After showing and tempting her with those beautiful pieces of furniture, part of his history through his mother, Jack had refused to let her help load them on her truck. What he could not lift by himself, stayed behind until he could get help. He said he would get Buck or Jimmy Richards to help him load the rest of the furniture and take it over to the house. He had essentially given the pieces to her, and she loved that he was willing to share that part of his history and his memories with her. He wanted to share everything he had with her, most importantly himself. Arguing did not get her anywhere except another whack on the ass, and a lot of them were not all that playful.
Josie still could not believe that she, an ex-cop, ex-CIA agent, ex-sheriff, was allowing a man to whack her on her butt and spank her. Unfortunately, it came as a package deal with Jack. He believed he would put her well being first, and she did trust that he did. Domestic discipline was part of his lifestyle, and if she wanted him in her life, she had to accept it. She didn't have to like it, but if she wanted Jack, it was part of him. And, sometimes deep down, she reluctantly admitted to herself, she deserved it. She might argue before he spanked her, but afterwards any guilt she felt for defying him was gone, and she knew his reasons for doing it were valid.
She had considered the tradeoffs. She knew she could easily find another man, as many men had pursued her in the past. The problem was she found most men lacking. They were too needy, too pliable, the kind of men who did not turn her on. Jack turned her on. She felt herself revving toward an orgasm merely by having him near, and she knew he felt the same way about her. Maybe deep down she needed a dominant man like Jack. Maybe it was because she would not settle for anyone but Jack, only Jack.
The men in her past, they saw a pretty face and a well-shaped body, but she never felt they accepted the rest of her—her intelligence, creativity and her inner strength—the fighter in her. That inner strength was important to her. She had fought long and hard for it.
The incongruity of the situation wasn't lost on Josie. Jack respected her for her intelligence and her strengths, but at the same time, he firmly believed he had the right to challenge her decisions. Any decisions he thought were ill advised or dangerous, he took as a personal affront. She could not budge him away from the idea that he was in control of her well being. He would apply discipline as he deemed it necessary to keep her safe and protected, or to remind her to think through her decisions and err on the side of caution.
What was a woman to do when faced with a man like Jack? He was her personal dream man come true. He was so damn handsome; all he had to do was look at her and she was ready and willing. She'd always had trouble building up to sex with her other relationships, but sex was not a problem between them. He had every quality and trait she had ever wanted in a man, without any of the negative traits she disliked except one—he believed in spanking. She had yet to figure out that conundrum.
"Do you want me to start the grill?" Josie asked, while watching Buck and Jack muscle furniture out of her truck and into the garage.
"No," Jack grunted as he lifted his end of the tall secretary. "The grill's off limits to you. I'll fire it up as soon as we're through here."
"Why is the grill macho-man territory?" she demanded.
"Because it is," Jack said with a grin. "You can shuck the corn and slice the vegetables."
Josie rolled her eyes. "I know and I can clean up the dishes afterward, too. How come that isn't part of macho-man territory."
"Luck of the draw," Buck said, grunting as he held up his end of the Italian secretary, and they heaved it onto a four-wheeled dolly to push it into the house.
Josie followed along behind them carrying a polishing cloth and some special Amish furniture polish she had ordered online. After they had wrestled it off the dolly and into place, it was her turn, and she polished with gusto. It was a beautiful piece of furniture, perfect for the place she'd chosen and she was glad that some of Jack's good memories would be in the room. The men went out to retrieve the kidney-shaped writing desk from the truck. That desk now held special memories too although she was not sure where it was going to go in the house. Until she and Jack picked out the permanent furniture, the small desk would reside in the library. She was determined that she was going to force him into sharing the responsibility of future furniture selections.
Josie opened the drawers, the little compartments and the glass-enclosed bookshelves that were a part of the intricate design of the secretary. When she was satisfied that it was thoroughly cleaned and polished, she attacked the writing desk, doing the same. One of the desk drawers was sticking, and she wiggled and pulled on it gently, not wanting to damage it. The drawer came loose and inside she discovered a leather-bound book. The volume appeared to be old and had the letters AJR written on the light brown leather. She marveled at the discovery. This book was probably Alice Rawlings' journal; it probably belonged to Jack's mother.
