He was looking at Gen when he spoke, but she kept her mouth shut. She’d answered questions a half dozen times, to multiple investigators, and this was just a traffic cop.
“Officer,” said Duke, “we haven’t been able to help the investigators with the case. Gen took out a restraining order on him after he stalked and threatened her, and frankly I’m not surprised he chose to run instead of sticking around to face charges. Are we free to go? It’s late and I’d like to get my girlfriend home.”
The officer looked to Gen and said, “Can you step away from the vehicle, ma’am?”
Gen leaned forward, braced, and swung her leg off, working hard to keep her balance and not look as drunk as she knew herself to be.
“Did your boyfriend take care of your ex for you? Make sure he wouldn’t bother you again?”
She shook her head. “Duke wouldn’t have done that. I had an attorney, and was making sure I built a case against both him and the Chattanooga Police Department. With him gone, my case is substantially weaker. My privacy was violated, and I’ll never get a chance to see him pay for it.”
“You been drinking?”
“Heavily, officer, but I’m not driving, and Duke’s taking care of me.”
* * * *
By the time they drove away, Duke was holding his wolf on a tight leash to keep from knocking the damned cop out with an uppercut to the asshole’s probably glass jaw.
He didn’t mind the ticket so much — he’d been going eighty on the interstate, after all. But the officer had kept them on the side of the road, harassing them, for nearly an hour. It was clear he’d been trying to tick Duke off enough he’d have an excuse to arrest one or both of them, and he’d very nearly decided to arrest Gen for public drunkenness.
However, Gen had sobered up enough to name drop a few high priced attorneys she kept on retainer, and the cop had quickly realized she’d get any charges thrown out with no problems.
Gen was wearing black leather pants, motorcycle boots, a pale yellow silk blouse, and a black leather jacket, but his Beautiful Genesis still managed to pull off high-class, even when dressed as a biker bitch, and three sheets to the wind.
Duke lived in fear she’d one day wake up and decide the hassle of life with him was more than she was interested in dealing with, and tonight he’d seen her frustration and helplessness when confronted with a police officer dead set on being as big of a pain in the ass as he could get away with.
Sure, Duke could — and would — complain to the traffic cop’s superiors later, but at the time, anything he’d done would’ve only given the dickweed an excuse for an arrest. Duke also wondered, though, if perhaps someone had put the rookie cop up to questioning Gen about McPherson when she was drunk.
Officially, the top brass had decided McPherson must’ve left to avoid charges. Unofficially, many of his friends on the force were convinced Duke had something to do with his disappearance, and weren’t going to let it go.
Brain had hacked the cellphone company logs so McPherson didn’t show up at the house on Signal Mountain — the signal had appeared to drop out at McPherson’s house that morning, and had never shown up again. The traffic cams showed him driving through Red Bank on his way towards Signal Mountain that morning, but the last image they had of him was about a mile from the base of the mountain.
The house it’d happened in had sold, Jiminy had successfully made both McPherson and his car disappear, and there was nothing to tie Duke, Gen, or anyone else to his disappearance. Jiminy assured Duke that Mike McPherson had been trained and conditioned as a sex slave and then sold at auction, deep in South America where he’d never escape, and never have a chance to tell his story. His vocal chords had been surgically fixed so they’d no longer work, and the tendons responsible for thumb control had been severed. He’d been given size C breast implants, and he now wore removable dentures so he could give better blowjobs with no teeth.
Jiminy also assured Duke that McPherson wasn’t likely to survive more than a year or two, as most sex slaves purchased by this particular man were destined for a hard, short life. Duke’s conscience would’ve been happier just killing the man outright, but Gen needed to be told her ex-boyfriend was alive, somewhere, so Duke lived with it.
Duke also made it a point to never do something to piss Pebbles off, because it was clear her husband would do anything she asked of him.
“It’s never going to stop, is it?”
They didn’t talk about Mike anymore, for a variety of reasons, but one of them was Duke was worried someone might have them under surveillance. Duke touched her mouth to remind her, but then carried her upstairs, undressed her, turned some music on, and got in the shower with her.