Chapter 1

Tim stood in shock, knocking over the chair he had been sitting on for the past hour.

"Holy shit!" he said, a bit too loudly.

Nervously he picked up the chair and went to check on the kids.

Tim signed a breath of relief when he found Brian and Kimberly sound asleep in their beds.

He always felt a rush of excitement when he snooped, but now he was nervous. As Tim walked back down the hallway, he feared something, or someone was going to catch him. As he stepped into the office, there it was, still on the computer screen. Looking around, he wondered if there were those nanny cams, hidden just to check on things.

Sitting down, Tim realized he was sweating.

"Shit," he said to himself. "Get yourself together."

Tim was good at hacking, and at covering his tracks. This computer had taken him just over thirty minutes to get through the password ... a bit longer than the average. Seeing what was in the files, Tim could understand why.

As he worked, cleaning up traces that he'd been there, he was in a battle as to what to do with the information.

Mr. Wright was a pretty nice guy. Always friendly. His two kids were cute as anything at one and two years old. His family had known them for about three years and had been at the funeral for his wife. That was a year ago. Tim had never known anyone who had died and this one was enough to tear anyone up. A doctor's mistake caused her to bleed out the night after giving birth.

Still ... Tim didn't know what to do with the information he now possessed. After all, his sister Cynthia usually babysat the two. This was just one of those odd chances that he got roped into being here tonight. Not that Mr. Wright went out often. Fact is, he rarely went out at all. Tim's mother had said it was depression from losing his wife.

When I pulled up, I smiled. There was a big difference between Tim and Cynthia's babysitting skills. Tim played with the kids a bit more, and that wore the two-year-old out. He also left just about every light on in the house. I raised my eyebrows just a touch when I noticed the office light on.

As I opened the front door, I saw Tim watching TV.

"How was it?"

"Great!" Tim said in forced enthusiasm. He wanted nothing more than to get out.

"They went down ok?"

"Just like you said they would. Not a sound since."

"Good. Good. Now ... how much..."

Tim was out the door in a flash and I walked upstairs. First checking on my two loves. They looked like angels ... well, when they were asleep! Then I walked further down the hall and stopped at the office.

"He was careless," I said as I shook my head.

Flipping off the light, I walked back to the other end of the hall and into the master bedroom. Sitting, I took off my shoes and sighed.

Tonight was a company get together. I hated those things, but had been convinced I needed to be there. It had come up suddenly. Because of that, Cynthia hadn't been available. Her brother knew the kids just as well, and they liked Tim.

Next week my best friend Todd was taking me out. Todd's wife kept track of things. She knew my wedding anniversary was next Tuesday. It would have been five years. While Todd would help make the evening pass, I would still go to sleep in an empty bed. Something I never thought would have been possible when I married the girl of my dreams.

As soon as their parents were out of the house, Saturday morning, Tim knocked on his sister's door.

"Come in."

"We need to talk."

Cynthia turned around on the chair, away from the computer and said, "Whatcha need?"

"Cynthia, this is serious."

Raising her eyebrows, as her brother never called her by her full name, she said, "What did you do now?"

"It's not me ... It's Mr. Wright. You can't baby sit for him any more."

"Yeah, right!"

"Cindy!" he said, the name she'd been called by friends for years

"Look, I have a job next Tuesday, what? You want me to call him and cancel? Or did you want the job yourself?" she said in a smart aleck tone.

"I don't want your job and you aren't going over there."

"Jeeze, Tim, what's wrong with you. What'd you do, go snooping and found his stash of girly rags?" she said with a laugh.

Tim's face got red, and Cynthia took it as though she'd just nailed it.

"Tim, all guys have those. Hell, Mr. Henderson has three subscriptions. He's never even suggested a thing to me. All guys like to look, right? Don't mean a thing."

"It's not that, it's worse. Much worse. I ... Ok. I snooped."

"What would I care if Mr. Wright was into bondage or something like that? All I do is take care of his kids. Damn, Tim, you remember last year. How the hell could I ever say no to taking care of them?"

"But Cindy, he..."

"What?"

"He writes stories."

"Fuck! That's it? He's an author or something? So?"

"No, I mean yes. Remember last summer when we were trying to find the most outrageous site that didn't have pictures?"

"Uh, yeah ... I still log into that one. God some of those stories are fuckin' hot. I write to those authors and none of them know I'm jail bait! Well for another month that is." she said and started to giggle. Then suddenly she stopped and looked at her brother. "Wait ... oh shit! He's..."

"Yeah."

"Which one?"

Tim shook his head.

"Tell me."

"No."

"Then I'm still baby sitting."

"You can't!"

"Tell me then."

"I can't."

"Yes, you can."

"No!"

"Then get out of my room. I'm going Tuesday."

"Don't say I never warned you, shithead."

Monday evening I was sitting in my office. The kids were tucked safely in bed. Before I left for work, I'd started a program. Now I was looking at the results.

"Shit," I said and sighed. "It's no wonder he was nervous. Dumb shit."

I shook my head, wondering if Cynthia would call at the last minute and cancel on me. I needed to go out tomorrow. I knew it. If she did that, I was going to have to take the kids with me, and go. I couldn't spend the evening in the house alone.

It put me into a depressed mood and I used that to write one of the stories I was working on. When I stopped, at about ten, I read over what I'd written. Hell, it was good stuff. It was also fucking depressing. I would have to re-look at it another day. Can't make the readers want to go out and kill themselves.