66 - Beginning of the End

Rolling over, Cassidy found that light was peeking around the black drapes of David’s guest room.  It didn’t offer much clue as to the time of day, but she would guess it was closer to noon than daybreak. 

Jon hadn’t left until literally the middle of the night, sneaking out of bed about three in the morning.  He would have escaped without her knowledge if hadn’t been for the kiss he stopped to press against her forehead, but he wouldn’t let her even sit up. 

“Go back to sleep, Dix.  I’ll call you sometime tomorrow.”

She had been too tired to argue with him, burrowing back under the luxurious covers with no more than a murmured, “Be careful and text me that you got home safe.”

Now, having slept as long as her body required, she yawned and stretched one arm toward the nightstand to tap searching fingers over its surface on a quest for her phone.  Once located, she hit the button that would bring the screen to life and found that there were two text messages.

[11:15 PM]LIBBY:  Is it too much trouble to let me know you’re safe someplace?

Cassidy grimaced.  Once Jon had arrived last night, everything else had ceased to exist.  Getting all caught up in herself and causing Libby to worry made her a horrible sister. 

[11:02 AM]CASSIDY:  Sorry.  Everything’s quiet and fine.  Call you later.

The other text was the reason she’d sought the phone in the first place.

[3:22 AM]JON:  Safe. 

She smiled at the single-word message, unsurprised by the…  Well, the brevity of it.  That’s who he was unless he had a reason not to be, and she was very fond of who he was.

You love who he is.

Yes.  She did. 

Attaching that word to him wasn’t a step she had been particularly excited to take, because she understood it put her past the point of no return.  While it had been offered lightly, her suspicion that he would always have her love hadn’t been an exaggeration.  Falling blithely in and out was Libby’s mode of operation, not Cassidy’s.  This was it.  He was the man she would love in this lifetime – no matter how his feelings/choices changed.

It made her vulnerable yet, at the same time, she was filled with inner peace.

Lord, if it was wrong, it wouldn’t feel so right.  Would it? 

She wanted to believe that but was well aware that a person could justify anything they chose to.  Wasn’t she a prime example, after all?  Setting fire to her grandmother’s house had seemed perfectly reasonable – at the time. 

The Lord takes care of fools and babies, and I certainly qualify.

Shaking her head, Cassidy began to tap out her promised daily assurance of safety, even though Jon probably wasn’t expecting one while she stayed at David’s.  This morning, the contact was more to soothe her vulnerability than anything.

[11:08 AM]CASSIDY: Good.  Me too.  Thx for last night.

At the exact moment she tapped the button to send, the phone shimmied its alert of an incoming message. 

[11:08 AM]DAVID: U outslept me.  Coffee’s made when u want it.

[11:09 AM]CASSIDY:  Thx.  Be down soon as I shower  :)

He was an odd duck, but such a good guy.  Jon was privileged to have such a trustworthy friend and Cassidy was catching the overflow of that good fortune.  How was she ever going to repay David’s hospitality, discretion and friendship? 

Maybe there’s somethin’ I can do to help with party preparations. 

With that thought in mind, she threw back the covers to face the day. 

###

“Jesus, what time is it?” Jon muttered, scrubbing at his face with both hands and blinking to bring the chandelier over his bed into focus.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept in his own bed until the sun was this high in the sky.  Mornings starting that late usually happened only during a tour but, after texting Cassidy and taking a shower, it was almost four before he got in bed this morning.  It was a little longer than that before he was able to drift off because his mind was in overdrive trying to formulate a set of schematics that allowed both Cassidy and the Titans to stay in his life.

The options were no different than they had been when this whole deal started.  He was going to fuck around on his wife and hope like hell she didn’t figure it out – or she turned the other cheek, despite her threats to the contrary. 

Scratching his head, he swung his feet over the side of the bed and was surprised to hear the muffled thump of something falling to the floor.  His phone. 

Jon frowned as he bent to retrieve it.  His usual custom was to leave it plugged in on the nightstand and he couldn’t recall doing anything different this morning.  Of course, he couldn’t recall not doing anything different, either. 

Maybe he’d checked the time and fallen back to sleep before returning it to the usual spot.  That must be it, since there was no other explanation. 

Flipping open the cover, Jon jammed his finger into the wake-up button to find that the time was just before noon and there was a message from Cassidy.  He tapped in the passcode and swiped to read the short communication without actually opening it, then flicked the cover closed without replying.  There wasn’t much point.  He had nothing to say beyond the fact that he would like to have woken up with her, and that was just pussy. 

“I see you’re finally up,” Dorothea remarked lightly as she came into the bedroom.  From the looks of it, she had been up for some time because she was fully dressed and accessorized with makeup and jewelry.  “You’ve got about an hour to get ready.”

Yawning, he vainly searched his mental schedule for some sort of activity today, but he came up with nothing.  “For what?”

“After you left last night, the boys asked if they could go to the New York FC soccer match today, and I told them you’d take them.  Three o’clock at Yankee Stadium.”

Okay.  It wasn’t exactly how he’d planned to spend the day, but time with his kids was always welcome. 

“Why aren’t you going, too?”

“I’m hosting the book club meeting this month.  That’s why the three of you are being sent off-site.”

He laughed as he stood.  “You realize we don’t live in a studio apartment, right?  There’s fifteen thousand fucking feet in this house, plus the other structures on the property.”

“Yet,” his wife informed him with a condemning eyebrow.  “One of you always manages to find me at the exact moment I want to be left alone.”

“Yeah, yeah.”  Scratching his chest, Jon strolled toward the bathroom.  “You’re probably talking about that fucking Fifty Shades of Grey and don’t want the kids to hear your kinky fetishes.”