She opened it, saw handwritten entries and closed it as she heard Buck and Jack shouting for her.
"Coming," Josie yelled back and headed across the room. She realized she still had the book in her hand, but the bookshelves and the secretary were wet from her polish. She didn't want to turn it over to Jack until she was sure there wasn't anything in it that would hurt him; she knew enough about his parents' tumultuous marriage to be worried. She raised her arm as she went out of the room and slid the book onto the top of the Italian secretary, and headed outside to the deck to fulfill her part of tonight's barbecue since they were expecting Clay and Georgina in a half hour.
Josie figured she had at minimum another two weeks of reports and paperwork to sort through for the inspection. She would be finished with her job about the same time Alex came back from camp. After she had finished organizing all the data, she would turn it over to Sheriff Tucker and brief him on what the State expected during the inspection cycle. She was not too concerned about them passing the inspection now. She had gotten a handle on what they needed and was assembling a three-inch notebook full of reports and final analyses of the last five years covering every contingency of what the inspectors might ask them to produce.
Josie also did not want the Sheriff's office to get through the inspection and simply return to the shoddy way they had previously handled reports. As disgusted as she was with the entire time-consuming process, she had to shoulder part of the blame herself. She had refused to correct the problem while she was in charge, maintaining for ten long months that the job was still temporary. She had added nearly another year of shoddy performance to the mess. She hadn't been as bad as her predecessor, but not up to the standards she was now putting into place. When she was through setting up the new system, it would all be online with reports past and present accessible in a matter of minutes.
When her phone rang, she picked up and was surprised to hear Agent Coulter on the line.
"Is this a secure line, Sheriff Raintree?"
"We don't have secure lines, Agent Coulter. Small-town Sheriff's offices don't budget for that kind of equipment. If you want to speak to me privately, call my cell number."
"I will," the Agent snapped and the phone went dead.
She pulled out her cell as it rang. "What's the problem, Agent Coulter?"
"Will you be overheard?"
Josie had already shut her office door and was looking at her grid board with the photographs of murdered women.
"No, we're private. What is it?"
"Another woman is missing," Agent Coulter said bluntly. "Same profile as the other women."
"From where," Josie demanded.
"Holbart," the Agent snapped. "Miranda Thompson, age 33, five-foot-six, long dark hair, slim build, mother of two, wife of Buddy Thompson, owner of Buddy's Brakes and Tires.
Josie glanced at her chart. "That doesn't fit the profile. Yes, the physical description fits, but none of the other women were local, married, or had children. The killer also waited years between some of the known murders. If the killer has s
truck again, this fast, something has escalated."
"Yeah, he's been found out and now his need to kill has escalated. I'm sending someone out to check the Rawlings' site, if nothing else the killer has been consistent about dumping the bodies there. Keep your eyes and ears alert, Sheriff," Agent Coulter ordered.
"I will," Josie said, as she disconnected. She should have told him she was not the sheriff any longer. She stepped out of her office and hailed Georgina. "We're expecting a missing person's alert to come through at any time. Get me a copy of the photo, please, before you distribute it. Also, find out when Tyrone is going to get over here and get this computer connected up to the network. Tell him to get his butt in gear, because I still have arrest privileges, and I'm running out of my already limited amount of patience. I need to start training you guys on this new database!"
Not more than ten minutes later, Georgina knocked and breezed through the door.
"Tyrone said he's sorry, but he forgot. He'll be over this afternoon. He's been busy setting up something at the high school, and he got involved with it.
"This lady isn't the only person missing," Georgina said as she handed over the copy of the report. "The mayor has flown the coop again and the town council is mad. He's not answering his cell phone. What do you think he's up to? Do you reckon he's looking for another job? 'Cause, Lord knows he's not going to serve another term as Mayor."
