Because it had become clear that I was going to be attending the dinner where Vincent was entertaining.
I ate fast. Just in case I got called away. Or in case he didn't feed me for another twenty-four hours.
I found out what the screaming was at the same time I found myself in the dining room.
Vincent had guests, two men in expensive suits and relaxed expressions that identified them as peers.
They glanced up at me in my sweats and back to the meals in front of them. I took a look around the room and froze. Across from me, Kie was chained to the wall by a belt around her waist. Her hair was everywhere, in her face, stuck to the tracks of her tears, in her mouth. She couldn't do anything about it because her hands were stretched overhead and fastened to the wall.
There were whip marks all over her body. Whatever she'd done to make him angry, he'd been taking it out on her for hours. There were dark circles under her eyes and every few minutes she fell off her feet, collapsing in some direction or another, yanked back up by the chains holding her in place.
Probably it had been happening since I first heard her screaming. The screaming had stopped because Kie was just too exhausted, too wasted, to go on screaming.
I could tell some of what had gone on with her. Her hair had been pulled violently enough there was actually blood in it, thin traces of red mixed in with the black. Someone had slapped her repeatedly and her mouth was swollen. There were whip marks on her bare breasts and on her back.
But I stopped then, and drank in what I was seeing. Not with pleasure, not even for my enemy and there was no doubt that's what Kie was.
But because she'd been his play toy for some time. They were married, for fuck's sake. And there was no reason that made sense, that she'd be broken by what had been done to her. Someone had had sex with her, that was obvious from traces on her skin, but this was her husband and if it wasn't him, I didn't think he'd allow even the most trusted and coveted colleague to go bareback where he himself later would.
All things considered, Kie's condition wasn't much worse than what I anticipated some "rough play" with Vincent Geddes generally ended with.
I dragged my eyes away from her and back to the table and a sudden, strange sensation swept over me: The knowledge that it was very possible I was living my last minutes on Earth. Because there was no way that Vincent's colleagues were going to rape me.
I'd go out fighting. I'd take one of them with me. I'd take all of them with me if I could. And if I could do that, if I could take someone with me?
Then I wasn't going.
They were.
"What's she waiting for?" one of the men asked through a full mouth. They were both completely nondescript, the kind of men that witnesses agree on in post-crime interviews because there's nothing to disagree about. If they’d stood, rather than shoveling food into their mouths, they'd be average height, somewhere around five-ten. They both had dark hair, not a shiny unnatural black and not sandy or the sort of hair that can look anything from caramel brown to honey gold. Just dark. Normal features, bland, not unattractive, but not even as forgettably attractive as the type of male model who shows up anonymously in picture frames and has to be removed before the real photo goes in.
"She's new," Vincent said lazily, not looking at me, then banged his fist on the table so hard his plate jumped.
I did, too. I was anticipating violence in the next few minutes. I was edgy. I was wondering how I'd die. If I'd be able to somehow affect my death myself.
More than that, I was horrified at the idea of not dying. That Vincent and anyone remaining would be able to get hold of me.
On the wall, Kie slid down again, jerked to a stop by her belt, and stood once more. I could almost feel sorry for her.
Vincent stood and came round the table toward me. Halfway between the table and where I stood, he slowed and put up both hands. "Whoa. Nobody's going to touch you."
One of the men behind him said, "Stuck up little cunt, isn't she?" and I wished I knew which one, so when the time came, I could choose him.
Only the time wasn't coming. Because Vincent stopped short of touching me. "You need to take off the sweats and put on the shoes. Then you're going to walk up and down the length of the room and sit down from time to time." He hesitated, then said, "Which in your case is the better idea. Just sit. Panties, heels. Naked boobs. Cross your legs. Don't cross your arms. You think you can do that?"
He wasn't asking if it was all right. Of course. But he also wasn't threatening to allow them to rape me or any other kind of assault.
My mind wouldn't wrap around it and my mouth didn't seem to want to close. If it was possible to feel shock from something like this, I did.
When he raised one brow, something I saw from the corner of my eye because I wasn't looking at him directly, I shut my mouth with a snap and said, "Yes. Sir."
He nodded like a complete dolt had just agreed that yes, she could see the point that the sky was blue and the ground was down, the thing under our feet. The instant I began to comply – because suddenly being mostly naked and in heels sounded far better than being dead – he turned back to the table and his guests and I was forgotten, as good as not here except for the occasional loving look cast at some part of my body. Loving. Lusting. Or longing to hurt. No way of knowing, if his guests were sadists.
From time to time I looked over at Kie. She'd given up trying to stand and was kneeling on all fours, her middle pulled up by the belt that didn't have quite enough length of chain to allow this. Her hair hung in her face and from time to time she sniffed, sounding like she was silently crying.
Despite their attention to whatever agreement the three of them were working out, the men’s attention came back to me more often than I'd have hoped. Long looks at my breasts, which frankly were nothing compared to the beautiful job Vincent had done on Kie's. It was a shame he'd then marked up all that firm, upthrust flesh.
And despite the fact that for me there was nothing more than feeling exposed and embarrassed by it and not quite sure if I should have fought this and quite sure the next instant that I shouldn't have, despite all of it, the panic didn't still.
Because what he'd done to Kie was appalling. Even if she liked it and if she had, she didn't now. Maybe all masochists learn that pain hurts at some point or another. Or maybe this was just farther and harder and worse than what he usually did to her.
But that he could do that to her, what could he not do to me?
So I sat quietly, displayed, wearing panties and heels and feeling less embarrassed and far less stupid than I'd expected. The first time I went back to high school, undercover and looking for dope, the first time I went to a rave, the first time I met somebody who was a biker and pretended I was Lily, looking to score, tiny and scared and addicted – those times there had been a feeling of unreality and a sensation that somehow we were all involved in some kind of over-the-top farce. It was hard at times to keep a straight face despite it being life or death.
Here, too. Their requests were so juvenile. To wander around like a one woman Hooters, or to wear heels because even when I was sitting they liked how it gave a certain elegant line to my legs.
I wanted to snap then and tell them that the line to my leg came from hours and hours of running in the desert, on dangerously rocky trails. I wanted to give it all away in a fury of protest, as if by shouting that I could run fifteen miles, surely, because I'd run twelve and we can always do more than we think and that then, fifteen miles away from them, I could find help and bring them down.