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 h*ps 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 f**k,” Ty whispered.

Holy f**k was right. And also a big, fat euw.

This was because we were watching what appeared to be a homemade  p**n  video and it was not a good one. Not that much  p**n  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.