nailed her.”
“I heard about it,” I muttered.
“Those poor children,” Billie said, keeping her voice quiet, not wanting Alice and Erin to hear her. “They’ve been through worse than any of us. They’ve been in the cages for almost a month. They’ve lost their mother and father. And… Wesley and Thelma do such awful things to them. My God, they’re only kids.”
“Kids with tits and…”
“Knock it off, Connie,” Kimberly snapped. In a softer voice, she said, “Billie, go ahead and finish what you were saying about Wesley looking for an island. Rupert oughta hear this.”
“Yeah,” Connie said. “So he can put it in his fucking journal.”
“You still keeping it?” Kimberly asked me.
“I ran out of paper.”
“Aw, ain’t that a shame,” Connie said.
“Finish it after you save us,” Kimberly told me. “And put in how Wesley planned it all, how he picked which island, and everything. It’ll help show he had premeditation.”
“Like he’s ever gonna stand trial,” Connie said.
“However it all turns out,” Kimberly said, “it’ll be a good thing if Rupert has a detailed record of the whole situation. It might be the only way anyone ever finds out what happened here.”
“If I’m dead anyhow,” Connie said, “I’m not exactly gonna give a rat’s ass.”
“Billie, go ahead and tell him the rest.”
“Okay. Let me see.” She was silent for a few seconds, then said, “Wesley decided an island would be the perfect sort of place, so he started doing research. At first, he thought mostly in terms of islands in places like Wisconsin and Michigan. You know, on lakes and rivers. He concentrated on the Midwest. Probably because he was raised in that area. Grew up near Chicago. The minute he broadened his horizons, though, he realized that the Bahamas would be ideal. Beautiful, tropical islands with great weather. Conveniently located off the coast of Florida. Handy airline service. The best part was, he found out that there’re hundreds of uninhabited islands in the area.”
“He didn’t pick an uninhabited one,” I pointed out.
“That’s because he read about the cages. He ran across an old magazine article…”
“Erin and Alice told me about that.”
“When he saw the bit about gorilla cages…”
“Thought he’d died and gone to Heaven,” Kimberly said.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Connie said, “we’re in Wesley Heaven.”
“Everything seemed to be falling into place for him,” Billie explained. “It was almost uncanny. First, he finds the absolutely perfect place for fulfilling his nasty little daydreams about us. On paper, anyway. Then, it turns out that Andrew and I are about to have our twentieth wedding anniversary.” With mock eagerness and an edge of bitterness unusual for her, Billie proclaimed, “Why not celebrate it with the whole family aboard a rented yacht in the Bahamas?”
“It did sound great,” Kimberly admitted.
“It was great… until…” Billie stopped speaking. I heard her start to cry.
For Andrew, her husband. That’s what I figured. Or maybe she was crying because of everything. Not only had she been made a widow during her twentieth anniversary celebration, but she and her daughter were locked in cages, kept like slaves for the amusement of a couple of demented perverts. She might’ve been crying for the others, too. Kimberly’s husband had also been murdered, and Kimberly’d ended up in a cage. The twins, too—Erin and Alice.
All five of them had lost people they loved. All five had been toyed with by Wesley and Thelma—beaten, whipped, raped, and God-only-knows what else.
It’s a wonder that they weren’t all bawling their heads off.
You can’t cry all the time, though. This was Billie’s time for it.
Kimberly still held my wrist.
“Let go,” I whispered.
Her fingers opened. I slipped my hand free, then felt my way along the front of her cage. I crossed the open area and came to Billie’s cage. She was still crying.
“Billie?” I asked.
“Rupert?”
I pressed my body against her cage and reached through the bars with both arms. “Over here.”
She found my arms and moved in between them. We hugged each other, bars sandwiched between our bodies. She sobbed quietly. The sobbing and gasping made her shake. I started to caress her back, but the smoothness there was broken by ridges—welts and scabs from the beatings she’d taken. She twitched slightly when I touched one.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“It’s okay, honey.”
Then I was crying, too.
I stopped caressing her back, afraid of hurting her. As I lowered my arms, she said, “No, hold me. Don’t stop.”
So I put them around her again, but very gently.
Jealous Dogs
“What the hell are you two doing over there?” Connie called out.
“Shut up,” Kimberly told her.
“We aren’t doing anything,” I said. Which was true. We were only embracing each other while Billie continued to cry.
“Thank God you’re all right,” Billie whispered. Her breath tickled my lips. Then she had her mouth there, wet and open, pushing against my mouth. It was a kiss, but not like any kiss I’d ever had before. She was still sort of crying while we kissed. It was strange, but awfully nice.
I’d been trying to ignore the fact that her bare breasts were pressed against me. You don’t want to notice that sort of thing when a woman is crying in your arms. But now that she’d begun kissing me, it seemed okay to think about them.
They were pushed out between the bars, soft and springy against my chest.
While we kissed, I squirmed so I could feel them slide on me. We were both sweaty. Our skin was slippery as if we’d been oiled. Her nipples were stiff, and rubbed against my chest like little tongues.
I tried to pull away so Billie wouldn’t feel how hard I was getting. But she held me tightly, so I couldn’t.
Her kiss was astonishing and wet.
By the time it ended, Billie didn’t seem to be crying anymore. We were both gasping for air, though. And she didn’t let me go. She kept her arms around me, just like before the kiss. We stayed pressed together.
“Thank you, honey,” she whispered.
“My pleasure.”
She made a quiet “Hmmm” sound, but didn’t say anything.
“Are you okay?” Kimberly asked.
“A lot better, now,” Billie said.
“I’ll bet,” Connie called.
“Why do you always have to be such a snot?” That one came from Erin—the first I’d heard from either of the twins since I’d left their cages. I grinned.
“Up yours,” Connie yelled at her.
“Same to you and many more.”
Alice got into the act. “Erin! Shhh!”
“She’s such a bitch.”
