Turned out Tricia was a riddle that wouldn't be solved right away. She acted strange for days after my episode with Nancy, but never said anything and eventually her behavior returned to normal. I half expected that she had heard or seen something that led her to discover what I had done to Nancy. But over time I realized that it was just my paranoia and if anything, she could only have had suspicions.
The paranoia, however, did drive me to start tagging her with electronic surveillance, keeping a closer eye on her activity. I tapped her email and listened to phone conversations, but nothing was discovered that would lead me to think she knew too much. This both relieved and disappointed me.
Tricia was a good assistant, very professional and very organized. She knew my work habits and controlled my office better than any assistant I ever had work for me. I would have hated on one hand, to have her tipped off to my bad behavior which could only cause complications for me right now. On the other hand, it would have been nice to find some reason to have her in the 'hot seat' of my office.
She was 24 years old and still attending college in the evenings. She was also a little tease. While she maintained reasonable standards of dress in the office, her skirts often hung a little low on her hips and her shirts would ride a little high. The stripe of skin, smooth tanned stomach, the glimpse of a petite belly-button, and most of all... the straps of a thong slipping above the top of her skirt, would always make me look twice. She was curvy, not thin and fragile, which accentuated her feminine allure. Nevertheless, she was young and also a direct employee and most of all... free of anything incriminating that I might be able to use to get her in a compromising position.
It had been about 10 days since my interlude with Nancy, and during this time I had raged with conflicting thoughts and personal judgments on my behavior. More and more, however, I was feeling horny. I was spending evenings and even into several nights, in the office looking for 'bad behavior'. My colleagues and team members saw this as a renewed dedication to my job... if they only knew. I would wake each morning with immediate guilt and resolve to make each day different, but by the time I would walk into my office my motivation was to find useful information on people I watched and worked with.
I realized that I had a problem, but didn't think I had become ethically bankrupt just yet, only that I was having a trying period of poor judgment in the face of incredible opportunity and temptation. But a problem it was, as I had stopped trying to develop relationships, sexual or otherwise, using more normal channels. Given the choice to hit the bar scene with friends or scan email for dirt on an unsuspecting associate, I chose the later every time.
During this time I really focused on Tricia, especially for the first few days after my fling with Nancy, but as I mentioned there was nothing for me to use. I continued to watch Melanie, but her behavior was in line and no more noon-time cock jobs. In fact I learned that she was no longer seeing Todd, having broken off the relationship only a few days ago. Nancy was a non issue as well. I watched her carefully and the most remarkable thing in her traffic pattern was an increase in hits to Monster.Com. I was not surprised, having been busted only weeks after starting with our company and then having to pay for her crime with her ass, it would be wise to look for another job. So far, no complicated wrinkles to sort out, instead just the opposite as things seemed to be smoothing out on their own.
Day 11, post Nancy, I was starting to become resigned to the idea that what had happened with Melanie and Nancy might have been a fluke. Could my run of blackmailed sex be over? Perhaps, and maybe I was coming to terms with the sensibility that it was for the better. It was bound to catch up with me at some point, especially if I continued. As I was starting to let all this rationality set in, I scanned an email to Tricia that caught my attention. It contained no dirt on Tricia, however, so there would be no immediate play for her sweet tail, but it did have information that made my previous thoughts of prudence dry up and blow away to the less visited places in my head. Turns out that she and other gossiping assistants had discovered our new marketing intern was doing some night work for a local escort company. How they had learned this was not clear, but there was an interesting conversation occurring amongst the gossips. All of them, (appeared there were about 5 in the email chain), were women. Four of them were expressing their disgust with her behavior and only one was defending her to some degree. Aside from knowing that Misty, (the intern), was an escort, I was getting a kick out of the fact that Tricia was her only supporter.
Tricia was only half-heartedly on Misty's side. She seemed more annoyed that the other four were being so quick to judge. I was impressed with Tricia's liberal defense, even if only for the sake of the debate, but more impressed that Tricia was willing to have an open mind and consider the circumstances in which Misty found herself. (Misty had been a struggling college student living on the meager salary we offered her as in intern. Economics had placed Misty in the position to look for work elsewhere). Eventually, however, their conversation bored me and I was already working to track down Misty's wild side in my own digital way.
It took a couple days, during which Misty conducted her business without use of our company's computers or anything else that I could digitally control, but I finally found a crack to wedge open. Frustrating as it was at first, I maintained my motivation by learning more about the intern of my current focus. She was a brilliant woman, with good grades and plenty of motivation. She was from a large family with little money, so she had made her way through college on scholarships and hard work. She was nearing her degree and escort work was putting food on the table, and then some.
The spoils of her night-job were actually excessive. Her car recently upgraded to a used 3-series BMW, her clothes sported labels such as Prada and D&G, but her success was also breeding recklessness. As I watched I learned her skills when 'on-call' were in high demand and that she was very good at what she did. Her service booked her for 3 to 4 calls a night, but she only worked 2 or 3 nights a week. They constantly begged for more time from her, but she had the upper hand and had negotiated larger percentages for herself. Most of this I gleaned from simply browsing the escort company's web site, but a couple easy hacks gave me more information as I snuck on their servers. Still, without something incriminating in the office, she would be off limits to me. I kept looking.
Her talents were along the lines of playing the naughty, yet naive school girl, the teenager next door, the innocent farm girl gone bad. She was 23 years old but looked all of 17. She was experienced like few others, but looked as raw as a choir girl. She expertly combined this physical appearance of purity with pale white skin that was deliciously accentuated by perky B-cup breasts and very long black hair and deep hazel eyes. She was all natural, home grown American pie. She had apparently learned the part very well, and knew how to market and sell her natural assets. Like I said, she was brilliant.
Was she brilliant enough to stay clear of my network borders and alarms? Perhaps not. Her escort service provided most of the web-presence required for their girls, but email was still something she used to communicate with her regular clients. While she tried to use clever keywords and avoid the obvious terms that anyone might pick up on, I finally found a pattern of emails from local ISP's, with email usersnames that were too cliché' to overlook. The tone of the messages and the combination of terms came together and I learned her lingo, and eventually started lodging my own email requests of the lovely Misty.
Justifiably cautious at first, she ignored my emails or simply asked me to go through the agency. But I insisted that I was a friend of one of her regulars and she finally gave in as I tempted her with large tips for her services. She finally agreed to meet me in a public place for a formal introduction. We agreed to meet at a bookstore with a café on the facing street where we could discretely, but with the comfort of a popular public spot, make further arrangements. She was also adamant that if we did make future plans, they had to be booked through her escort service. She did not moonlight on them, apparently.
Busy as her schedule was, our meeting could not take place for another couple days and that meant well over 2 weeks would have passed since my encounter with Nancy by the time I met with Misty. A short period of time in relative terms, but for me it felt like a lifetime. It was amazing for me to realize that I was actually maintaining two completely different thought patterns, in parallel. On my right shoulder sat the little angel telling me to be good, making me resign to stay clear of further forced seductions and that time would heal the wounds and guilt I felt. On my left shoulder was the demon that made me lustful in my domain of control, to see how far I could assert my influence and to enjoy the eventual spoils of such victories. The devil was winning this battle, at least this round, since it was easier to justify what I was attempting to do when the subject of the hunt was an escort. She did this kind of thing for money, right? Were her ethics and morals any more admirable than mine? But the right shoulder would jump in to keep me cognizant of the fact I was attempting to force her hand, take away the decision she would otherwise have. I moved forward on blinding lustful desire alone.
