Chapter Twelve

By Wednesday afternoon, Jett was ready to leave her job and move to Bear Creek. Monday morning had been the worst, true. No, actually leaving Griffin on Sunday afternoon was worse than that. They’d sat for hours with Tyler, finding absolutely nothing on the security tapes that would implicate either of them. They’d gone farther back than that and found nothing on the morning of the attack, either.

They’d talked twice a day, every day, since she’d left. She’d learned a great deal about him, and they’d laughed together and told stories from their childhood and teen years. She felt she knew him better than she did people she’d known for her whole life.

Tonight they were going to talk about the future. They’d touched on it Tuesday night, but it was almost two in the morning when the subject had come up, and they’d both been tired.

“We need to be on our game,” he’d said. “Think about moving up here and we’ll discuss the specifics of it tomorrow.”

The specifics were going to be difficult to address. She had a life here, a house, a job. The job wasn’t that big of a deal now, since she would give it up in a heartbeat. She’d been ready to confront Stan Monday morning when she’d come into work, but the coward had not been here. He’d left for England to go house hunting on Saturday. The more she found out about his character, the happier she was that they’d never really made a connection.

But there was one good thing. He had led her to Griffin, who was the man she wanted to be with for the rest of her life. She wanted to talk with him now about the specifics of their relationship, but she had work to do. There were stacks of papers on her desk that needed to be gone through, proofed and filed. But she couldn’t concentrate. All she could do was think about Griffin, and how life would soon be.

A knock on her door made her jerk her head up. “Yes?” Kelly Maynard stood in the doorway of the office they shared. “Why are you knocking?”

The answer came when Jack Tyler poked his head over Kelly’s shoulder. “Got a minute?” he asked.

Seeing him in her office made her gasp. She hoped it had been low and he hadn’t heard her. “Sgt. Tyler, come in.”

Kelly took a step back. “I’ll leave you to it.”

The officer came in and shut the door behind him. Without being asked he sat down in a chair between the two desks.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I have a few questions, and I want to make sure we have privacy.”

“By coming to my office? By making my co-workers talk about why a state officer is questioning me?”

He shrugged, and she wanted to get up and show him out. But he would just keep coming after her, she was sure of that.

“Ask me, and then please leave.” She indicated the files on her desk. “I have work to do.”

She hated that smug look on his face.

“Tell me again how well you knew Portland.”

Jett wanted to scream. “I didn’t know him. I’ve told you that. The only time I saw him was when he was having an altercation with Griffin.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“How many times do I have to tell you?” She pushed back from her desk. “The first time I was in Bear Creek was this past weekend.” But it won’t be the last. She didn’t want to tell the cop that, though. It was none of his business.

Tyler reached into the pocket of the jacket he wore and pulled out a plastic evidence sleeve. It contained a piece of paper which he set on her desk and pushed toward her.

“Can you explain this?”

She picked up the sleeve which contained a piece of paper from a small notebook. On it was written, ‘JM guilty’. Behind that were several dollar signs.

“JM guilty,” Tyler said. “Jett Montgomery.”

“It doesn’t say my name, just gives my initials. You’re grasping at straws.”

He didn’t respond, and she grew uneasy.

“Was he trying to blackmail you for something you did?”

“Now you’re just making stories up.” She picked up the bottle of water on her desk and took a drink. “I’m being rude. Would you like something to drink?”

“I’d like the truth about what happened?”

“You won’t get it from me,” she said. Then she grimaced. “That didn’t come out right. What I meant to say is I don’t know what happened. I didn’t know Portland. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But your boyfriend did?”

“You know, you’re trying to twist my words.” She stood. “If you want to continue to talk with me about this I’m going to get one of the lawyers down the hall to join us.”

“I’m done.” He stood and walked toward the door. “For now.”

When he was gone, Jett sat back down. She was glad he didn’t call her bluff. Stan was the only lawyer around this office who handled criminal cases. She did need to talk to one of them, though, to see if they knew someone she could talk to, because she was sure Tyler was going to try and pin this on her and Griffin.

She needed to figure out how to tackle this situation before it got out of hand. Her conversation with Griffin tonight would be about more than her moving to Bear Creek.

***

“He’s not looking at anyone else but us.” Griffin could hear the tremor in her voice, even though they were talking over the phone. “He’ll find some way to pin it on you, and say it was about me, say the JM in the note implicates me in some way.”

Griffin tapped his pen against his desk. It was late at night, and he should be at home, making room in the dresser and closet for Jett’s clothing. He intended to ask her to share his life tonight, not talk about Portland’s murder.

This was not how he wanted this conversation to go. He tapped the pen again, then wrote JM on a sheet of blank paper. Something pressed against the back of his mind, but didn’t come forward. He wrote JM again, and again, and again. Think, Flack, think. He wrote it one more time, and then his pen took over and he wrote, Jake Montgomery underneath the initials.

“Son of a fucking bitch.”

“Watch your language,” Jett said with a laugh.

“I just figured it out, what the JM means, anyway.” He wrote the sheriff’s name again. “Sheriff Jake Montgomery. Now it makes sense why he’s not coming back to help with the investigation. He wants people to think he’s in Colorado. I wonder where he stays while he’s there.” He tapped the pen in rapid succession.

“What’s that noise?” she asked.

“That’s me thinking,” he said. “Can you call in sick for the next two days? That way we can have a four-day weekend.”

“What for?” she asked.

