by Gen Griffin
“Eventually,” David replied. He took her breast into his mouth and sucked on it until she started to shiver against him. She spread her legs willingly as he pressed his hard cock between her thighs and into her moist, hot pussy. The sex came hard and fast as he pushed up and into her, harder and harder until she screamed with delicious agony. He made her come hard and fast and didn't let up until she was shaking and wet against the sheets. When he finally came, he collapsed on top of her, breathing hard as his lips pressed against her skin for one last sensual kiss.
“I love you,” Trish whispered.
“I love you too.” He grinned at her.
As the afterglow faded, Trish sat up slowly in the bed. “I need to go bed shopping and figure out what's wrong with the air conditioner on our house.”
“The a/c can wait. You're not leaving my sight until Curtis is either in the jail or six feet underneath it,” David bent down so that his lips brushed against Trish's mouth. “I'm not letting you go. I won't let him hurt you again. I promise.”
Chapter 21
“What do you mean we don't have any officers on duty?” Katie glared at the work schedule in front of her.
“It's Tuesday morning. The only people scheduled to be on duty were Addison and Kerry. Kerry called in sick and Addy's in the hospital.”
Meg, Possum Creek's newest police dispatcher, shrugged her shoulders helplessly. “I tried to call Ian so I could ask him to come in but he's not answering the phone for me.”
“Call Kerry back and tell him that he can't call in sick.” Katie rubbed her own temples as she felt the beginnings of a headache coming on. “Tell him its not optional.”
“You call Kerry and tell him that he can't call in sick. Last time I got into an argument with him, he pulled me over two days later and wrote me a $300 ticket.” Meg crossed her arms over her pale blue blouse and pouted. “I can't afford to argue with Kerry. Why don't you just call Ian?”
Katie bit her tongue and tried to think of a solution to the problem that didn't involve calling her husband into work on his day off. “Ian's at our fish camp up on the river. Did you call Frank and tell him that we don't have any officers on duty?”
“Sheriff Chasson said that you would handle it when you came in. Of course, he didn't mention that you were going to be 45 minutes late to work.” Meg ran her fingers through her thick, dark brown hair and frowned accusingly at Katie. “I've been panicking for the last 30 minutes. I mean, what are we going to do if we get a call?”
“Pass it over to Baker County,” Katie replied. “Look Meg, I'm sorry I was late. I've been having really bad insomnia and then, when I finally did get to sleep, I overslept. It won't happen again.”
“Not my problem if you oversleep. You're technically my boss. Its all overtime on my check.” Meg managed to look angry and smug at the same time. “Though I do think its kind of funny that Ian won't answer the phone for the dispatch number even though he knows you're supposed to be on duty.”
“Go ahead and go home,” Katie said. “I'll handle this.”
“Are you sure?” Meg was already walking towards the front door.
Katie faked a smile. “I've got this. No worries.”
Meg rolled her eyes as she went through the front door and into the parking lot outside.
“Witch,” Katie muttered under her breath. She picked up her cell phone and swiped her finger across Ian's name so the phone would call him. It rang six times and went to voicemail. She hung up and redialed with the same results. The third time she called, he answered.
“I asked you to give me some space today,” Ian slurred drunkenly into the phone. “Why are you calling?”
Katie glanced at the clock on the wall behind her desk. “I was going to tell you that we need you to come into work today, but since its nine o'clock in the morning and you're already plastered, I'll just tell Frank I couldn't reach you.”
“I'm not on schedule today. I don't even have the truck right now, remember? You have it.”
“Addison was on the schedule for today.” Katie ignored his comment about her having the truck. It wasn't like she couldn't go pick him up from the boat landing. “He's still in the hospital. Kerry called in sick.”
“Oh. Well, tell Kerry he doesn't get to be sick.”
“Guess that's my only option, isn't it?” Katie didn't even try to keep the irritation out of her voice. “Shame you're already drunk. We really could have used the overtime pay.”