Little alarm bells went off in Josie's head. She waited until Georgina was back at her desk before calling Agent Coulter from her cell.
"What, Sheriff?" the Agent snapped out.
"A hunch or a good guess," Josie said. "Send someone out to the Indigo Hotel in Holbart and the surrounding hotels. Check for the registration of an Aiden Roland or a man fitting his description, five-foot-ten inches, maybe 165 pounds, light brown hair, wire-rimmed glasses. He's near forty but looks thirty. I think there's a picture of him on the Rawlings' homepage."
"What's the hunch?" Agent Coulter demanded. "Isn't that your mayor?"
"Yes it is, but I thought I saw him last week heading into the Indigo Hotel with a dark-haired woman. Aiden has been missing a lot of work lately. He's not been where he's supposed to be, when he's supposed to be there."
"You think he might be our killer?"
Josie laughed. "No, I think our too-handsome-for-his-own-good mayor might be having an affair with a woman with two children and a husband. I think they may have gotten carried away and not being as discrete or as conscientious about their clandestine get-togethers as they should have been. I could be way off base, but it makes sense to me. Will you check it out?"
"You think this is about the mayor screwing around with someone's wife?" Agent Coulter demanded.
"It's worth the time to check it out. If she's missing and not dead, I will be elated. She can work out her affairs herself. I'll be quite happy if she isn't another victim."
"I'll check it out and get back with you," Agent Coulter snapped and disconnected the call.
Josie put her cell back in her pocket and shook her head. Diplomacy was not the FBI Agent's best asset, but it wasn't hers, either. She looked up at her chart again and still could not shake the feeling she was missing something.
Forty minutes later Josie received another phone call from Agent Coulter. Miranda Thompson was safe and sound, found and identified in the Indigo Hotel with Aiden Roland. Both were in a state of undress, but that wasn't against the law. Mrs. Thompson was none too happy about being found in a hotel room with a man or about being questioned by the FBI. An argument ensued that was loud and angry, and the senior agent suspected the affair between the mayor and Miranda Thompson was over.
Josie smiled and removed the missing report from the files, relieved that the woman was not another victim. She went back to her paperwork only to have another interruption, this time from Alex. The boy was upset as one of his friends had snapped a photograph of her bruised and swollen face, and sent it to him. He wanted to come home and did not care if he had to give up the remaining weeks of baseball camp. He wanted to come home to protect her.
Josie sat back in her chair and grinned. Both of her guys seemed to think she couldn't take care of herself, which she found endearing because she'd been taking care of herself for a long time. It was nice though and gave her a warm fuzzy feeling to know they cared. She talked Alex down as best she could, relaying to him that she wasn't in any danger as she was no longer the sheriff and instead was doing a very boring job of paperwork. When she hung up the phone with her twelve-year-old, she dialed County to inquire about his mother. Several phone calls later, and she tracked Marcy Carter to a 30-day alcohol rehabilitation program. A phone call to Alex's child advocate attorney, Mrs. Eileen Foster, confirmed that the court date for the termination of Marcy Carter's parental rights over Alex had been rescheduled. Mrs. Foster said she would do her best to see that the court didn't delay the hearing again.
Pushing her paperwork aside and feeling frustrated with the system and restless, Josie headed home for lunch. Jack wouldn't be there, but the leftover barbecued chicken from the previous evening was and would do nicely since she had skipped breakfast. She parked her truck and jumped out, hungrier by the second as she thought of the leftovers in the refrigerator. She went to the side door and stopped as Jimmy Richards was trying to insert a key in her door.
He turned and smiled. "Hi, I was going to leave a note for Jack," Jimmy said with a grin. "I had a question about some of the plumbing changes he wanted in the bathroom in his new office. My key doesn't work anymore."
"No," Josie said, unlocking the door and inviting him into the kitchen as she disarmed the security panel. "It works for the carriage house, but not the main house. I changed the house locks after all the inside construction was completed, and I put in the security system. I'd given out too many keys to many construction people. If I decide on any more work that needs to be done, I'll get you a key made. Right now, Jack and Buck are acting as my repairmen. Do you want some lunch? Jack makes great barbecued chicken."
