leapt to her face, and her robe was hanging open. Now she pulled it closed. Max grabbed her and shook her hard. Her blonde hair stood out in a swirl about her face. 'Who the fuck do you think you are, you little bitch?' he demanded. He slapped her again, and she cried out.
'Please. I'm sorry,' she sobbed. 'I didn't mean…'
Max turned away from her and walked back to the couch. Connie still hadn't moved. He grasped one tiny arm and pulled her halfway to a standing position. She let out a squeal of pain. Her crotch must be on fire, he thought.
'Go clean yourself up,' he ordered, pushing toward the bathroom. 'Pete, go with her.'
'Piss on that,' Pete said. 'I want to fuck my girl.'
'We all want to fuck. This'll only take a moment. She looks disgusting.' Pete looked at him with a wry grin, as though amused by his squeamishness, and shrugged. He followed the limping, sobbing girl into the bathroom.
In a moment they were back. While Pete stood with his gun trained on the women, Max opened Connie's suitcase and tossed clothes all over the floor until he came to a yellow quilted robe. It had buttons instead of a sash. He yanked the buttons off and dropped them on the floor. 'Here, put this on. Just don't hesitate to take it off when you're told to.'
Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying, and her face still showed a lot of pain, but she seemed grateful for the chance to put some kind of garment on her body. She hugged the robe around her, covering herself.
'Butch, you and your little sweetheart here stand guard over him,' Max said, pointing at the man on the floor. Then he looked over at Sally. 'It's Pete's and my turn now,' he said with a grin.
Chapter Four
Sally didn't make any fuss. The sight of her little friend getting the shit screwed out of her by Butch seemed to have taken out whatever starch she still had in her sails. She carried her suitcase, as Max ordered, and walked into the front bedroom. Pete took Julie's arm and ushered her into the master bedroom. Julie didn't make any trouble, either. She looked back over her shoulder at Max and Sally just disappearing through the doorway, but that was all. No doubt she couldn't quite get used to the idea of her darling little sister getting raped. Well, she'd just have to get used to it.
The front bedroom was just off the hall, right behind the screened porch. It had one window on the side of the house. Max pulled the shade down and swore to himself over Pete's carelessness in not pulling it down by now. He half-expected Sally to make a break for the door and the porch while he was at the window. When he turned back to her, she was still standing in the middle of the room with her suitcase in her hand, leaning slightly to the side from the weight of it.
'Why don't you put that down?' Max said with a laugh. 'You're going to stay a while, and it might get in the way of things.' She put the suitcase down and stood looking at him. Her hands worked at her sides, her fingers rubbing at her palms.
Max sat down on the foot of the three-quarter size bed and lit a cigarette. He had found a carton of them that morning, in a drawer in the kitchen. 'You're a little cooler than your friend, aren't you?'
'I guess so.' She had a hard time looking at him while she spoke. Her long, light brown hair hung like a halo about her face, setting off the face's beauty. She looked like an angel, or a Madonna.
'It must run in the family. Your sister was as cool as ice last night. Until we got to the fucking, that is. Then she warmed right up.' The statement, and the language, drew a shudder from her, but that was all. Max had to hand it to her. 'Watching Butch out there giving your friend the works really got me turned on. Isn't that the term you kids use nowadays? Turned on?'
'That's right.'
'Well, I don't usually go for stag shows. I prefer doing it to watching it. But I appreciate watching a smartness kid get her comeuppance. And that's what Connie got just now.'
She looked surprised, as though it hadn't occurred to her that there might be anything other than ordinary, sexual desire behind his actions. 'You don't like young people?'
'I've got nothing against them. Not the boys, anyway. It's you smart little bitches, I don't like. Don't get me wrong. I like you physically. I just don't much like you as people.'
There was a shift in her expression. She looked like something had just occurred to her. 'There's some reason you wanted me instead of Julie, isn't there? I mean, it isn't just that you think I'm prettier. It's something else.'
'You're younger. That's something.'
'That's still not all of it.'
'Bravo. If you were in a class of mine, I'd give you an A for that little bit of logic. Sure, there's something else. You remind me of someone.'
'What did you mean about being in a class of yours? Are you a teacher?'
'Didn't you hear about it on the news? I'd think they'd be giving profiles on all three of us by this time. Sure, I was a teacher. A college professor, in fact.'
'Was it one of your students? Whoever it was who made you hate young girls?'
'There's another A. It sure was.'
'And I remind you of her?'
'Right. You remind me of her. You're sixteen, aren't you?'
'Yes. I'll be seventeen in six weeks.'
'If you're alive in six weeks.' That made her blanch, but she recovered in a moment.
'You want me to be scared, don't you? You want me to hurt inside from fear.'
'Sure. Does knowing that make it any easier?' He smiled. 'You're good at hiding it, but you're scared as hell right now.'
'Well, of course I'm scared. Wouldn't you be?'
'You're scared, and you're going to fuck for me, aren't you, Sally?'
She looked away from him. 'Do I have a choice?'
'Sure. You can fuck for me, or you can fuck for Butch out there.'
'Okay. I'll take you. Is that what you wanted to hear?'
'Glad to know I'm number one on the hit parade,' he said, smiling. 'She was a little older than you.'
The quick change of subject confused her for a moment. She looked at him with a puzzled expression.
'The student,' he explained. 'The one you were asking about a moment ago.'
'I assumed she was, if she was in college.'
'She was nineteen. Are you a virgin?'
The question brought another quiver along her spine. 'Yes,' she said.
'She wasn't. Not when I knew her. But she was nineteen. If you hadn't run into this situation, I doubt you'd have been a virgin by the time you were nineteen. You're too beautiful, and there are too many guys around who are happy as hell to relieve you of your hymen. And girls nowadays don't place that much importance on virginity. She didn't.'
'What did she do to you? It must have been something pretty bad, to make you want to…'
'She's the one who put me in the death house, sweets.'
'I see. You mean she testified against you, and you were innocent or something like that?'
'No. I mean I was guilty under the law. And she didn't testify against me. She could hardly do that since she was deader than hell at the time.'
'My God, she's the one you killed.'
'That's right. As I said, I was guilty under the law. But the law doesn't take as much into consideration as it should. She deserved to die.'
'And you had a right to kill her?'
'I sure as fuck did. She ruined my life. She came into one of my classes and decided to have a little fun with the stodgy old prof. Maybe it was a bet with her little friends or something. I don't know. Maybe she just wanted to be sure she got a good grade in the class.'
