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Plain and ordinary. Except for the fact that he was holding a whip.
“Dammit, tell me who you are!”
The whip came down and hit her on her wrist below the cuff. She screamed, then bit her lip, holding back the cry. She would not give him the satisfaction.
“You will not speak unless I tell you to speak.”
“Fuck you!”
The whip came down a second time, and again she cried out.
You idiot, Lucy, he means what he says.
“Now that you’re awake, it is time for your first lesson. Watch and learn.”
Lucy began to shake.
He placed a bowl of scrambled eggs and bacon between the bars of the cage. Lucy looked over at the girl as she dropped the blankets. She was about Lucy’s age, maybe a year or two younger, blond with large blue eyes. She’d been pretty, and would be again, when the bruises that covered her face healed. He’d beaten her.
She wore a filthy, loose-fitting floral housedress, the old-fashioned kind that Lucy’s mother sometimes wore when she was flitting around the house. Her face was clean, though streaked with tear stains, and there was blood on the dress.
“You may eat,” the man said.
The woman crawled to the bowl without looking at Lucy and ate, her face close to the bowl, her hands slowly but purposefully scooping up the breakfast and eating.
In all her criminal psychology classes, Lucy had never encountered a situation like this. She didn’t know what to make of it. It was like a slave–master relationship. How long had the woman been held captive?
When the woman was done, she went back to her corner and averted her eyes.
The man smiled at Lucy. “See how well she obeys?”
“Is that what we are to you? Animals?”
“No. You’re females.”
The tone told her he believed women were beneath animals. He was some sort of misogynist? How many women had he hurt? What did he do to them?
He said, “You will obey just like that one.”
“My brothers will hunt you down like an animal, you bastard!”
He lashed out again with the whip, his face red, his eyes narrow. She bit back a cry when the tip came down on her upper shoulder.
He leaned over and said through clenched teeth, “They will never find me. They will never find you.
“Woman!” he shouted at the girl in the corner. “Show the bitch what happens when you disobey.”
The girl pulled up the back of her dress. Her buttocks were red and swollen, more than a dozen welts blistering her skin.
He turned to Lucy with a half-smile. “If you speak again to me in that tone, if you swear at me, if you talk without my permission, you will suffer the same fate. And you will learn, girl. You will obey me.”
He walked up the stairs and turned off the light.
FORTY
Sean had not felt so helpless since he was fourteen and his parents were killed in a plane crash.
He’d fallen asleep at his desk late—four? Five?—and woke at dawn. Dillon was asleep on the small couch in his office, his long legs hanging over the armrest.
