Meanwhile, Gunnar Donaldson and Ronnie Issak were just slipping naked into one another's arms in their king-sized bed in the house they now shared. As their relationship had progressed over the past year, they had eventually moved in together in what had been just Gunnar's house, which was in turn Brad and Jack's former home which they now rented out to the other couple.
"I love you, baby," Ronnie said softly, as he kissed the hunky state trooper he still could not quite believe was now his fiancé.
"You too, honey," Gunnar replied tenderly to the handsome secret US Government Agent-turned-UPS man he loved. Ronnie had even confided his top secret former career to Gunnar, who respected the urgency of keeping what exactly Ronnie had done a secret. Not even Ronnie's daughter, the popular and famous country and R&B singer and Pleasant View native Destiny Rose, knew the truth about what her long-lost father had done for a living for the past couple of decades, before reuniting with her about the time her singing career had taken off a year before.
Gunnar and Ronnie were soon making love with a passionate intensity, with Ronnie's big nine and a half inch cock filling Gunnar so full and making him feel so in love – and in heat.
"MMmm! Harder baby," Gunnar was soon moaning, prompting Ronnie to open up and begin to give his prostate a delicious full throttle massage.
"FUCK!" Ronnie exclaimed in pure pleasure, love, and lust as he did just that with reckless abandon to his love.
"Mmmm! Uhn!" Gunnar groaned. "Let me ride it, baby!"
Gunnar climbed astride Ronnie and position himself so that Ronnie's big rock hard rod was pounding his love button again and again, causing Gunnar to moan again and again in pleasure, as Ronnie began to do the same. They were both very vocal in their lovemaking, and each drove the other crazy with this fact.
Soon they were both reaching an explosive climax, and then drifting off to sleep. But, before long, Gunnar, who had been scheduled to be on duty the following day, was paged out. As he sleepily and quickly got into uniform, Ronnie asked what was going on.
"The Cliffords' helicopter has gone down!" Gunnar exclaimed, in shock and disbelief at the horrible news himself.
Ronnie immediately got an awful sinking feeling about this in the pit of his stomach, and not just because he was also a longtime fan of the Democratic couple. "No," he silently told himself, "there couldn't be any connection to my living here now. Hopefully it is just a terrible accident."
The crash scene of the helicopter carrying former President Blake Cliffords and his wife, current presidential candidate Heloise Cliffords, was in a farmer's field just south of town. The helicopter was actually only moderately damaged, the crash apparently actually having been more of a very hard landing. Just outside of the wreckage, the bodies of the pilot and two Secret Service agents who had been on board were found, all shot dead. Blake Cliffords was found with a gunshot wound to the head, but he was still alive. There was no sign of either the co-pilot or Heloise Cliffords.
By the time the former president had been airlifted to UK Hospital in Rosemont, the national media was already beginning to converge on Pleasant View. By the wee hours of the next morning, a theory was already being reported: apparently the co-pilot had intentionally brought the chopper down and then shot the pilot, the two agents, and the former president, before running off with Heloise as his hostage.
"It's bullshit," Jack commented to Brad early the next morning, as he was preparing to return to the police station after a quick trip back home. "There is no way one man could have gotten all those shots off, not when the pilot and the two agents were all armed too."
"Someone on the ground helped him, and fired some of the shots?" Brad surmised.
"Has to be, ballistics will prove it, I'm sure," Jack concluded.
"Secret Service and FBI are all over this, basically all they want me and my guys to do is control the influx of media traffic, and say,'Hey, here she is!' should ol' Heloise come wondering into town miraculously," Jack said wryly before leaving.
Meanwhile, the air inside the space was musky and damp. Heloise Cliffords awoke groggily. She groaned, noting that her head was pounding from the pistol-butt strike she had received while struggling as they had taken her out of that van the night before. "My God, Blake!" Was her next thought.
Sure, he had been an egotistical womanizer too many times in the past and was still a jackass at times, but dammit she really did love him – contrary to the opinion of too many. Was he even still alive? She struggled, realizing her wrists and ankles were both tightly bound. At least they hadn't gagged her – but did that mean that wherever this is was somewhere that no one could ever hear?
Blake Cliffords awoke with an even worse headache than his wife was having just then. "Wha-where am I?" He rasped weakly.
"He's awake!" One of the several armed agents guarding Cliffords' room in UK Hospital shouted. Soon a doctor and nurse came running to examine the former leader.
