Pay back

Jamie looked up at the blazing fire so bright in the night. The orange glow of the enormous fire reflected in her eyes. She had completed her mission to burn the old house down. Hot sizzling embers rose up into the dark sky. Soon, the fire squad would show up along with on lookers. But it would be too late. It was already too late to save the historic house. Maybe now Pete would believe her when she told him his day was coming. Pay back was hell. She could just see him crying over his family's treasured home going up in flames. Too bad he wasn't here to see it happening. Jamie would have loved to see her ex suffering like had made her suffer. To see his face as the place burned would have been icing on the cake. But she knew in her planning of tonight she had to do it when he was away on business. She didn't want to risk killing him if he had been inside the house. No, as much as she would love to see him dead, that wasn’t her style to kill. She only wanted to make him suffer like she had through the divorce and its aftermath. He had ruined her life. Now she would ruin his.
Jamie tossed back her long auburn hair and gave an eerie laugh as she watched the roof collapse. She needed to go, but she was drawn to the moment. Pete would get a taste of his own medicine. He deserved every bad thing he had coming his way. He had left her homeless and broke. Her modeling career was over thanks to Pete. Everything and everyone she had ever loved was gone. Oh that smug look of his! She just wanted to slap him as she remembered the last time they had talked. " Your family and your friends are on my side." he had bragged. "They think you are crazy!" he had said. Pete had made sure of that with all his lies. Even her mom believed Pete over her. They all thought the worse of her. They believed she had stole from Pete and had affairs.. She was on drugs he had told them. She was a nut case he led them all to believe. She had let them believe it all too. She had had do so to protect them. Pete had had that hold on her. He had blackmailed her to keep quiet about the truth. She had gone along with the ruse because he had threatened her. She knew his threats were real too. If she had not gone along with his lies, her parents would be dead by now. After all, he was one of the most powerful men in the country. He had ways of getting things done quietly.
Jamie retreated into the darkness when she heard the sirens coming. The house was out in the countryside and not seen from the main road. But someone had seen the tall flames dancing in the air and called it in . She was sure of that as she heard the sirens coming closer. Jamie walked into the woods behind the house. No one had seen her and no one would. She had made sure of that. She breathed a sigh of relief. Her plan that that had been in the making was finally coming to fruition. She had taken all the threats, all the lies he told everyone knowing that her day of reckoning was coming. It had taken time, as he had hid his secrets well. She knew she had to have evidence on him or no one would believe her She had found it. It has taken her six months, but she had the evidence. She fingered the key she wore around her neck. It was the key to the safety deposit box at the bank that she secured just yesterday. All the evidence she had gathered on Pete was in the box. She would turn it over to the officials in time. That was part of the plan too. But not before she finished having her fun. She deserved it. She had earned it. She would stay low and let people think she was still in the mental home overseas that Pete had put her in. That would be her alibi. She had paid off the head administrator to keep quiet on her release. They all knew she was not mentally ill and had released her of her own accord. But she had made sure the administrator kept quiet with cash. Pete’s cash. He had so much he didn’t even know she was tapping into one of his accounts. He thought he was smart and had cut her off. But she was smarter. She smiled as she thought about the next step of her plan. In a few days, Peter would find out he had no insurance on the house. Then, there was the clients who would be dropping their accounts with him for no reason. Oh that would be enough to give him a stroke. He would be clueless as to why his clients would be dropping him. Maybe then she would go to the police with the evidence. But then again, if she was having fun, she might keep tormenting him. Oh he would begin to wonder if it was her doing. He may even try to find her or even hurt her family. But it would be too late. Her family would be safe by then. He would never find her. It would be like tangling a carrot in front of him. He would be wondering what she was going to do next. She would ruin him, just as he had ruined her. Then, she would go to the police.
Their marriage had been one of mutual respect for two years. She had loved him and he her. But then she had started to find out things. Things that scared her. Things that when she asked him about it, he had told her to leave it be. The late nights, the helicopters, and strange visitors. She figured it out. He knew she knew too much. That is when the marriage had started to unravel. A snide comment here and a lie here to cover didn’t work anymore. So he had resorted to ruining her reputation with everyone. He had had to divorce her because she was cheating he had lied to their loved ones. She was selling dope he had made her own family believe. She was crazy he had told everyone. He had even made it look that way in a public way. She remembered how her parents had looked so shocked when they found the pills. Pills that had her name on them. Pills that Pete had placed in her bedroom to make it look like an overdose. Oh how she had wanted to tell them to truth. The truth that the reason she was in a coma for those three weeks was because he had spiked her drink with gosh knows what. But when she awoke in the hospital, that it is the day he had made the threat. He had grabbed her hair when she woke up and dared her to go again him. “This is just a taste of it,” he had told her.. “You tell anyone what you know and next time it will be a someone close to you dead” Then he had pushed her back on the bed and walked out of the hospital room. That had been over a year ago. She had started her planning then. She knew it would take time. She had to sneak. She had to do some of those things he accused her her like stealing. She had stole his money. But hey, he had taken her money--their money. So really it was her own money she was stealing. She was lucky he had not discovered the Swiss account was being used. It was her lifeline through all this turmoil. It had taken money for the investigation, for the safe house she had purchased, for the arson she had carried out tonight. She jumped into the truck she had parked on the logging road in the woods. She drove off in the opposite direction of the home she had once shared with Pete. She had two hundred miles to cover to get out of the vicinity of this place. She felt an indemnity that she she knew she deserved. Pete had not seen nothing yet.

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