Colorado 03 Lady Luck (61 page)

I didn’t pry. Ty needed to work this out
without me in his face about it and he knew I was there when he
needed me.

After Irv left, I made dinner and Ty told me
the rest of what Angel had to say. To say I was stunned was an
understatement. Then again, Chace Keaton had given it away that day
in the closet; I just didn’t get all of it.

We ate dinner and we hit the couch.

And I didn’t like the dregs of beer, warm
beer at the bottom of the bottle was not my favorite thing so I
wanted another one and I knew my husband did too.

So I pushed up on my elbow that was between
the couch and Ty and looked down at him.

“I’m getting us more beer,” I said when his
eyes moved from TV to me.

His answer was to stretch a long arm out to
tag the remote and hit pause. Then he looked back at me. I grinned,
put a hand in his chest but pushed up on my hand in the couch.

Then something caught at the corner of my
eye, I turned, looked over the back of the couch for a scant second
and at what I saw, instinct drove me to drop instantly down, all my
weight hitting Ty. It came as a surprise to him and he grunted, his
hands going to my hips, his lips beginning to curve up because he
thought I was messing around then he saw my face and they
stopped.

“Someone’s doing something at the backdoor,”
I breathed, my lungs constricted, my breath sticking in my
throat.

Ty went solid under me for a nanosecond then
he bucked his hips to pull out his phone as he whispered, “Stay
here. Do not move. I’m not back in five minutes, you dial 911 then
you call Tate.”

I opened my mouth to protest but didn’t get
a sound out before his phone was pressed into my hand, he was out
from under me and he was gone.

I lay there hyperventilating, listening and
clutching Ty’s phone in my hand. Ty didn’t have shoes on and I’d
taken mine off when we hit wind down mode on a Sunday night which
was to say, approximately five seconds after we waved his father
away. I couldn’t hear him move, I couldn’t hear anything.

Then I heard the backdoor open.

Then nothing.

I kept hyperventilating, counting to thirty
then counting to thirty again trying not to think about my husband
having enemies, no weapon and no shoes.

I counted to thirty again.

I got to my seventh set of thirty when I
heard the backdoor close then I heard the lock flip then I heard
the vertical blinds slapping against each other as Ty pulled them
over the door then another slap as he shut them. Then this happened
again and I knew he was at the window over the sink.

I lifted up and looked at him over the
couch. Then I watched as he moved around the house, a manila
envelope in his hand, closing all the blinds including the ones at
the wall of floor to ceiling windows that it took three long tugs
to get both sides of them across the expanse then he slapped them
closed.

I’d never seen those blinds closed. It felt
weird being closed in our house. We were in a development but
removed. There were houses close but with the trees around, they
felt far. Being the last house in the development, up an incline
that grew significantly steeper after the last house before ours,
our place felt separate, private, there was no need to close the
blinds so I never had.

I felt a shiver trill up my spine at the
need to close the blinds and then another one when Ty walked to
stand opposite the coffee table from me where he lifted up the
envelope and started to study it, turning it back to front.

I curled my legs in an S and got up on my
hand, my eyes also on the envelope.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“No clue. Was sittin’ at the backdoor.” I
looked up at his face to see him looking at me. “You see who put it
there?”

Dusk had fallen, it wasn’t dark but there
wasn’t a lot of light left. Our house faced west, the back was
darker than the front and the outside light wasn’t on.

I shook my head and answered, “It was a man.
A big guy but not you, Bubba, Deke big. Short-sleeved shirt, plaid.
That’s all I saw.”

“So you didn’t recognize him?”

I shook my head.

He nodded and looked back down at the
envelope.

Then he moved to open it and I tensed,
whispering, “Honey,” not wanting it to be an envelope bomb or
something because I didn’t want our house to explode. I loved our
house, of course, but mostly I didn’t want Ty and me to explode
with it.

He ignored me, pushed the clasps back,
flipped open the lip, turned it over and a CD in a transparent,
green plastic case slid into his hand.

I got off the couch and moved to him as he
turned the envelope to look inside and I made it to him as he
leaned forward and dropped the envelope on the coffee table and was
looking at the case back to front.

“Is that it?” I asked.

“That’s it,” Ty answered.

“No note?” I went on, looking down at the
case which was a CD, no writing, nothing.

“No note, nothin’ on the envelope,” he
replied.

Then without another word, he moved to the
stairs. I hustled after him. His legs were longer than mine and he
was already in the office, reaching to the computer to turn it on
when I got there.

My computer was an all in one unit, just a
big, long monitor, a wireless keyboard and mouse. Shiny black. It
was awesome. I bought it because it looked good not because I knew
anything about computers. Still, the dude at the store said it was
a really good one and I’d noticed it was super fast, at least
compared to my old one.

Ty dropped the CD on the desk and felt
around the sides of the computer. After about a second, the CD
drive slid open at the side.

I kept quiet and reminded myself to breathe
as the computer booted up, Ty loaded up the CD, shoved in the
drawer and sat down in the swivel chair, rolling it to the desk,
his big hand covering the mouse.

I leaned into the side of the chair as the
computer read the disc then opened up a window listing things Ty
could chose from for what he wanted to do with the disc.

He picked, double-clicked, the screen went
entirely black and I held my breath, hoping that it wasn’t some
virus that would explode my computer because I liked my computer
and my man that day asked me to slow down spending, he did it in a
way that was
super
nice and
we didn’t need to drop a whack on a new computer when mine was only
five months old.

Then a small, square screen popped up, my
breath came back, I blinked as what I saw and heard hit my brain,
Ty’s hand moved the mouse, he maximized the image and it filled the
big monitor.

Then I stared.

“Holy fuck,” Ty whispered.

Holy fuck was right. And also a big,
fat
euw.

This was because we were watching what
appeared to be a homemade porn video and it was not a good one. Not
that much porn was high-budget, high-quality just that this
was
bad.

And it was bad for more reasons than the
director clearly had no vision.

Two women working an old guy. He was tall
and lean but he was old. And he was into some seriously sick
shit.

Seriously
sick.

I’d never seen anything like it, I didn’t
know anyone was into that kind of thing, I didn’t actually even
know that kind of thing existed and, watching it, I wished I
still
didn’t know.

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 fucked 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 fuck up your
Sunday and, no way around it, you see this sick shit, it’s gonna
fuck 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 fucked 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 pussy.”

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.