I was staring in fascinated horror, wanting to pull my eyes away but for some reason not able to. I wondered why some anonymous man had dropped this at our backdoor. I wondered how anyone could get off on that crap.
And as I was wondering and struggling with the nauseous roil in my stomach, I heard Ty whisper, “The blonde.”
I had been concentrating on the activities, not the participants so I focused on one of the two females, the blonde not the brunette.
Then I froze.
It was Misty Keaton.
“Ohmigod,” I breathed.
I felt Ty’s eyes on me but mine didn’t move from Misty. Thinner, younger, I couldn’t guesstimate by how much but half a decade, at least.
“You ever see that man?” he asked.
My eyes moved to the guy even though I didn’t want them to considering what the women were doing to him and I shook my head.
“The other woman?” Ty went on.
I looked to her and shook my head again.
“Look, Lex, at the salon? Grocery store? Anywhere?”
I kept looking and, for my man, I did it hard though it cost me. Then I shook my head.
I felt Ty’s eyes move away from me then I forced mine to his hand which was again moving on the mouse. He hovered the cursor at the bottom the screen so the controls on the video came up and I saw the video lasted over thirty-five minutes.
Gross. I couldn’t imagine sustaining that activity for one minute without hurling much less over half an hour.
Ty clicked on the control and the action stopped when he slid it across to take it to the end. The screen went blank. He slid it back half a centimeter and we were treated to an empty bed, covers mussed, no one in the room.
Then I sucked in breath when the camera caught Arnie Fuller, full face and close up, his attention focused on something then the screen went blank.
He’d made the tape.
And it was highly likely one, a couple or all the participants didn’t know he’d done it when he’d done it.
But I was guessing they knew shortly after.
“Phone,” Ty rumbled and I realized I still had his phone in my hand.
I lifted it up and he slid it out of my grip, instantly flipping it open. His thumb moved over the keypad then he put it to his ear.
Then I heard him say, “Tate? Ty. You in for the night?” He paused then, listening as well as clicking, opening up the DVD directory and the hard drive directory, then, “Just got a delivery, anonymous, DVD sex tape left at the backdoor. Hang on.”
He looked at me and pushed the chair back, dipping his head to the machine.
“Save it but bury it, babe. At least two places.”
I nodded, reached out, moved the keyboard to face me, grabbed the mouse and got to work.
Ty went back to the phone, “I’m here.” Pause then, “Yeah, Lex saw the guy who left it but didn’t recognize him and he was gone before I got out the backdoor. Misty Keaton is on the tape, younger, thinner, gotta be around the time she f**ked me over or just before. I don’t know the other two in the tape and Lexie hasn’t seen them. But I do know Arnie Fuller made it seein’ as he was on screen after the festivities were over, camera caught him turning it off. It is not fun viewing, brother, but I’m at a loss why this was slipped to me. I need you to take a look at it and tell me if you got more.”
Another pause while I created directories, “Recipes” then “Cookies” then dragged the video file across windows, dropped it in and renamed it “Chocolate Chip”.
Then Ty said, “Right, we’ll be over soon’s we save it. Sorry, Tate, need this info or I wouldn’t f**k up your Sunday and, no way around it, you see this sick shit, it’s gonna f**k up your Sunday.”
He was not wrong about that. My Sunday hadn’t been the greatest but we’d got to the good part. Still, that video f**ked up the whole day.
I kept going, creating another directory called “Addresses” then “Christmas Card List” then saved the file under the name, “Out of Town”.
Ty was back to Tate. “Right, we gotta shut the computer down. Be there as soon as we can. Thanks.” I heard him flip his phone shut and say to me, “Close it down, babe.”
I did and he ejected the DVD. He put it back in the case while I moved out of the office and down the stairs. He followed me down and I went directly to my shoes. Ty got his boots on in no time flat and waited while I finished with my zips then we both hoofed it to the car. We took the Viper. Ty stayed within the speed limit but I knew it cost him.
When we hit Carnal, I spoke into the strained silence.
“What do you think this means?”
I looked to him and saw his eyes flash back and forth from road to rearview mirror as he answered, “I think it means Arnold Fuller’s net is unraveling.”
“That man in that video is important and he’s blackmailing him,” I guessed.
“That man in that video is important and Fuller’s got him by the balls,” Ty replied.
“Misty?” I whispered.
“Fuller’s go-to pu**y.”
Hmm. This seemed to be true. After what I saw, I was actually beginning to feel sorry for Misty. She looked like she was loving every minute of it in a way she looked like she was trying really, really hard to pretend she was loving every minute of it which means she was not. Even if the guy was hot, not old enough to be her father, no girl could love every minute of that.
Ty kept talking. “The question is, this guy’s important, how many more men like him does he have by the balls? And question two, who got hold of this and gave it to me?”
“It wasn’t Keaton or Frank,” I said softly.
“Crabtree?” Ty asked.
“No, it wasn’t him. I’d recognize him anywhere, even in the dark.”
“Then his net is unraveling,” Ty muttered.
I went silent, uncertain what this meant but knowing it was only partially good and the rest could be very bad.
We arrived at Tate and Laurie’s house which was on the other side of Carnal, through some winding roads up on a hill. A long two story house, the bottom floor mostly built into the ground, a deck that ran the entire front of it and jutted off the end. It was embedded in trees and I loved our view and, even as days slid into weeks, I was not used to it. Still, I had to say that the seclusion and quiet of Tate and Laurie’s house surrounded by dense Colorado forest was definitely a close runner up in cool.
Ty parked, waiting for me to round the car and took my hand as we walked through the bright outside lights up to the deck. Tate came out the sliding glass door that I knew led to the dining area off the kitchen and he slid the door to.