“Quit nagging me about money, Katie.” Ian made a hacking noise into the phone.
“I wouldn't have to nag you about money if you'd quit spending so much of it,” Katie hissed into the phone, whispering even though there was no one else in the building to hear her. “What happened to the hundred dollars we had in our bank account?”
“I needed gas for the boat, beer and propane for the grill out here.”
“That was our gas money for the week. I had to borrow $40 from my mom yesterday.”
“Whoops.” Ian didn't sound the least bit sorry.
The other phone started ringing on the desk, saving Katie from saying something she would probably regret. “I have go.”
“Look Katie, I'm sorry about the money. I didn't know you needed it. Pay your mom back out of my check on Friday.”
The other phone continued to ring. “Bye Ian.”
“I love you,” he said. “I know you don't think I do, but I love you. I just need some space and some time to clear my head.”
The phone was on its sixth or seventh ring.
“Good bye, Ian. I love you, but I'm getting really tired of you bailing out on me every time I need you. Try to sober up. I'd hate for you to miss our daughter's birth because you were too drunk to drive to the hospital.” Katie hung up the phone with a click.
She grabbed the ringing landline as she prepared to send a text with her cell phone. “Callahan County Sheriff's Department. How can I help you?”
The text she sent to Kerry was simple. You're on duty. No excuses.
Chapter 22
“The ring she was wearing last night was worth a lot of money. I broke her arm. She won't be wearing it. She's got to have hidden it around here somewhere.” Curtis was pulling heaps of colorful lingerie out of Trish's drawers. He held up one lacy bra. “She's got some big tits.”
“Can you hurry up?” Kerry asked. “We're not supposed to be in here. You broke the glass on the back door. This is robbery.”
“No, it's not.” Curtis threw the bra to the ground and intentionally stomped on it. “She's my wife. Her belongings are my belongings until a judge says otherwise.”
“I don't like being here,” Kerry hissed through his clenched teeth. He didn't want to think about the text he'd received from Katie saying that he was still on duty. Getting called out to respond to a crime while he was actively committing theft would be a total disaster.
“I need the money.” Curtis moved on to the next drawer. More clothes. Shirts, to be exact. He checked the size on the tag. She'd lost even more weight since she'd left him. Shame she hadn't bothered trying to lose weight when they were together. He might not have found Destiny the stripper quite so appealing.
“For what?” Kerry demanded. “What could you need money for so badly that its worth catching a felony charge?”
“Its complicated,” Curtis said.
“You're blackmailing me into committing a crime. The least you could do is tell me why we're doing it.”
“I need the money.”
“You said that already.”
“I'm broke. And when I say I'm broke, I mean that I owe the partners at my law firm nearly a hundred thousand dollars.”
“Holy shit. You borrowed a hundred thousand dollars from your co-workers?” Kerry did a double take at Curtis. “I can't even bum five bucks for lunch off of mine.”
“Yours don't like you.” Curtis continued yanking Trish's clothing out of the dresser and throwing it onto the ground. He rubbed the soles of his muddy sh
oes against every piece of clothing. He intentionally ripped some of her belongings as he discarded them. “My bosses liked me enough to lend me the money to get set myself up in style when I moved to the city.”
“Set yourself up in style?” Kerry privately thought that Curtis wasn't a very likable guy, but he kept that observation to himself.
“Criminal defense lawyers need to give off the impression that they're wealthy. Especially when you work at a high end practice like I do. Our clients aren't drunks who got into a bar fight. They're mostly white collar criminals. Guys with money like to see money. When you're working with a guy who embezzled a couple million dollars, he doesn't want to see you drive up in a ten year old Buick and an off the rack suit.”
“You borrowed a hundred thousand dollars from your bosses so you could get a makeover?”
“I prefer to view it as investing in myself,” Curtis replied. “I leased a brand new car. I had all my suits professionally tailored. I had my teeth fixed. My apartment has a good address. A really good address.”
“A hundred thousand dollar address?”