Several minutes later, the doctor was talking to Blake, who was very alert now in spite of what he had gone through the night before. "You are very lucky, Mr. President. The bullet grazed your right temple area rather deeply, but there obviously seems to be no permanent damage. You do have a concussion as well from your fall after being shot."
"What can you tell us about what happened?" Asked one of the agents.
"All I remember," Blake replied, "Is the helicopter was going down, and the pilot was shouting to the co-pilot, what the fuck was he doing. The next thing I remember is waking up a few minutes ago. Where is Heloise?"
The decision had been made by Churchill Downs officials, at the recommendation of the governor, to take the unprecedented step of postponing the Kentucky Derby. The race would be rescheduled as soon as possible. All of Kentucky, even those who were vehemently opposed to her politics, was focused on coverage of the search for Heloise Cliffords and her captor, as was much of the nation.
One short, bald, sweaty and completely deranged man in Rosemont, Kentucky cursed at the TV screen in his ratty little apartment on Rosemont's bad northeast side. He was no fan of the Cliffords, but it was Jock Twitty that he would like to see dead and buried. Twitty, who was the current Kentucky Attorney General and also a leading candidate for Governor of Kentucky was the one man Glenn Perkins hated the most. And he had intended to get a final – and terminal – revenge on Twitty at the now-postponed Derby.
Meanwhile, "Go. Now! Do it!" a man barked into a phone, from inside a shadowy and very secure location a few hundred miles away from Pleasant View. Ronnie Isaak had finally drifted back off to sleep, worrying about Gunnar being out helping with the crash investigation, and worrying about the Cliffords – but worrying even more about the possible connection this might all have to a certain old nemesis of his. His fears were confirmed when the door to the house was busted open, and the next thing he knew a dozen armed FBI and Secret Service agents were dragging him out of bed naked, only throwing a sheet around him roughly as they cuffed him, read him his rights, and drug him out into a waiting van with all the neighbors gawking.
"Ronald Zachary Issak, you are under arrest for complicity in the commission of three counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, and one count of kidnapping," the lead agent had begun.
It wasn't long before it was all over the news that for some strange reason a nondescript forty-something UPS man in Pleasant View, Kentucky had apparently been the co-conspirator in the attack on the Cliffords, their pilot, and the two agents charged with protecting with them. The other suspect was the fugitive co-pilot of the Cliffords' downed helicopter. Jack wasn't having any of it. Granted, he had no idea that the man he knew as Ronnie Isaak had once been a secret agent. Everyone in Pleasant View, including Ronnie's daughter Destiny Rose and Destiny's mother Josephine, who had known him as Zach Lewis when Destiny was conceived had actually, to his relief, bought Ronnie's quickly concocted cover story. He had told them that the name change to Ronnie Isaak had occurred when he had previously been working in Vegas as a lounge singer – as a sort of homage to his favorite singer Chris Isaak.
"I'm telling you, Ronnie Isaak wouldn't hurt a fucking flea!" Jack growled to the federal agent who was now in charge of the investigation and who had arrested Ronnie and placed him in the Burnside County Jail for now. "He is engaged to one of our best state troopers and the damn man collects money for every charity in town. Model citizen I tell ya!"
"And I'm telling you this is none of your fucking business!" Berkins thundered.
"But your ballistics – that has to be bullshit!" Jack retorted.
"And I am telling you, Chief, that Ronnie Isaak's gun exactly matches the bullets that were found in the two agents. And not even his own boyfriend can give him an alibi for last night!" Berkins retorted angrily. That part was true – Gunnar had to admit that Ronnie had been gone at the time of the crash – saying he was just going to go for an evening drive that Gunnar hadn't felt like joining him on. He would have, Gunnar had to also admit – had time to have gotten home and made love to Gunnar after participating in the attack – but obviously Gunnar didn't believe that for a fucking second and was distraught over his lover's arrest.
"What is all this shit about him being some sort of secret agent, anyway?" Jack was asking.
"CLASSIFIED!" Berkins practically yelled. "But, let's just say, he isn't the unassuming UPS man that you yokels all take him for!"
Just at that moment, Gunnar Donaldson had walked into Jack's office, and upon hearing Berkins' words, a look of astonishment crossed his handsome face.
"OK, fuck this, I know who is behind this," Ronnie was soon telling Berkins and a couple of other agents who were interrogating him. "You idiots don't even have as high a clearance as I had, and yet it sounds like you have already blown my cover."
"It is not our concern if Hooterville now knows that you were once one of us," Berkins retorted.
