Page 1 of Fighting for Tawny

CHAPTER ONE

Fists flew as Tawny Westfall traded vicious blows with her attacker. She threw a fast right hook that connected with Yolanda’s nose. Blood spurted. Yolanda grabbed a fistful of her red hair and yanked her head back while landing punches to her kidneys. In a defensive move, Tawny flipped the other woman over her shoulder, but Yolanda was quick and wiry and back on her feet in an instant. Tawny executed a series of jabs that caused her adversary to stagger, but Yolanda refused to surrender. With amazing strength, she came at Tawny and swept her legs from beneath her in a low roundhouse kick. She stomped on Tawny’s knee, wrenching a cry of both pain and fury. Tawny wrapped her arms around Yolanda’s legs, and she toppled to the ground. She jumped on Yolanda and pounded her face and ribs. Her own blood dripped on Yolanda’s mangled face. One punch knocked out a couple of Yolanda’s teeth.

None of the ground guards intervened. Chants of “Kill her! Kill the bitch!” filled the air. The fight ended when Yolanda lay still and unmoving in the dry brown grass. Tawny’s chest heaved. She gasped for breath and fell to the ground next to Yolanda.

Every part of Tawny’s body ached. She sat on a hospital bed in the infirmary as the prison doctor wrapped her bruised midsection to keep her broken ribs stable. She’d already set her broken nose for the second time in two months since Tawny had gone undercover as a prisoner at the California Institution for Women to find out why inmates kept disappearing or dying from drug overdoses. So far, she’d been too busy surviving to start sleuthing. No one trusted her.

Dr. Sadler rarely spoke to the inmates when she treated them, but today she said in a soft voice tinged with a midwestern accent, “If you keep this up, Tawny, you won’t live long. You were busted up pretty badly today. Do you have a death wish?”

When Tawny went undercover, Special Agent in Charge Jiena Cofield and Chief of Police of Laguna Beach Justice McQuaid, for whom she worked, agreed that she should keep her real name. Her friend and colleague, Lieutenant David “Hutch” Hutchinson, along with computer genius John “Tex” Keegan, hid her identity online in case anyone did a search for her.

“No. I’m not looking for trouble, Doc. It keeps finding me. And the guards don’t care.”

Dr. Sadler treated the scratches and cuts on Tawny’s face, arms, and hands with antiseptic, sutured those that required stitches, and bandaged them.

“I know you’re educated. I’m aware of the intelligence you’re hiding in your eyes. How did you end up here?”

Tawny shrugged, though the movement hurt. “Hooked up with the wrong guy. He planted drugs on me and split when I got caught. Of course, the cops didn’t believe me. Neither did that asshole of a judge, Judge Cohen. They assigned my case to a useless public defender who didn’t give me the time of day or offer any kind of defense. So, here I am.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as I am. I’m on the five-year plan, and time keeps getting added whenever I get in trouble.”

Dr. Sadler helped Tawny lie back on the hospital bed and covered her with a sheet and a light blanket. “I can protect you for twenty-four hours before you’re taken to solitary.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

Tawny had become a light sleeper since her incarceration, but here in the infirmary, she felt safe enough to fall into a restful sleep. No one could get in or out of the infirmary without the proper credentials. Exhausted from the fight in the yard and the constant need to stay alert for trouble, Tawny closed her eyes and slipped into a comforting dream about being home with her loved ones, especially the man who gave her the inner strength to carry out her mission. LA SWAT officer Marcus Finnigan. Their instant dislike of each other hid their powerful attraction until it couldn’t be denied any longer. It erupted into a fiery confrontation one night shortly after Tawny had been released from the hospital after an attempt on her life. Finnigan demanded an admission of her true feelings, or he would leave her alone and not look back. She chose him and never once regretted her decision.

A hand shook her shoulder. Finnigan’s smiling face and twinkling eyes filled with mischief disappeared, and Tawny groaned his name.

“Hey, wake up, Ginger,” a voice hissed in her ear.

“Yolanda. Haven’t you gotten us into enough trouble? We’re both spending a week in solitary because of you.”

“No one has ever given me a smackdown like that. We shed blood together. Now you’re my blood sister.”

“I don’t need your protection.”

“It ain’t about protection. It’s about family.”

“I’m not interested in joining a gang.”

“It’s not like that. The gangs in here…well, they’re vicious like rabid dogs. All I’m sayin’ is, I got your back, Ginger.”

Yolanda hobbled back to her bed. Tawny pondered what she said. It would be helpful to have someone on her side. Yolanda could be a source of useful information.

So far, Tawny had heard a few of the inmates grumbling about Judge Cohen holding arraignments over the weekend when they were less likely to be represented by a lawyer, a clear violation of their civil rights, and from her own experience, she believed it to be true. She’d been watching the news on TV in the common room of her unit in the institution when D. A. Mallory Hayes was arrested for the murder of her husband Bentley. Mallory had been on her way to CIFW when the transport van had been attacked. According to the news, she’d escaped unharmed with Detective Luca Martinelli’s help. Two of the other women in the van with her who survived the explosion never made it to CIFW. If she had to guess, Brielle McQuaid’s famous father, Cameron McAdams, probably had something to do with it. Tawny had learned bits and pieces of the bizarre story, and though most of it was muddled, one aspect remained clear. Judge Cohen had arraigned Mallory and five other women on a weekend and sent all of them to CIFW.

A trustee brought Tawny’s unappetizing dinner, and after swallowing as much as she could of it, she left her bed and found Yolanda. The twenty-something, dark-haired Mexican American woman glanced up at her in surprise. “You lost or somethin’?”

“I got your back, Yolanda.”

She offered a lopsided smile. “Blood sisters?”

“Yeah. Blood sisters.”

They spit into their palms and shook on it.

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