“Technically, a twenty-five hundred dollar a month address,” Curtis corrected.
“How were you planning on paying the money back?” Kerry asked.
“I was supposed to pay it back after I won a few cases. We get a cut off of the profits every time we successfully defend a client. Consider it a bonus.”
“Why didn't you pay him back?”
“Maybe I have been practicing law without a license, hypothetically speaking.”
“You got caught.” Kerry mentally cursed himself for going along with Curtis's crazy plans.
“Two weeks after Trish left me,” Curtis said. “I made a mistake on a case. It cost the law firm a lot of money. One of the junior partners decided to check my credentials out a little more thoroughly. Ben didn't outright say that he caught me using Trish's law license, but he said that their were inconsistencies in my records.”
“Did you get fired?”
“No, but I'm also not being given any of the good cases.” Curtis gave up on the dresser and moved on to the closet. “My last four cases were all small-time bullshit where the lawyer is just window dressing.”
“Not the kind of cases you would get a bonus for?” Kerry guessed.
“No,” Curtis acknowledged. “And now Ben is putting a lot of pressure on me to give him his money back. He says that if I don't pay it back by the end of the summer, he's going to expose me as a fraud.”
“If you're in the hole for a hundred grand and about to lose your career, why are you still worried about your ex-wife?”
Curtis began ripping Trish's clothing free from the hangers in her closet. “Trish is worth a lot of money.”
“Trish came into town driving an ancient Honda that barely ran,” Kerry pointed out. “I'm not under the impression she has cash to burn.”
“I never said she was worth a lot of money alive.” Curtis finished trashing the closet and then moved on to the pile of shoe boxes that were stacked on the shelf above the bar the clothes had been hanging on.
“Life insurance,” Kerry said quietly.
“Life insurance. She doesn't even know I have a policy on her,” Curtis confirmed. He took a pair of strappy black snakeskin heels out of their box. He sat one on his palm and held it up to his own eye level. “She always wears the sexiest heels.”
“You're going to kill Trish and then cash in on the life insurance?” Kerry didn't like where this plan was heading.
“Killing Trish was my original plan.” Curtis was fondling the high heeled shoe, rubbing it against his cheek and across his lips. “But her death needed to look like an accident. I took out a million dollar policy on her. It doubles in value if she dies in an accident.”
“And you couldn't manage to make her have an accident?” Kerry's skin was starting to crawl.
“She's had several accidents. Unfortunately, none of them have been fatal.” Curtis continued to caress Trish's shoe. “Why couldn't she have just drowned when I pushed her off my boat?”
“You pushed her off a boat?” Kerry turned his attention to the bed that was laying on the floor. He wondered how wild the sex would have to be for the bed frame itself to break.
“She doesn't swim well,” Curtis supplied. “We went out during a storm and, with a little help from me, she went overboard. I thought she'd wash up dead on the shore in a few days. Insurance company would have had no reason not to pay the claim. I could have paid back the money I borrowed from Ben and continued to practice law without anyone being any wiser about the origins of my law license.”
“Except she didn't drown,” Kerry pointed out.
“No. Unfortunately, she didn't. I shoved her overboard and she swam right back up to the surface and climbed right back up onto the deck.” Curtis unexpectedly flung the shoe to the ground in a fit a sudden anger. “Bitch should have just drowned like a good little wife.”
“You realize that if she dies now, no one will believe you didn't kill her?” Kerry asked.
Curtis took down another shoe box. “Why do you think I'm wasting my time searching her room for jewelry instead of going after her?”
“What makes you think her jewelry is valuable?”
“Because her grandfather thought I wanted her jewelry when I was trying to get him to tell me where she was. I'm guessing she must have come into some family heirlooms since she moved to Possum Creek.” Curtis threw the second box of shoes to the ground and then picked up a third. “Well, hello. What do we have here?”
Curtis stuck one meaty hand into the shoe box and lifted out a handful of gold chains and gemstones.
