Outcast

Jim is an engineer and lives in a very political town.
Jim loses his wife to his boss and then he becomes a political outcast.
Jim is a skilled engineer and he gets a job at a nearby military base.
Jim then screws over his ex bass, financially.
His ex company then sends Angela to solve the mystery of why the outcast is doing well.
Jim conquers Angela

Extract:
The town in which I live is a very political place. Unfortunately, I’m a damn good engineer, but a damn poor politician. A lot of the people down at work are damn good politicians, but damn poor engineers. The other engineers can’t compete with me technically, however, they can use politics to make themselves look good and me look bad. Thus, ol’ Jim has become an outcast from the employers in the town.

The problem with an outcast is that he is, by definition, separated from those who cast him out. If he runs, the separation has done its job. If he doesn’t run, he becomes a puzzle. A puzzle is a very dangerous thing, in a political world. People who live in the political world just might begin to question why things are happening the way they are. Such questions can eventually destroy a political world. Unfortunately, even though I'm an outcast, I still get caught up in local politics.

I have no real preparation for the political world in which I find myself working. I have been a top student since my early days in school and I easily won academic honors. Along the way, I married a very pretty girl, whom I never would have met except that she needed tutoring. Once the girl gets to know me, she figures that the geek is her ticket to riches. Only later do I realize her true motives.

After I graduate from college, I find that at first I do very well at my job. However, my boss meets my wife at the first Christmas party and decides that he’ll just have her for himself. From that day on, everything I do at work is wrong.

Finally, my boss and my wife confront me. She wants a divorce from me, so that she can marry my boss. She also wants the house and the good car.

I tell the cheating two, “You can just go to Hell. We’ll have to settle the matter in court. You do know that marriage is a legal contract? What you want does not override a written contract. You will just have to wait.”

They don’t want to wait. Their shyster lawyer and I then work out a settlement. Our marriage will be annulled and my former wife will get the house and the good car.

Of course, once the matter of the annulment is settled, I get fired from my job. Also, it seems that no one in town will hire me, or even interview me. It appears, to the politicians, that I have lost everything.

However, I continue to live in a little rental house, out on the edge of town, and I continue to go to work at the big military base, also out on the same edge of town.
The establishment wonders why I’m able to work at the military base. However, they can’t get anything out of the Commanding Officer. The CO tells them that what they’re asking is ‘classified information.’ It’s a puzzle for the establishment and, as I pointed out before, a puzzle is a very dangerous thing, in a political world.

As time passes, the puzzle grows steadily more troublesome. It appears that the classified work I’m doing for the CO is going to be a major effort; read expensive. It also appears that the mortgages on the house that my ex-boss and his wife (once upon a time, my wife) have obtained from me are a bit more than they had realized. In fact the mortgages are for more than the property is worth. Actually, the mortgages are for quite a bit more than the property is worth. My ex boss and former wife are good at dealing with people, not so good at dealing with math things, such as compound interest. Dealing with people can allow a person to get and retain a job. Dealing with such things as compound interest can determine if the person survives financially.