Not that he cared.  The way she’d been trying to keep him under her thumb the last couple of days, a “guys only” outing would be nice.  It gave him permission to act like a teenage kid again and nobody would be suspicious when he slipped away to call Cassidy.

It was going to be a good day.

“You got me,” Dorothea admitted drolly.  “Except rather than just talk about them, we’re actually going to re-create the scenes.  Elizabeth is bringing the butt plugs.”

“Jesus.”  Her book club members bound and stuffed was a visual he didn’t need.  When was he going to learn to keep his smart-ass comments to himself?

###

After two months, Billy Jack was just about tired of all this shit. 

Yes, the girl was a felon and, as sheriff, he was bound to uphold the law of Coweta County, where the crimes had taken place.  He fully understood that.  He’d just prefer to do it from the comfort of his own office rather than chasing her all over the country like some sleazy bounty hunter.  

If he and Stanley hadn’t been friends since they were both knee-high to a grasshopper, Billy Jack would have put a stop to this nonsense before those two girls ever got served a notice to vacate.   

There was something fishy going on about this whole damn thing, if you asked him.  Ever since Stanley's mama, Orfamay, had passed, all of her living descendants had gone crazier than a hotel full of bedbugs.  Stanley waving around updated wills and buying guns, Glory torching the family homestead and taking off with Orfamay’s car, Liberty flipping him the bird every time she saw him, her boys throwing rocks at the police cruiser…  Truthfully, Gerald Ray might be the only one left of them with any wits.

With a sigh of disgust, he checked the number carved into the stone gatepost and then glanced back at the printout lying on the passenger seat of his rental car.  Both read 744, so he presumed that this was the right place. 

His foot shifted from the brake to the gas pedal, and he briefly wondered if he’d had it wrong about celebrities all these years.  People Magazine and all those other publications always talked of them hiding away from the world, but this guy wasn’t hiding himself in a castle behind sky-high locked gates.  His gates were wide open, welcoming the world inside the wrought-iron fence. 

It was with a law-enforcement professional’s eye that Billy Jack noted at least four other buildings on the property as he crept his way toward a huge house that held as much appeal for him as a park bench.  There might be millions of dollars tied up in this rock star’s mansion, but the stark outside didn’t suit his taste at all.  The Bass Pro Shop store was warmer and more inviting, in his personal opinion, but what other folks did with their money wasn’t any concern of his.

To each their own.

The concrete pad in front of the house was bigger than the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office parking lot, and he pulled the Chevy Impala in alongside another vehicle along the left side.  Pushing the gearshift into Park, he turned off the ignition and admired the black BMW.  Foreign cars weren’t his favorite, but this one was a sporty model and had been waxed to a high sheen that reflected the sunlight.  He might be an unsophisticated country fellow, but he could appreciate an immaculately clean car, even if it was of German descent.

Grabbing his hat, he patted his shirt pocket and thought that, if there truly were a merciful God, Jon Bon Jovi would tell him where to find Glory and put an end to this whole mess.   He didn’t feel the photo in his shirt pocket, so he flipped through the folder that had the address until he located it.

“Damn,” he muttered to himself, tucking the picture where it was supposed to have been in the first place.  “Havin’ a sugar daddy done her good, because she wasn’t nothin’ to look at before.”

Billy Jack exited the car, scuffed boots scraping the concrete as he settled his Stetson on top of his head.  He was ready to get this over with.

It didn’t take long to receive an answer to his ringing at the tall, white front doors.  He’d only stood there about thirty seconds when it was opened by a woman in her late-forties to early-fifties.  His sheriff’s eyes noted a sizable diamond on her left hand, additional jewelry that was understated yet of the finest quality, and a pair of dressy boots that probably cost as much as his truck back home.

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” he greeted with a cordial smile, sliding a hand into the back pocket of his Wranglers and extracting a leather wallet that he flipped open to display his badge.  “I’m Sheriff Matthews from Coweta County, Georgia.  I’d like to speak to Mr. Bon Jovi, please.”

Professionally groomed eyebrows knit together and she tucked long, chestnut locks behind one ear.  “My husband isn’t home this afternoon, Sheriff.  Is there something I can help you with?”

Just as he’d hoped when the door swung open, she was Bon Jovi’s wife.  This would be his best shot at getting information, because chances were that this woman was pissed about a beautiful, younger piece of tail worming into her husband’s life.   She would be a whole lot more forthcoming than the man who was banging that tail.

“Then you’re Dorothea Bon Jovi?”

“I am,” was her aloof affirmation while crossing the flowing sleeves of a white blouse over her chest.  “What is this about?”

“Well, ma’am,” He tucked two fingers into his shirt pocket, extracting one of the photos that had been on the internet earlier this week and passing it to her.  “I’m here about this woman, whom he apparently had contact with a few days ago.  I was hopin' that he might be able to give me an idea as to her current whereabouts.  Or perhaps you have some information?”

The coldness in Mrs. Bon Jovi’s eyes and the flatting of her mouth told Billy Jack that he’d hit pay dirt. 

“Why are you looking for her?”

“She’s a person of interest in an arson investigation.”

Whether Glory Cassidy was screwing this woman’s husband or not, the little missus’s body language said she believed it to be true and was none too happy about it.  Dorothea pushed the picture back at him with squared shoulders and levelly met his gaze.

“She might be staying with a friend of ours.  David Bryan.  I have the address if you want it.”

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and law enforcement hath no greater friend.

“Thank ya, ma’am.  I’d appreciate that.”

***** New posting schedule is now in effect.  Every other day from now until the end, which should be August 30th.  At that time, I will have a start date for my new story.  Hope you enjoy the rest of the ride!!  xoxo *****