"But that's my point, asshole," Ronnie replied evenly. "Secret Service, FBI, you guys have no idea what I was involved in, and I'm not just talking CIA or NSA." "And that is all the more reason you probably harbored some sort of grudge that made you want to help Lou DeMonte with his plot to bring down that chopper and take Heloise Cliffords hostage after trying to kill her husband the former president, not to mention murdering those two agents and the pilot," one of Berkins' sidekicks inserted.
"And I am telling you. If you go high enough on the food chain and tell them DeLuca Ramirez, they will know who I mean," Ronnie tried to explain. "HE'S the one who is pissed at ME and is just using the Cliffords as pawns in this sick game – at which you idiots are helping him succeed – to frame me in all of this. Hell, DeMonte may have just been the pilot, he may not even be in on it either."
"Oh, I'd say bringing down the chopper makes him in on it!" Berkins snapped.
"Fine!" Ronnie replied, "But it doesn't make ME in on it! If you want Heloise Cliffords back alive, you had better find out how to get to Ramirez and what exactly he wants besides revenge on me!"
That night, Justin was finally back at home with Eric. All of Pleasant View's officers had been pulling double shifts, between assisting with the search for Mrs. Cliffords, herding the influx of the media and the curious, and just normal Pleasant View police work.
"Hey babe," Eric greeted him as he walked into the living room.
"Hi darlin'," Justin said, coming over and greeting Eric with a kiss and a warm embrace.
"Anything?" Eric asked, although he already knew the answer from seeing the continuing coverage on the cable news.
"Fuck no," Justin replied wearily. "For all I know Heloise Cliffords may be far away from here by now. My gut tells me she is not, though. I wish we could find her, obviously. But, right now I'm just tired as hell."
"How about the hot tub before dinner?" Eric suggested with a smile.
"Oh my God that sounds heavenly," Justin agreed, smiling back.
Nude, the two lovers relaxed in the hot tub. Soon they were embracing, then kissing passionately. This went on for a long while, before they eventually began to make love on their deck next to the hot tub.
"Fuck me harder!" Justin gasped as Eric was inside him.
"Mmm! Yeah!" Eric grunted in heat.
The flames of their passion rose higher and higher until they both had reached a shattering, and much-needed climax.
"I love you baby," Eric whispered in Justin's ear.
"You too, babe, so much," Justin replied.
Meanwhile Heloise Cliffords stirred from the sleep that had overtaken her tired body earlier.
"OK, you stinky bitch!" came the voice on the other side of the flashlight. "Feeding time at the zoo!"
It was true, she supposed, she did stink. She had soiled herself in her captivity and her bonds were really hurting her wrists and ankles. The vicious bitch was at least feeding her once a day, Heloise thought. And she supposed it was a bonus that along with all of her ridiculous extreme right-wing rhetoric the food apparently was not poisoned.
"Look, you'll never get away with this," Heloise tried wearily. "Let me out of there and I'll seek immunity for you. I know you are not the one behind all of this, and they are just using you."
"Shut up, bitch!" Thundered her female tormentor. "And open up."
Heloise chocked down the sandwich her evil attendant held to her mouth, and thirstily drunk the proffered water that came next. "Please," Heloise tried, her resolve steely. "Think of what you are doing here!"
"Fuck off, and see you tomorrow! And don't forget, yell all you want, cause ain' nobody gonna hear you!" Was the only taunting reply the woman made before turning and disappearing back away into the murky dampness of wherever the dark place was that Heloise Cliffords was being held captive.
A few hours away, a young man cursed. So he wouldn't finally get his revenge today after all. But he WOULD get it. Destiny Rose was supposed to have been singing at the Derby, and he was sure she still would be whenever it was rescheduled.
As Justin and Eric stepped from their post-lovemaking shower, Justin's cell was ringing.
"It's Chief," Jack said.
"What's up, sir?" Justin asked. Although they were best friends and sometimes sexual playmates, Justin and Jack were all business with one another when it came to police business, as this call clearly was from the start.
"I hate to do this, but I'm going to have to have you come back in," Jack replied, sounding exhausted himself. "I just came back in myself. On top of all the other shit going on in this town right now, Julie Moore's little girl Emily has gone missing.
"I'll be right there, Chief," Justin replied, clicking off his phone.
Meanwhile, "Hello, lady, who are you?" came a small voice out of the darkness, holding a dim flashlight.
"Hello, who's there?" Heloise Cliffords replied wearily.