I continued to work the lights and the intercom. I didn't notice the time going by. Everyone was having a great time and without any of them knowing i..., I had managed to keep all of the dancing clean. I felt proud of myself.A little after midnight I gave the light duties to Theo; a close friend of ronit's. By that time, the crowd had thinned and I had to announce to the remaining diehards that the party would be ending in forty five minutes. The house wasn't wall to wall graduates as it had. I hadn’t told my motheranything and I wasn’t going to. We got back a little bit late but I ranback to the house. By now if she wason her usual schedule she would befast asleep. I kept my fingers crossed. Igot in silently as I could. When I got toher bedroom door it was almost closed but not completely. I pushedthe door a few inches and peeked inthe room. I was very surprised to what I saw.She was lying on her back with myunderwear in her hand with her legsspread. I got closer and took off. She’d also had a lot of sex - that not for the first time. She and Marcus had been together that way for almost a year by then, but it was the first time that they’d done so without worrying who would find out what they were up to. In hindsight, Althea suspected she’d always planned to stay in Jayanesia, but couldn’t even admit it to herself until she got the hell out of Tennessee.Since then, the appeal of a barely-there government had lost a lot of its shine. Althea still enjoyed a lot of the. I found a cleft in the rocks and waited.I let the kidnapper pass me on the way back. Just as he walked by, I jumped him with my bowie knife at the ready. I easily cut the thug's throat from behind. I nearly took his head off, and he dropped in his tracks. I quickly pulled him into the rock cleft to cut down on the amount of blood I would have to hide. I cut off one of his pants legs to use to wipe up the blood on the rocks and used his hat to carry sand from a hidden location to cover the blood.