LITMIR.BIZ

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run, my ass,” she muttered.

      “Huh?”

      Tammy looked so sweet and innocent. Savannah also decided not to slap her. “Why don’t you run along?” she said. “Make it obvious to Mr. Muscles and those older guys in the corner over there that you’re on your way to the locker room. Maybe we’ll get lucky and one of them will follow you. I’ll keep an eye on them while I tell Dirk this gig is over. At least for today.”

      “You got it.”

      Tammy gathered her towel, clothes, and water bottle and sashayed toward the women’s locker room door. At least, she tried to sashay. Savannah smiled thinking that she really couldn’t expect a Yankee gal to priss properly. If a girl wasn’t raised on sweet tea and buttermilk biscuits, a certain wiggle was missing from her walk. ’Twas a shame, but it couldn’t be helped.

      However, Tammy was fulfilling her duties as bimbo bait quite well. Savannah couldn’t help noticing how every set of male eyes followed her friend as she left the room. Undoubtedly, if there was a hardcore, lawbreaking, dirty picture–snapping pervert among them, Tammy’s tight, size-zero heinie would draw him out.

      Savannah picked up her gym bag, walked over to Dirk, leaned down, and said in his ear, “Okay, big boy. Your girls have enjoyed about as much of this bullpucky as we can stand. We’re pulling the plug and heading home.”

      “Gotcha,” he replied, looking as tired and disgusted as she felt. “The magic is pretty much gone for me, too.”

      She followed his eyes as he watched the girl who had been next to him walk away and head toward the locker room herself. On the way, she stopped and said something to Mr. Bulging Biceps, then gave him a quick kiss.

      “Hm-m-m,” Dirk grumbled. “And I figured he was gay.”

      “You think all muscular guys with great hair are gay.”

      His feathers instantly ruffled. “You like his hair?”

      She sighed. “He’s got hair, Dirk. Hair is hair. Frankly, I think it’s overrated, but—”

      “Go shower.”

      “I’m going to. And I’ve gotta keep an eye on the kid, in case it’s a janitor or somebody who works here sneaking in the back door or whatever.”

      “Give a yell if you need me.”

      She gave him a sweet smile. Sweeter than he deserved, considering how he’d been ogling the barely legal female next to him. “We always holler out for you, sugar, when we need to be rescued by a burnin’ hunk o’ manhood.”

      He lit up so brightly that she felt guilty and didn’t have the heart to tell him she was pulling his leg. The only time she “hollered out” for him was when she needed someone to hold down her sofa, eat her popcorn, drink her beer, and watch boxing on her TV.

      Or when she needed a dear friend.

      She left him and made her way to the door in the back marked “Women’s Locker Room.” And even though Clarissa was still screeching about the horrors of lard and cellulite, Savannah couldn’t help noticing that male eyes followed her own figure, too. Maybe not as many as Tammy’s, but she still had her share of admirers.

      A good sashay mixed with a hearty dash of self-confidence went a long way when it came to attraction and sex appeal.

      She was feeling tired and lazy and relaxed when she entered the locker room, ready to just shower, go home, and kick back.

      But the moment she passed through the dressing area and into the showers, a creepy, apprehensive feeling washed over her. The hair wasn’t exactly standing up on the back of her neck, but she had the sensation that some sort of threat was nearby.

      It was an intuitive warning that she had felt many times before as a police officer and since, as a private investigator. And she had learned, long ago, not to ignore it.

      She opened her mouth to call out to Tammy, but thought better of it. Instead she glanced around taking in the closed door on the back wall of the long, narrow room, the two rows of shower stalls on either side.

      She could hear more than one shower running. The odor of disinfectants, mixed with the floral smells of soaps and shampoos, scented the humid air.

      Only three stalls were being used their plastic curtains drawn. She walked quietly between the rows, bending over to peek at the bare feet exposed between the bottom of the curtain and the floor.

      Tammy’s perfectly pedicured, hot pink toenails made identification easy. Three stalls away from Tammy were a pair of feet wearing bright red and purple flip-flops—the senior lady from the rowing machine, no doubt.

      But it was the feet wearing the sneakers that caught her eye.

      Sneakers and jeans.

      In the stall right next to Tammy’s pink toes.

      Silently, Savannah crept up to the curtain of Tammy’s stall and pulled it aside a few inches.

      A wet, sudsy Tammy whirled around, but Savannah pressed her finger against her lips in a silent “Sh-h-h,” then pointed to the plastic curtain that separated her shower stall from the one next to it.

      Tammy’s eyes widened, but she nodded.

      At least twenty thoughts and decisions processed in Savannah’s brain in the next few seconds, the major ones being: Weapon’s in my gym bag. Don’t pull it yet. Handcuffs in waistband. No time to call Dirk. Tammy’s wet and slippery. Won’t be much help.

      The most satisfying thought: Gotcha now, you dirt-sucking perv…

      And the uppermost thought any time she was getting ready to apprehend a perpetrator: Don’t get killed!

      A moment later, all conscious decision making was over, because an arm reached beneath the plastic curtain. And in its hand was an open cell phone.

      A video camera cell phone.

      And the user was pointing it up at them.

      Savannah felt, more than heard, Tammy’s sharp intake of breath as she instinctively moved back away from the camera and against the curtain on the other side of the stall.

      Stepping into the stream of the shower, Savannah reached down, grabbed the wrist, and yanked with all her might.

      Someone yelled.

      She felt him fall. Hard.

      But she hung on.

      The camera fell with a clatter, and Savannah was dimly aware of Tammy scooping it up and holding it to her bare chest.

      Savannah braced herself and gave the arm another jerk.

      Her illicit photographer came sliding, facedown, across the floor, under the curtain, and into their stall.

      Tammy squealed and tried to gather the curtain around her as Savannah twisted his arms behind him. A second later, she had him cuffed.

      “You got him!” Tammy shouted.

      Savannah flipped him over…and looked down into the frightened, youthful, pretty face of Dirk’s bimbo exercise companion.

      “And he’s a she!” Tammy added.

      When it came to stating the obvious, Tammy was gifted.

      Savannah loved her anyway.

      “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Savannah asked the girl, reaching up to turn off the shower, now that they were all three thoroughly drenched.

      “Nothing! I wasn’t doing anything!”

      “You were taking dirty pictures.”

      “I was not! I was calling my mom!”

      Savannah turned to Tammy, who was now cocooned in shower curtain. “Check that phone,” she told her. “Was the camera

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