“You found her jewelry.” Kerry wasn't interested in the jewelry. “Now can we get out of here?”
“You getting nervous, Kerry?”
“We're committing a crime. Yes, I'm nervous.” Kerry looked towards the door. “You got what you wanted. Now let's get out of here.”
“Give me five more minutes,” Curtis said.
“For what?”
“I want her to know I was here.” Curtis jammed the shoe box full of jewelry into Kerry's hands. He then proceeded to turn around, grab the dresser and flip the entire piece of furniture over onto its side. The mirror shattered on impact.
“Oh god,” Kerry whispered as Curtis proceeded to throw Trish's nightstand into a wall. It caved in the drywall and exposed the beams underneath.
Kerry turned and bolted out of the room with the jewelry.
Chapter 23
“Y'all have got to get me out of here.” Addison was propped up in the hospital bed with his chest wrapped in bandages. A brilliant blossom of blue and black bruising was covering most of his skin.
“You got shot yesterday. You're not going anywhere.” Cal was sitting in the chair in the corner with his boots propped up on a nightstand. He had dark shadows underneath both eyes and several days worth of scruffy stubble on his chin.
Addison looked towards David. “I've been arguing with him all morning. Please explain to him that I can't sit here another five minutes or I'm going to go crazy.”
“Can you get out of the bed on your own?” David was holding the bag that contained the chicken biscuit that Addison had asked for.
“David, he can't leave. He's hurt.”
“Maybe,” Addison looked up at David with hope shining in his wide turquoise eyes. “Cal won't let me try and neither will any of the nurses.”
“If you can get out of bed, I'll jailbreak you.”
“David!”
“See Cal, this is exactly why David is my best friend and you are only my second best friend.” Addison shoved the hospital tray table away from him.
“Because I worry about your actual health?” Cal scowled at Addison. “Sorry, but your sister is going to kill me if I let you break out of here and then you die from some kind of preventable complication.”
“If I start hemorrhaging blood, I'll let you bring me back.” Addison began
tugging the adhesive heart monitors off of his chest. The machine immediately started squealing loudly. “Shit. See, they've got this place booby-trapped. Try to get out and alarms start going off. It's like prison.”
“How are you planning on getting the IV out of your arm?” Trish asked him.
“They're not that hard to remove,” Addison replied. His skin wasn't its usual healthy tan but he looked fairly perky for someone who had taken a bullet to the chest less than 48 hours ago.
A nurse came into the room. She stopped and frowned at Addy. “What are you doing?”
“Leaving.”
“You can't leave. The doctor hasn't released you and he isn't likely to do so anytime soon.”
“Watch me.” Addison slowly and carefully slid his legs off the side of the bed. His bare feet were a couple of inches away from the floor. Addy reached for the tape that was holding the IV in place on his arm.
“Mr. Malone, you are no condition to leave.”
“I'm not staying.” Addison yanked the tape off his hand and then hissed because his arm hair had been pulled off with the tape. He pinched the base of the needle in between his thumb and his forefinger. “And I hate IV's.”
“Don't yank that out!” The nurse hurried towards him.
Addy yanked the IV out. He looked over at the nurse. “Sorry.”
“You can't just leave when you want to. You are still very injured.”
“I'm not going to die.”
“You could die if you over exert yourself and reopen that bullet wound,” the nurse said.
“I won't.”
“Hey Addy, don't you need clothes?” Trish was frowning at his bare thighs. “Just a suggestion.”
Addison glanced down at the skimpy hospital gown he was wearing. It was doing an extremely poor job covering his broad chest and definitely wasn't long enough to cover anything he had below the belt. “Shit.”
David smirked. “You might want to make a toga out of a sheet or something.”
“You got spare clothes in your truck?” Addison looked hopefully at David.
“Are you kidding me?” David asked. “My house burned down last week. I've been too busy chasing homicidal maniacs around town and trying to identify dead bodies to squeeze in a shopping trip. I don't own any clothes. The clothes I'm wearing now are yours.”
