Night Is Darkest by Jayne Rylon

watching them fuck would be the hottest thing he’d ever seen. The thread of envy weaving through his desire ashamed him. He should be ecstatic for the new couple but he couldn’t hush the niggling voice urging him to join in even though a committed threesome could never work long-term.
    Both Ty and Lacey had extended open invitations through their body language earlier in the night. He’d fled the house but going out hadn’t served him any better. Worry had plagued his mind the entire time he’d been separated from them, even though he hadn’t found a single fact to justify his unease. No one remembered seeing Rob, or hearing anything unusual, that night.
    Before he could turn the knob, the door swung open and Tyler asked quietly, “Are you going to stand out there all night or are you going to come in?”
    It wasn’t sarcasm. The uncertainty in his best friend’s eyes cut like a knife.
    “I came back, didn’t I?”
    “I figured you at fifty-fifty on that one.”
    Mason didn’t clue him in to how close he’d come to breaking his promise.
    “Did you find anything, Mason?” The weary timbre made it clear Tyler didn’t have high expectations but Mason shook his head anyway.
    When Ty joined him on the porch instead of leading the way inside, he knew something was up. What did he want to keep from Lacey? “What’s going on?”
    “ I found something.” He tensed. “Well, a couple somethings actually.”
    Senses on high alert, Mason waited. “Start with the worst and work your way back.”
    “Right. Well, her computer was definitely targeted. I got it up and running but the email from her anonymous sender didn’t have a virus. I think opening it triggered code already lurking in the background of her operating system. We’ll have to call in some help to find out more than that because the entire message is corrupted. All the text is jumbled. I can’t make heads or tails of it. The complexity makes me think it was professional and specific.”
    “Son of a bitch.” Mason braced himself on the porch railing, arms locked straight as his head dropped. His exhalation puffed out in a white cloud. “I was hoping we were wrong on this one, Ty.”
    “I know.”
    “What else?” He sighed. How much more could he take?
    “I spent some time trying to recover the rest of Lacey’s data files. You know, her pictures and shit. It wasn’t too hard to get it all back but there were some…uh…extra goodies in there, too.”
    “Like what?” The run-around piqued his curiosity. Tyler didn’t often mince words like this.
    “I think you better come see for yourself. She’s crashed on the little couch in there. Wouldn’t go to bed until she knew you were back safe.”
    Guilt raised Mason’s hackles. “Fine. Let’s get this over with. I want to go home for a few hours before our shift starts.”
    “You could bunk here. Lacey wouldn’t mind. She cares for you Mason…”
    “It would never work. Not tonight. Not ever.”
    “Come inside and check things out before you decide. Just keep your voice low.” Tyler ambled away before Mason could object. He deserved the cool treatment but it rankled nonetheless.
    In the office, Ty drew up a second chair he’d scavenged from the kitchen then situated the monitor so they could both view it. Mason kept his eyes averted from Lacey’s sleeping form to ensure he limited his temptations. Sitting knee to knee with Ty when frustration rode him hard was bad enough.
    After he spared a quick glance in the direction of the measured, steady breathing Mason could detect in the quiet room, Ty navigated through the folders on Lacey’s hard drive. Under My Pictures, an innocuous looking directory titled Stuff caught his attention. When Ty double clicked then turned the thumbnail feature on, Mason’s eyes bugged out.
    Pornographic images littered the screen. Judging by the sliver of the scroll bar on the right, there were thousands more where these had come from.