem inserting himself into the middle of my marriage so I had no problem inserting myself into the middle of his marriage. If he’s cheating on her with a co-worker there’s no telling what kind of skanks, sluts, and whores he’s cheating with. She needs to protect herself and get tested for STIs.”

“He’s not like that. And he’s clean.”

“Since the first thing you do when coming home after ‘working late’ is take a shower, I’m assuming you’re having unprotected sex with him. You should get tested too. I got tested for my peace of mind, even though we haven’t had sex since you started your affair.”

Kendall looked at her husband in shock. He had known for months. And acted like there was nothing wrong while he hired private investigators. Who was this man?

“You just wanted payback. You’re pathetic,” Kendall said.

Dan again noticed that her phone was buzzing with incoming notifications which she had been ignoring as she hurled insults at him. As she paused for a breath, her phone started ringing.

“You should probably take that,” Dan said again as he took another sip of bourbon.

Kendall again walked towards the main bedroom to answer her phone.

Dan made a call on his iPhone and quickly mumbled into the phone. He then opened his iPhone to the recording app and leaned it against the lamp sitting on the end table next to his chair. The phone was video-recording Dan while keeping the line open so that the person on the other end of the line could hear what was happening. Dan sat on his hands as he waited for his wife’s return. He did not have to wait long.

Kendall practically flew into the living room. “You posted this on Facebook!?” She screamed. “You posted this on Facebook and tagged all my family and friends!? You tagged Pastor Riley!?”

“Well, yes, but in all fairness, I also posted it on Linked-In so all your professional connections could see it as well.”

Kendall screamed in frustration and anger before throwing her cell phone at Dan’s head. He closed his eyes as she reared back for the throw and braced for the hit. When it came, it was so much worse than he was expecting. He almost blacked out when the phone hit his forehead but he just managed to keep his wits about him. He knew she was going to do something and sitting on his hands to prevent killing the bitch was one of the most difficult things he had ever done.

Kendall jumped across the space separating them and started hitting him in the face. Dan could feel his lip split and the copper taste of blood flowed into his mouth. She hit him in the nose and Dan’s vision blurred for a moment. It finally got to the point that he stopped sitting on his hands and covered his face with his arms as she continued to beat on him.

Kendall was screaming, “I’m going to kill you, you motherfucker! I’m going to get a gun and blow your fucking head off!”

Finally, Dan had enough and gently pushed her off as he stood and walked away a few steps, putting a loveseat between himself and Kendall. If the 911 operator that Dan called had done their job correctly, he would only have to wait a couple of minutes for the squad car to arrive. Which is exactly how things transpired.

Kendall was glaring at Dan with hate-filled eyes; her chest heaving as she took deep breaths. She was trying to calculate the best way to go after Dan. Left? Right? Over the top of the loveseat? The doorbell rang before she could figure out a plan of attack.

“You should probably get that,” Dan said, his voice flat and unemotional.

Kendall’s nose flared and her eyes squinted as she looked Dan in the eye. She paused a moment and then spun on her heel and marched to the front door.

Kendall flung open the door only to be confronted by the sight of two police officers. Her expression was a mix of confusion and anger as she spoke with the officers, looking back at Dan every few sentences. The officers and Kendall were too far away for Dan to understand their mumbled conversation. He could see Kendall gesticulating wildly and pointing her finger towards him. Dan could see Kendall stand aside and allow the officers entry to their home. She escorted one of the officers away from the living room and towards the kitchen. The other officer approached Dan.

“Mr. Kenner; I’m Patrolman Diaz and my partner is Patrolman Agnew. Your wife said that you have been violent towards her tonight. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on? Did you touch her?”

Dan shook his head no. “I confronted my wife about an affair she’s having. She attacked me.” Dan pointed to his face. He could feel the blood on his face from taking the hit from the thrown cell phone. He could also feel his split lip. “I’m the one who called 911. She’s been getting violent lately. She slapped me a month ago and then a week later, threw a coffee cup at my head. It missed me, but if it hadn’t, I would have had to go to the emergency room.

“I recorded the confrontation tonight. Would you like to see the video?”

Patrolman Diaz most certainly did want to watch the video.

Dan made several tapping moves on his iPhone and then handed his phone to the police officer. Patrolman Diaz watched the video in silence, raising his eyebrows at the scene of Kendall launching herself at Dan.

The police officer looked at Dan skeptically. “It looks like there was a conversation before the recording. Was anything said that would escalate the situation?”

Dan shrugged. “She found out that I had a private investigator following her for a month and that I had passed on the findings to her affair partner’s wife. She wasn’t happy about that.”

The police officer chuckled. “You don’t do things halfway do you?”

“As the guy said, ‘I light my path forward by the light of the fires of the bridges burning behind me’.”

“Okay, Dylan McKay.” The officer shook his head and smiled. His partner exited the house and they conferred with each other. The other officer shook his head and nodded his head toward Dan. Patrolman Diaz played the video on Dan’s phone for his partner. His partner rolled his eyes and shook his head. Kendall’s explanation had been much different, but she was not aware that she had been recorded.

Patrolman Diaz walked back to Dan. “We’re arresting your wife for domestic violence and making terroristic threats. My suggestion to you is to take out a restraining order.”