“A road trip. Get up here as quickly as you can tomorrow morning.” He tapped the pen once again. “I have to make a phone call right quick. I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”

“What? Wait.”

Griffin tapped the pen on the desk one more time before he said goodbye, then he disconnected and called Tricky.

“Does your boss have a cabin in Colorado? Is that where he’s gone?”

“Hello to you, too,” Tricky said. Griffin paused, and Tricky was sure he was waiting for an answer. Finally he said, “I think it’s up by South Fork somewhere.”

“You’re not sure where?”

“No.”

Griffin put the call on speaker and called up maps. “It’s about a three hour drive.”

“What’s this about?” Tricky asked.

“It’s about JM,” Griffin said before he explained Tyler’s visit to Jett, and what he thought JM meant.

“It makes sense,” Tricky said. “But if he’s been driving back and forth between here and South Fork there’s got to be some sort of paper trail if he used a credit card. If he paid cash for gas and food, someone saw him between here and there.”

“That’s why Jett and I are taking a road trip,” he said. “Can you get me a picture of him? And find out where the cabin is if you can, maybe through tax records or something. You do stuff like that, don’t you?”

“I do,” Tricky said. “I’ll call you back.”

They disconnected and Griffin hit the button for Jett. He’d put her at the top of his favorites list after not even a week. That said a lot.

“You hung up on me,” she said when she picked up the call.

“You need to pack two bags,” he said, ignoring her accusatory tone. “One to leave here for when you move here, and one for a trip to Colorado.”

“Are you always going to be this demanding?”

Griffin stared at the phone. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Demanding in the bedroom, or playroom, is one thing. But in real life? I’m not the type to lie down and take orders like that.”

Griffin cleared his throat. “I can be overbearing sometimes. We’ll discuss it in the car.”

“So you’re not going to ask me if I want to go?”

“Are you trying to be a brat, or does it come naturally?” Griffin walked to the wall and opened the door to the playroom. He went inside and picked up a whip, which he brought back into the main office.

“It comes naturally,” she said.

He moved the whip slowly against the floor, then flicked it into the air, the sound reverberating around the room.

“Oh, oh,” she said. The excitement in her voice, and the fact she knew exactly what she’d heard, made his dick hard. He flicked it again, and again. After the third one he said, “Strip.”

“Excuse me.”

“Do you have wax in your ears? Get naked. Now.”

He heard the phone clatter onto a surface, followed by the rustle of clothing. He imagined her standing in her condo, and his cock swelled even more.

“I’m back,” she said seconds later.

He cracked the whip at her pronouncement, and she groaned in pleasure.

“Think about it striking your ass.”

“Yes, Mr. Flack.” Her voice was so low he barely heard it.

“Now, here’s what’s going to happen.” He cracked the whip one more time. “You’re going to pack two bags, one for here, and one for a four-day weekend. Then you’re going to go to bed. You’re going to do it all naked. Every once in a while I’ll remind you to behave.”

“How?”

“Did I give you permission to speak?”

“No, Mr. Flack.”

He cracked the whip once more.

“Do not touch yourself in any way.” One more crack. “If you do, I’ll know. Now get packing. And wait for your reminders.”

Griffin ended the call. He let the whip fall to the ground and then undid his jeans. Jett might not be able to touch herself, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t come while he imagined her obeying his orders. When he was done, he would have to think about fun games to play with her in the car. There was no reason why they couldn’t mix business with pleasure.

***

The first time he called Jett was tempted to let it go straight to voicemail. He had no frigging telephone manners, and she meant to have a chat with him about it. Maybe. Or maybe not. But she did think that it was rude of him to hang up without saying goodbye.

She hit accept, ready to say, “What?” when the sound of a cracking whip came over the phone line. Her nipples and clit tightened as she imagined him standing in his playroom, flinging the whip like an expert.

“Oh my,” she managed to say before she realized the phone was dead. She put it down, tempted to get herself off despite his order not to; he wouldn’t know, would he?

But she knew he would. She continued to pack, her mind wandering to what life would be like in Bear Creek, or rather at Tres Lobos, since that is where his cabin was located, even if she’d never been there.

She wondered if they were moving too fast. She was sure she would be able to sell her condo pretty fast. In fact a few of the ladies at work had expressed interest in it from time to time. But did she want to go that far? Maybe she should let one of them rent it first, to see how things worked out between her and Griffin.

She was being paranoid, of that she was certain. Or was she? Her mind was paving roads six ways to Sunday, and she couldn’t figure out what was the best path to take.

The phone rang again and she jumped, dropping the pair of shoes she was about to put in the Tres Lobos suitcase. She picked it up and didn’t say anything. This time there were two cracks of the whip, and a dead line.

Jett continued to pack, and every once in a while the phone would ring, and the whip would crack, adding one crack for each call. By the sixth call Jett was so turned on she thought her body would go into convulsions.

It was on the eighth call that she realized he was still on the line after the eight cracks from the whip.

“Are you going to be a good girl tonight?”

“That depends.” She waited for him to ask what it depended on, but he didn’t so she continued, “Do I get to feel that whip sometime?”

“I’m surprised you have to ask. The answer of course is yes, but it depends on how well you obey.”

“I will be good, Mr. Flack.”

“I will know,” he responded.

“I promise I will be good,” she said.

“We’ll see. Good night, Jett. Keep your hands to yourself.”

“Good night, Mr. Flack. I promise I will.” Because she knew if she didn’t she wouldn’t feel the whip. And she really, really, wanted to feel that whip.