Sidney Sheldon’s Chasing Tomorrow

‘You don’t love me. You barely even know me.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Yes it is. Believe me. Besides, I’m far too old for you.’

‘Says who?’ Rebecca coiled herself around him like a cobra, kissing him with a passion that caught Jeff completely off guard. She was a gorgeous girl, but he wasn’t ready for this. Gently but firmly, he pushed her away.

‘I’m married,’ he said. ‘What happened between us the other day—’

‘Almost happened,’ Rebecca corrected him.

‘Almost happened,’ Jeff agreed. ‘Well, it shouldn’t have. I was hurt and angry, and you’re a beautiful girl. But I love my wife.’

‘Your wife’s a whore!’ Rebecca’s sweet, innocent features twisted suddenly into an ugly mask of jealousy and rage. Jeff stepped away from her, shocked. He had never seen this side of her before.

A horrible thought struck him. As if someone had cut the cable of an elevator he was taking, he felt his stomach lurch and the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

‘How did you get the footage?’ he asked again. ‘Tell me!’

‘I won’t!’ snapped Rebecca. ‘Can’t you see you’re missing the point here? Tracy’s been screwing around behind your back. That’s the headline. Who cares how I caught her out. The point is I did. I did it because I care about you, Jeff. I love you!’

But Jeff was already gone, the disc clutched tightly in his hand.

*

AT SEVEN O’CLOCK THE NEXT MORNING, Jeff sat in Victor Litchenko’s basement office in Pimlico, staring at a screen.

Victor was an old friend and one of the top audiovisual experts in the London underworld. A master at doctoring footage, both images and sound, Victor Litchenko described himself as a ‘digital artist.’ Few who’d worked with him disagreed.

‘It’s actually not a bad piece of work,’ the Russian said at last, sipping at the double espresso Jeff had brought him. ‘The most common mistake amateurs make is to go for something too complex. But here she simply doctored the time line and changed the lighting. Very easy. Very effective.’

‘So it is Tracy?’

‘It is Tracy. The footage itself is genuine, nothing’s been superimposed or patched together. All she did was to change the time clock in the bottom right-hand corner. You think this was shot at two A.M. because there’s a set of numbers there telling you so. If you strip those out, like so’ – he tapped a few keys – ‘and remove the superimposed shadowing she used like…so…’ Some more tapping. ‘Voilà! Now, what do you see?’

Jeff frowned. ‘I see the same exact thing but in the daytime. There’s Tracy, coming out of the hotel. And there’s her lover.’

‘Ah, ah, ah.’ Victor interrupted him. ‘Look again. What makes you think that’s her lover?’

‘Well, they’re…she kisses him. Right there,’ said Jeff.

‘On the cheek,’ said Victor. ‘How many women do you kiss on the cheek every day? And then what happens?’ He fast-forwarded the footage in slow motion. ‘They embrace. A friendly hug. They part ways. Shall I tell you what that looks like to me?’

‘What?’ Jeff’s mouth felt dry.

‘It looks like two friends having lunch.’

Jeff watched the footage again, slowly.

‘It’s the oldest trick in the book, and one of the best,’ said Victor. ‘I’ve used it in countless divorce cases. A man and a woman coming out of a hotel at two a.m. and embracing, after the woman’s told her husband she’s spending the night three hundred miles away? That’s an affair. But edit the circumstances just a little, and what have you got?’

Jeff’s voice was a whisper. ‘Nothing.’

Victor Litchenko nodded. ‘Exactly. Nothing at all.’

THE DESK CLERK AT THE BRITISH Museum smiled warmly.

‘Mr Stevens! Welcome back.’

Jeff hurried past her up to his office and pulled open the door.

His desk had been dusted but otherwise was exactly as he’d left it the day he stormed out. The day he last saw Tracy.

Rebecca’s desk was empty.

All her things were gone.

IT TOOK HIM TWENTY MINUTES TO reach Rebecca’s building. Ignoring the bell to her flat – no warnings, not this time – Jeff pulled a hairpin out of his jacket pocket and expertly picked the lock.

Once inside, he slipped upstairs, ready to break into the apartment itself and confront Rebecca. The bitch had deliberately deceived him, sabotaging his marriage and playing him for a fool. When he thought about how close he’d come to sleeping with her, he felt physically sick. But that was all in the past now. Now Jeff knew the truth. Now he was going to make her pay. He was going to find Tracy, and force Rebecca to tell her the whole truth. Tracy would still be angry, of course. She had every right to be. But when she saw how desperately sad and sorry he was for ever doubting her, when she realized what a Machiavellian, twisted young woman Rebecca Mortimer really was…

Jeff stopped outside Rebecca’s flat. The door was wide open.

He stepped inside. The place looked like a bomb had hit it, clothes and books and trash strewn everywhere.

An elderly Indian man looked surprised to see him.

‘If you’re looking for the young lady, she’s gone, sir. Took off last night and told the security guard she won’t be back.’ He shook his head bitterly. ‘No scruples, these young people. She still owed me three months’ rent.’

CHAPTER 5 (#u5a371f57-c4b9-520b-8edb-e65e17423ecd)

SHE OPENED THE BRIEFCASE AND LOOKED at the money.

‘Two hundred and fifty thousand?’

‘Of course. As agreed. Feel free to count it.’

‘Oh, I will. Later. Not that I think you’d cheat me.’

‘I should hope not.’

‘But people do make mistakes.’

He smiled. ‘I don’t.’

He had made mistakes, of course, in the past. Mistakes that had cost him dearly. The worst mistake he’d ever made had involved taking Jeff Stevens and Tracy Whitney at their word. Those two repellent swindlers had destroyed his life, once. Now, in some small way, he had returned the favour. Destroying their marriage wasn’t enough. But it was a start.

‘I didn’t enjoy this job,’ the girl was saying, emptying the contents of the briefcase into her own, tattered backpack. She’d cut her hair since he last saw her in London and now wore it short and black, in a sixties-style bob. He preferred it to the look she’d adopted for Rebecca Mortimer, all long tresses and freckles. Youthful innocence didn’t suit her.