The Perfect Wife(55)


He leads you to a tiny storeroom piled high with boxes. There’s a workbench, almost hidden by tangles of leads and bits of equipment, with a laptop open on it. You can feel the excitement radiating off him. Or is that just your own nerves?

“There’ll be a port,” he says impatiently. “Somewhere I can plug into.”

“On my hip. But I want the iPad first.”

“It’s still scanning. I can show you what I’ve got, though. I printed it out. I knew you’d be back.” He takes some sheets of paper from a shelf. “It’s part of someone’s internet history. It’s garbled, but it makes pretty interesting reading.”

You hold out your hand for it, but he shakes his head. “Uh-uh. When you’re hooked up.”

“Get on with it, then.” You give him a hostile stare.

You could help him by undoing your jeans, but you don’t want to make this easy for him. You want him to feel awkward, to realize what a violation it is. You look on with what you hope is a withering expression as he pushes down your waistband.

“That’s nice,” he says, oblivious, studying the neat row of ports. “Options. We’ll go for FireWire.”

You hear the click as he plugs in a cable. Then he turns back to his laptop.

“The printout,” you remind him. Distractedly, he puts the pages in your hand.

“Incredible,” he breathes, tracing the numbers and code you can see flickering across the screen with his finger. You ignore him and look at the first page.

And what you see there brings you up short.





42


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WWW.Undertheradar.com How to go off grid and disappear completely 0===== €€

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STEP ONE Plan carefully. About a month before you intend to disappear, show signs of depression. Ask your doctor for medication and remove the correct number of pills from the bottle each day.

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STEP TWO Delete your computer history. Remove your laptop hard drive and boil it, then smash it with a hammer. Finally, run a degausser (electromagnetic wand) over it to obliterate information that may give you away (such as visiting this web page). €üà?a# _ e g ? à eE

STEP THREE Erase all information from your cellphone, then leave it on public transport. Someone will take it and start using it, creating a false trail which will help frustrate those looking for you later.

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STEP FOUR Purchase a vehicle for cash. Provide a false name. Remove all tracking devices (toll passes with RFID chips, satnav, OnStar car system, etc.) Root

STEP FIVE Practice your new lifestyle. Get food to go. Never order from chain restaurants. Change your eating habits, e.g. if you are a vegetarian, consider eating meat. Use alcohol wipes on glasses and cutlery to avoid leaving fingerprints/DNA which can be read with an easily purchased BPac machine. Use a sleeping bag in (non-chain) motels. Always pay cash.

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STEP SIX Reduce social media activity. Create a new, offline-only identity. (Do not make the common mistake of trying to obtain false papers in the name of a dead person) X0X0X0~~STEP SEVEN. Accumulate large amounts of cash. Getting into debt with a loan shark or drug dealer is a risky but effective ploy. They will come looking for you after your disappearance, which can help divert attention.

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STEP EIGHT Tell people close to you you’re worried about being followed. Alternatively, tell them you’ve started hiking in remote locations. (Hiking is preferable to drowning as fewer bodies are recovered from hiking accidents.) Tell no one what you plan to do, not even those you trust the most.

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Purchase a baseball cap with LED lights under the flap. This will make your face a blur to infrared CCTV cameras when traveling.

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Entry

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STEP NINE Create a corporation under a name not connected to you. This will be a legal entity able to lease an apartment, pay bills, run a checking account etc. Use the corporation account rather than your personal account to pay whoever set it up for you.

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STEP TEN Ditch all your credit cards, personal possessions etc. Then leave.





43


You stare at the pages. Whatever you’d been expecting, it certainly hadn’t been this.

Not an affair, after all. Not a suicide. A secret of a totally different kind.

You ran away.

True, not all the details match—the Web page specifically said not to fake being drowned, for example, and the iPad clearly hadn’t been hit with a hammer or boiled. But you must have decided your well-known love of surfing made the ocean more believable than a hiking accident. As for the iPad, perhaps you meant to take it with you. All the other details, such as the pills, are too close to be a coincidence.

You’re still alive.

The thought is shocking. Everything Tim believes—everything he’s done, from raising Danny on his own to reconstructing you—has been built on a monstrous deception. A lie, perpetrated on him by the woman he loved. The woman who always said she loved him in return.

Ironically, by finding the information that finally clears Tim of your murder, you’ve discovered something that will completely destroy him.

But—why? That’s what you still can’t get your head around. You had a good life, an adoring husband. Okay, so he preferred you with braids and didn’t like it when you faked an orgasm. Hardly reasons to fake your own death.

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