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winter. With the rain pelting against the windshield, he was in the perfect spot to observe the entrance to the restaurant without being seen. An older Sony DSLR camera was in his lap, mounted with a 180 lens. Not the best one he owned, but good enough for the few shots he would take when the couple finally finished eating and came out.
    Jerry didn’t love being a private investigator, but he didn’t hate it, either. It was simply something to keep him busy sincehis retirement from Seattle PD two years ago. Jerry was still a young man, only fifty-three, and retirement in the cliché sense—golfing, vacations to Florida, early bird specials at the local diner—had never appealed to him. Relying on referrals from his cop friends, he’d started the business one month after his last day at PD and had been lucky to have a steady stream of clients from the first day he’d hung his shingle. The income wasn’t making him rich, but it supplemented his pension decently. He specialized in cheating partners and missing persons. There always seemed to be an abundance of both.
    This job was the former. Not Jerry’s favorite type of work by any stretch, because in infidelity cases like this, emotions always ran high. And he hated delivering bad news, which he almost always had to do, because if a husband or wife suspected their spouse was cheating, the spouse almost always was. There was something to be said for marital instincts.
    Jerry knew all about marital instincts. He’d been married for over fifteen years. He had damned good marital instincts.
    The glass door of the restaurant finally opened and the woman exited first. Her date held the door for her as she went through, laughing at something she’d said. Arm in arm, the pair strolled down the sidewalk to where the man’s Range Rover was parked in the pay lot. The woman narrowly avoided stepping in a puddle, and she grabbed her date’s arm for support. Jerry allowed himself a tight smile in the privacy of his Jeep. Not cool making her walk in the rain, buddy , he thought. You should have had her wait in the restaurant while you went to get your fancy car. That’s what I would have done .
    Rolling his window down a few inches, Jerry poked the lens of his Sony through the opening and took several photos in rapid succession. Pictures weren’t his strong suit, and nobody had requested these today, but he felt compelled to bangout a few shots anyway. You never knew if you’d need them later. Plus it was easy taking pictures of this woman. Her smile was infectious, and Jerry thought she looked extra beautiful this afternoon, her long coat unbuttoned over a knee-length green dress, one he hadn’t seen before.
    As far as her lover went, Jerry had done a thorough background check, and not that much had come up. The man’s name was George Jackson and he was the head basketball coach at Puget Sound State University. His income was roughly $160,000 a year, obnoxiously high considering the Steelheads had been the losingest basketball team in the Pacific Northwest for the past three years straight. Jackson was forty years old, making him six years younger than the woman on his arm. An upstanding, taxpaying citizen with no criminal record.
    The wind picked up suddenly, catching the woman’s dark hair and pulling it back off her face. Even from this distance, Jerry could see the gorgeous diamond hoop earrings she wore, the stones glinting like little stars at her lobes.
    Diamond hoop earrings that the woman only wore on special occasions.
    Diamond hoop earrings that had been an anniversary present five years ago.
    Diamond hoop earrings that Jerry had spent hours picking out at the jewelry store, because that was the kind of thing a husband did for his ten-year wedding anniversary.
    Through the long lens of his camera, Jerry watched as another man held his wife’s arm, leading her toward a shiny white Range Rover. He watched as Annie climbed into the passenger side, still laughing as