‘I’m busy.’ The man reached down to his magazine. He shook the pages under Cain’s nose. ‘I’m making plans for what I’m gonna do to her. Getting what you call inspiration.’
‘You will not touch her.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says me.’
The fat man laughed. He rolled the magazine between his hands, squeezing it into a solid tube, and waved the impromptu phallic symbol towards Jennifer’s cell. ‘I think I’ll start by softening her up with this. Otherwise she will be no good to a man of my size.’
Cain closed his eyes. His lids flickered.
The fat man jabbed the rolled paper into Cain’s chest. ‘You coming in your pants at the thought of that, you sick fuck?’
Cain’s left hand snapped on to the exposed wrist. He pulled, snaring the man’s thumb so that it was held tightly to the rolled paper. His other hand merely caressed the bulging flesh where wrist became hand. The movement was so subtle that at first the fat man did not realise what had happened. Only when he saw the blood pouring along his forearm did he try to snatch his hand away. Cain let it go, and watched as the man’s goggle-eyed incredulity centred on the lifeless thumb hanging alongside his palm.
‘Jesus Christ! What the fuck have you done to me?’
Cain said, ‘Severed both the abductor pollicis brevis and longus tendons. You’ll find you can still wiggle your thumb, but you’ll never make a fist again. It will, I’m afraid, impede the manner in which you seek “inspiration” in future.’
The man looked again at the pinkish ends of the tendons poking from his opened flesh, then up at Cain. His mouth was open, and Cain realised he’d lost him. Just too many long words. To clarify, he mimed the sex act of manual self-gratification.
The fat man’s hand was limp, and to prove the point the magazine fluttered from his grasp. He watched it hit the floor, then followed the lines of Cain’s body all the way up to where he held the Tanto. Cain waved the knife. ‘You still have one working hand. Are you going to put it to good use and go fetch the woman something to eat and drink?’
The fat man suddenly shrieked: his voice high like a little girl’s. Lurching around the chair, he grabbed at the exit door he’d been guarding. His instinct was to go for the handle with his right hand, but it had become a hindrance. Wide-eyed he cast frantic glances at Cain, then tore open the door with his left and fled up a second corridor. Cain doubted he’d be coming back. He snorted at the man’s fleeing back, then went to peer through the hatch at Jennifer.
‘I’m having something to eat and drink brought for you,’ he said.
Jennifer didn’t reply, but he saw her eyes flashing in the dim light. She finally sat up. Her gaze had never left his. ‘Where are my children? If you’ve harmed them…’
‘They’re safe,’ Cain said. ‘I didn’t touch them.’
‘You left them all alone?’
‘I did. But I trust that they’ll have been collected by now. As soon as John arrives, you will be released and you can see them again.’
‘John won’t come.’ Her words were like a mantra.
‘Oh, I’m sure he will.’
‘No.’ Jennifer struggled up from the floor, still unsteady from the residual effects of the drugs he’d administered. She approached the door, her hands fisted at her sides. She thrust out her jaw and said again, ‘John won’t come. But his brother Joe will.’
Cain stared into the woman’s eyes and believed her. ‘Won’t that be great? A nice little family reunion?’
‘Joe will make you sorry you ever came near me. He’ll tear your throat out.’
Cain touched the scar tissue on his neck. ‘He already tried that, but failed. This time I’ll show him how it’s really done.’
‘Joe will kill you, and I’ll spit on your body when he’s finished.’
‘Steady on, there,’ Cain laughed at her. ‘Don’t forget that I’m your only hope of getting out of here alive. I’m here to protect you. The fat guard… do you know what he’d do to you if I wasn’t here?’
Jennifer was no fool; she recognised the implications of the fat man coming into her cell unchaperoned. Her features slipped into open shock.
‘He comes to the door and… says things.’ Jennifer’s voice had lost its vitriol towards him.
‘I’ve punished him for that, Jennifer. He won’t bother you again.’
She nodded silently, wrapping her arms around her body.
‘Now, you should remember that when next you make threats,’ Cain went on. ‘I’m your only friend and protector. I’m the only one who’s having food and water brought to you.’
‘It won’t mean a thing when Joe gets here.’
‘Then I’ll just have to show him how misguided he is.’ He jiggled the point of his knife in the air, grinning as he mimed cutting a throat. Cain halted the charade on hearing the clatter of feet in the outer gangway. He slid the blade out of sight. ‘I’m just going to close this flap for a little while, OK? There are some others who may need putting in their place.’
He closed the steel flap over the slot and slipped a bolt across. Walking back along the short corridor, he timed it so that he met the group of men just as they were about to storm through the bulwark door at the end. There were three of them, two of whom he already knew. One was the driver who’d helped him transport Jennifer here from the airport, the other a tall Russian with steel-coloured hair and eyes the shade of a Siberian winter sky. Cain had been introduced to Grodek as the captain of this ship when he’d boarded. He did not at first know the third man.
‘Cain,’ the stranger said, eyeing him up and down. ‘It looks like I got here just in time.’
Cain recognised the voice from having conversed regularly with him in the past day or so. ‘You did?’
‘The name’s Baron.’
‘I know who you are. You’re the one that allowed Joe Hunter and Jared Rington to escape.’ Cain appraised the man. He was shorter, and slighter of build, than the others but there was a detachment about him that appealed to Cain. Not much, though.
‘That was Sigmund Petoskey’s fault. He allowed his defences to drop and Hunter managed to take him hostage.’
‘And Kurt Hendrickson’s death?’
‘Nothing I could do about that.’
‘Joe Hunter outsmarted you again, huh?’
Baron smiled whimsically, and Cain could feel the man’s gaze caress the scar on his throat. ‘The way I’ve heard the story told, you weren’t so successful against Joe Hunter either.’
Cain returned the smile. The two men were like a viper studying its reflection in a mirror, ready to sink in its fangs the second it found an opening.
‘Looks like we have something in common, then.’
‘Not to mention a common enemy.’
Grodek stepped forward, and Cain noted the gun in the man’s big fist. His own hand, concealed by his hip, still held the Tanto. Yet neither man made a play with their weapons. Grodek merely used his to point out the splashes of blood on the floor. ‘I made a deal with Hendrickson. I agreed to extend my hospitality and resources to you, Baron. But that did not include allowing this maniac to injure my men. Brady’s hand has been crippled.’
‘Didn’t Hendrickson warn you? He should have. Cain slaughtered one of his men at their first meeting.’
‘Aah, yes, my old pal Getz,’ Cain said, recalling the incident. ‘Maybe killing him was a little extreme, but I had a point to prove. I am happy to go on proving myself if necessary.’
Grodek made a noise that sounded like Paaah!
‘That fat pig — Grady, was it? — is arranging food and drink for our guest?’ Cain asked.
‘Our guest? We should kill her now before things get even further out of control,’ Grodek snapped.
Baron laid a hand on the Russian’s wrist, making the bigger man lower his weapon. ‘You promised that you would help.’
‘I promised Kurt Hendrickson, but he is dead. So is my promise.’