Patrolman Diaz opened the front door as his partner escorted Kendall from the kitchen, her hands cuffed behind her. She was crying and starting to hyperventilate.

“Dan! Don’t let them do this to me! Please, if you ever loved me, make them let me go. I promise I’ll be good!”

Dan rolled his eyes and turned to the officer who handed him a business card.

“My email address is on the card. Send me a copy of the video.”

As the squad car pulled away, Dan made a call to his attorney, Dwight Solomon.

“It went down exactly as I thought it would. She was just arrested and carted off to jail.”

“Just keep your cool Dan. If she shows up tomorrow, you know what to do.”

As Kendall exited the courthouse the next morning, accompanied by her parents, she was stopped by a twentysomething, gum-chewing blonde.

“Excuse me,” she said as she stopped in Kendall’s path. “Are you Kendall Kenner?”

“Yes,” said a very tired, hungry, and annoyed Kendall Kenner. “Who are you?”

“You’ve been served,” replied the blonde as she as she handed a shocked Kendall a manilla envelope. The blonde smacked her gum and turned her back on Kendall to walk away.

“What is this shit?” Kendall called to the blonde’s back.

“Don’t know; don’t care,” the blonde called back over her shoulder. “But I’d say you’re probably fucked, whatever it is.”

Kendall angrily opened the paper and saw the words Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.

“That motherfucker!” she screamed to her parents.

It had been a difficult morning. Kendall had been awakened early and removed from her jail cell before being taken to a holding cell in another part of the building. She sat in the holding cell for an hour before she met with her attorney. She had been allowed one phone call the night before and had used it to call her parents who had immediately started leaving voice messages at various law firms so that hopefully, they could hit the ground running the next day. They had contracted with the first lawyer who returned their call the next morning and were assured that Kendall would be represented at her hearing.

Judge Kendall had her bond set at ten thousand dollars which meant that she would have to either put up the full amount or pay a bail bondsman 10% and then pledge real property as collateral. The judge also issued a restraining order forbidding her from contacting her husband or appearing at the residence or his workplace. She was to make arrangements with her attorney to retrieve her belongings from the residence. Kendall’s lawyer had objected to this but had then been shown photos of Kendall’s husband. The objection was withdrawn.

After leaving the courthouse, Kendall’s parents took her through the drive-through at McDonald’s as a first stop. She had been booked into the Denton County jail too late to eat dinner and the jailers had awoken her early for a morning court appearance so she missed breakfast. Kendall had not eaten dinner the previous night, choosing to spend her time in bed with her boss, Tony. She planned to grab some leftovers out of the refrigerator when she got home last night but that plan had gone to shit. She thought about how she got here.

She and Tony had just finished their second round of sex when her phone dinged with an alert. While Tony dozed next to her, she checked her phone, expecting to see a text from Dan. What she had seen instead was a low balance alert from her bank. She quickly logged in on her bank’s app and immediately saw that the joint bank account had only a few dollars on deposit. Two ACH withdrawals had hit the account that afternoon; one was for twelve thousand dollars and the other for eighteen thousand. A Google search of the payees revealed nothing.

Kendall knew that this could mean that they were scammed or that the bank had made a mistake. Kendall was an intelligent woman. She also realized that it could mean that Dan knew about her affair and had emptied the checking account. She did not believe that was the case, however. She knew her husband and knew that he was not afraid of confrontation. If he suspected her of having an affair, he would have said something. Dan Kenner was not the type of man to let something like this pass. She knew that, and yet here she was; lying next to her boss in a cheap motel after having sex that was spectacular in its mediocrity. Not for the first time she wondered what she was doing here.

Things had always come easy for Kendall. She was always the prettiest and smartest girl in class. She was seldom the most popular because other girls did not trust her. She had learned at an early age how to weaponize her sexuality and it was a gun she did not hesitate to draw. Starting with Mr. Campbell, her high school calculus teacher. A few blow jobs earned her an “A+”. Letting Ms. Donovan eat her pussy got her an “A” in Econ. She never dated high school boys; she only went out with men; guys who had graduated from college and had good jobs.

College had been a rinse and repeat of high school. If she was struggling with a class, she would fuck the professor. And male or female, they all wanted to fuck Kendall. She had graduated college in four years, receiving a finance degree. She had thought about law school but knew that she was not a strong enough student. You couldn’t fuck your way through law school.

For Kendall, her current affair with Tony Guyer, the senior director to whom she reported, meant nothing. It was a means to an end. If she was able to get in a little recreational sex, what a previous lover had called “sport fucking,” while pursuing the promotion, then so much the better.

It was during her second year of employment at Chase Bank that she met Kyle Evans. Kyle had visited her bank branch as part of an investigation into possible money laundering activities by a suspected drug dealer. Kyle was on assignment to the Denton County Sheriff’s Department Special Operations Division and his longish hair, mustache, and devil-may-care attitude had immediately dampened her panties. She brazenly asked him out for drinks and hopped into bed with him at the end of their first date. For Kendall, the sex was mind-blowing and she was cock-crazed for Kyle. Within two months they were living together. Within another year, they were married.