?Shut your gob!? Quinn shouts, seizing Linda?s haunches and driving harder. ?You know what they really loved in the arena? Women and animals. They?d take the urine of female animals and spread it on virgins, sometimes twenty at a time. Then they?d let the trained males at them. Baboons and mandrills, bulls and boars, dogs and leopards, even giraffes. That'?s history?real, every bit of it.? Quinn shows Caitlin his gray teeth. ?People don'?t change, and you?re no different.?
Caitlin can?t bear to look at Linda?s face. All she can think to do is deflect some of Quinn?s bottomless rage onto herself. ?I?d like to see
you
get it this rough,? she says. ?See how you like being on the receiving end.?
Quinn huffs and laughs. ?A man does the givin?, princess. The woman does the takin?. I'm not particular, so long as it?s warm and tight.?
?Your day is coming,? Caitlin says in a barely audible voice. ?There are places not far from here where men twice your size will be happy to give you what you?re giving her. Twice as much, from what I saw when you dropped your pants.?
Quinn pulls out and starts toward Caitlin, but before he can reach her, the door to her right bursts open and two men enter the room. One wears a black balaclava hood, the other a green one. The man in the black mask looks from Quinn to Caitlin, then back at Quinn. It?s as though Linda isn?t in the room.
?What are you doing here?? Quinn asks in a dazed voice.
?Liam called me.? The black-masked man?s voice seems hardly distinguishable from Quinn?s. ?About a day late, by the look of it.?
?You told me I could do what I wanted with her.?
?You bloody sod. For one night, I said.? The man looks at Caitlin, eyes glinting through the slanted eyeholes cut in the balaclava. ?Has he touched you??
Caitlin is certain that the man in the black balaclava is Jonathan Sands, but given the circumstances, letting him know that could be fatal. ?Only to put this collar on me,? she says. ?He?s raped her for
two days straight, though. She has some serious infections, her leg and her urinary tract. She needs an emergency room right away.?
Quinn laughs, then cuts off the sound with a cough.
The man in the black balaclava takes two steps toward Quinn and leans forward as though to speak, but then his right hand lashes out and cracks the bridge of Quinn?s nose. Blood erupts from the Irishman?s face, and he topples backward, holding his nose with both hands.
The third man watches without reaction.
Quinn gets to his knees but remains doubled over, blood pouring through his hands. Sands extends his arm to help him up, but when Quinn takes the hand, Sands snaps his boot into Quinn?s rib cage with a crunch. The force of the blow lifts Quinn bodily from the cement. He drops flat on his belly, gasping for air.
?Get up, you piece of shite.?
Quinn gets slowly to his knees, covering his belly like a beaten dog preparing for another kick, then slides up the wall behind him until he?s erect.
Sands jerks his head toward Caitlin. ?Where?s her clothes??
?Over there. In the cabinet.?
?Get ?em. And take that fuckin? collar off her.?
?Why? Are you trading her??
?Get her bloody clothes. And keep your mouth shut while you?re about it. Jaysus.?
Quinn goes to the cabinet and retrieves Caitlin?s jeans and T-shirt. ?You broke my ribs,? he grunts, as he hands them to her.
?I ought to give you a proper digging,? Sands mutters. ?You ignore another order and I'?ll have Liam kneecap you. I?'ve half a mind to do it here and now. Got a drill in the lorry.?
Quinn holds up both hands, silently pleading for mercy.
?What about it, ladies?? Sands asks. ?You want to hear this bastard scream??
?We just want to go home,? Caitlin says. ?We don'?t care about you or him or whatever you?re doing.?
A toothy smile flashes through the mouth of the balaclava. ?That'?s what you say now. But you?ll feel different later.?
?What are you going to do with us??
Sands sniffs and keeps looking at her, but says nothing. Slowly, his eyes travel from her breasts to her ankles, then back to her eyes. As this happens, she realizes that there is no ?us? for Sands or Quinn. In their minds, Linda is already dead.
?You?ll be home in twenty-four hours, good as new,? Sands says. ?That'?s a promise.?
?I don'?t believe you.?
?You don'?t have to. It?s the truth.?
?What about Linda??
Sands glances to his right, where Linda remains bent over the table, sobbing through her nose, covering the duct tape with glistening mucus.
?She?ll be looked after. She can?t go back home, though. Not right away. She?ll have to start over somewhere else. We?ll either give her a job on one of our other boats or see she has the money to start somewhere else. Money?s no problem.?
Caitlin knows he?s lying, but there?s nothing to be done. She wishes Linda believed what he was saying, but who knows better than Linda Church how worthless Sands?s promises are?
Quinn takes a key from atop the cabinet, then comes over and unlocks the thick leather collar from Caitlin?s neck. He?s still naked from the waist down, but his erection?s gone, his penis shrunk to a nub.
?Go ahead,? Sands says to Caitlin.
?What??
?Kick him. Right in the bollocks. He deserves it for being so bloody stupid.?
As Quinn darts out of reach of her feet, Caitlin recalls what he asked Sands:
Are you trading her?
Penn must be trying to negotiate her release by trading something for her. What? Could he be onto Ben Li?s private insurance policy? During the night, Linda told her that Quinn had several times asked her what ?The birds know? might mean. Apparently Ben Li had screamed this phrase several times as he was being interrogated belowdecks on the
Magnolia Queen.
Maybe Penn has cracked this mysterious code?
?Put her back in the office,? Sands says to Quinn, who?s pulling on his pants.
?What about the other one??
?Wherever you had her before. And get her some fucking medicine. Human medicine. You know where to get it.?
Quinn looks puzzled by this order, but he signals his willingness to obey with a nod.
?I'?ll take Masters,? Sands says, motioning Caitlin toward the storeroom door.
Her door is the first outside the storeroom, the only other room with four walls. Now she can see the rest of the kennel, and it?s just as Linda described it, two rows of Cyclone-fence stalls, the cats housed in the one nearest the main door.
