Page 30 of Fighting for Tawny

“I once had sex in a hammock,” Yolanda declared. “I wouldn’t recommend it. We got dumped on our asses.”

“My boyfriend grew up on a lake,” Terrin commented. “We did it in the bushes in broad daylight. Lord, it was awful. I’m surprised we didn’t get poison ivy.”

“Back seat in a Chevy.”

“Mile High Club.”

“Restaurant bathroom.”

Everyone participated in the discussion except Tawny. They gazed at her with expectant grins on their faces.

“C’mon, T. Your turn.”

Tawny blushed recalling her hottest moments with Finnigan, especially one. On a hot summer night when he was working late, she’d surprised him at the command center and whispered that she was nude beneath her dress. He’d grabbed her hand, led her into the locker room, and drove hard and fast into her. The fear of discovery increased their excitement and pleasure, though the encounter didn’t last more than a minute.

“In the locker room at an ex-boyfriend’s gym. He’s a personal trainer.”

“Damn. I’ll bet he’s buff.”

“Oh, he is.”

“Why’d you break up?”

“He cheated, so I busted up his precious Camero.”

“Like the song?”

Tawny grinned. “Yeah. Just like the song.”

As if on cue, they belted out the line from Jazmine Sullivan’s song, “Bust Your Windows.” They laughed and shoulder-bumped each other. Tawny read a few more pages, and the group broke up. She joined her classmates, already studying, for two hours, then relaxed with Jo in front of the TV until they parted for their cells.

In the darkness, Tawny’s mind refused to shut down in spite of her exhaustion. She visualized a dry-erase board and began to list suspects, but she couldn’t hold onto any threads. Frustrated, she fumbled for her journal and her pen light. On a blank page, she wrote Warden Stoltz at the top. She drew a short line and added Whitcomb’s name. Next, she listed Lucy’s and Nixie’s names and the others who’d either disappeared or overdosed. She jotted down details about each of them. Her intuition prompted her to include Wendy Corrigan and Director Jerry Dickinson at the bottom of the page. She stared at the names and tapped her pen as her mind whirled with unlikely theories and improbabilities. Something bothered her. Something important. Something on the edge of discovery.

On Friday night, bikers claimed the dive bar. Between thirty to forty motorcycles, Whitcomb guessed, dominated the parking lot. Inside, the place hummed with raucous laughter and loud bragging, punctuated by the sound of billiard balls and darts. Whitcomb shouldered his way through the bar to the table where Stoltz waited for him. Two bottles of beer sat in front of Stoltz.

“I took the liberty,” he said, waving at the bottles.

“Thanks.” Whitcomb dropped into the empty chair and swigged the beer. “Why are we meeting without Cohen and Jones?”

“I don’t trust them. Or you either, for that matter.”

Whitcomb saluted him with his bottle of beer. “No honor among thieves.”

“Have you ever met anyone else in the network?”

“No. You?”

“No. Invisibility bothers me. Who the hell killed Bette Simpson? For damn sure it wasn’t law enforcement.”

Whitcomb lifted a brow, bemused by Stoltz’s stupidity. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me? Everyone knows the entire thing was fake. You can thank Tawny for figuring it out and preventing a riot.”

Stoltz scowled. “All right. I get it. But that doesn’t answer my question. Did the network set it up? Why? Bette Simpson would have been captured soon enough.”

“Not unless she’s been in their custody all along.”

“No. No, I don’t believe that.”

Whitcomb shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

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