"No, but if you've got a piece of paper, I'll leave that note for Jack," Jimmy said. "It's a shame your house is done. I miss seeing you around, Josie—as a friend, I mean. I'm real pleased you've hooked up with Jack."
"I get it," Josie said with a grin. "You're happily married with five kids and another in the oven. Is it another boy?"
Jimmy shook his head. "Mary Anne said she doesn't want to know in advance. I know she's hoping for a girl this time, but so far we've specialized in boys. I already got me a basketball team, maybe we'll be trying for a baseball team next. Well, I've got to go down to Snyder and pick up a special order of bathroom fixtures." Jimmy scribbled a note, folded it and left it on the kitchen counter with Jack's name on it.
"Be careful, the weather service has been warning of high winds and storm warnings all over this sector of the state. Do you want some coffee or soda to go?" Josie asked.
"Naw, I've got some in my cooler in the truck. Be careful yourself. We reinforced that storm shelter of yours but never got around to refitting it with a power generator. That's something to keep in mind and not forget. I'll see you later, kido."
Josie absentmindedly headed to the refrigerator after Jimmy left. It bothered her a little that Jimmy thought he could still let himself into her house without calling her in advance, but she knew he meant no harm. Jimmy's key ring was massive, and he probably had keys for half the homes in town. When something went wrong in your house, you called Jimmy and he fixed it—fast. A lot of the services in town came and went into homes as repairs needed to be completed, or appliances needed to be delivered. It wasn't necessary to take a day off work and wait around for someone to show up; you left your door unlocked for their entry. Rawlings had always been a friendly, trustworthy kind of town. Most of the citizens still didn't lock their doors, and she only did because she'd been city trained never to leave a door unlocked.
She finished her lunch and was heading out the door when the house phone ran
g, but of course, she couldn't find it because she never remembered to return it to the docking station. Her cell quickly followed. Jack warned her that a tornado had touched down outside Mangum and was tracking northeast toward Rawlings.
Josie called into the sheriff's office. They had already received notification. Schools and businesses in town were preparing. After the Moore F-5 tornado, Oklahomans didn't ignore warnings or second-guess threats anymore. People would bring their outside displays inside, and drag patio furniture inside along with anything else that could fly. Josie got busy dragging patio furniture off the deck and storing them inside the garage and the closed in back porch. The winds were picking up steadily, and she could see the storm clouds building. She was carrying some potted plants from the front porch to the garage when she heard the first loud crack. She instinctively ducked and looked around for falling or swinging branches, but she didn't see any. She closed the outside shutters on the downstairs windows and headed inside, and she heard a second crack and felt the entire back of the house shake. She ran out to investigate and saw that a large tree limb had fallen down on the second-floor balcony, broken through the railing, ripped down the trellis and landed on the back porch roof.
The winds were getting stronger, but Josie knew what she had to do. She headed for the garage and dragged out a ladder and chain saw. If a branch that size crashed down on the deck, it would take out a large section of it along with the hot tub, and she had only used that hot tub a few times. She'd debated having the tree removed from her backyard and now she decided she'd made the wrong decision to keep it.
She climbed up onto the porch roof and trimmed all the smaller branches off the big limb, tossing them over the edge. She was nearly finished cutting the largest part of a large limb into manageable pieces when there was another crack. She ducked as a smaller limb fell, smashed into the ladder and knocked it down on the deck. Shutting the chainsaw off, she surveyed her predicament. One end of the porch below was brick steps; the other end was a flat concrete driveway. The entire back of the closed-in porch was attached to the extensive deck surrounded by railings with built-in seating areas and the hot tub. The heavy ladder had missed the Jacuzzi by only a few feet. Unfortunately, there were no windows accessible from the porch roof, and it was a good sixteen or more feet to ground level, all of which were hard surfaces or obstructed surfaces with things that she didn't particularly want to fall into and break a leg or worse.
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