Twenty-one

He’d promised not to hurt her if she did what he asked.

He lied.

Maggie lay in the dark, battered cheek pressed against the rough concrete floor, long gone warm under her feverish skin. She was bleeding. She could feel the sluggish weep of it drying against her face. Her back. Her arms. Between her legs.

Thinking of it—of what he’d done to her—made her want to curl into a ball, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t protect herself. Couldn’t fight back. Couldn’t run.

She’d tried and she’d failed.

What he’d asked her to do was impossible. How could she give someone a miracle? She wasn’t God. She wasn’t anyone. But she’d done as he asked anyway because he’d promised …

I want you to give to Robert what has been given to you. I want you to give him a miracle. Save his life.

Feeling foolish, Maggie had lifted her bound hands, dropping them onto Robert’s chest. The man standing beside her watched, his gaze riveted to the place where her fingers pressed against the sick man’s sternum. She’d been about to ask if she was doing it right. To tell him she didn’t know what she was doing but then her gaze traveled the length of his arm, giving her a good look at what he held. As a vet tech, she’d seen something like it before. Knew what it was used for. It was a snap-action bolt gun, used by ranchers to kill cattle and horses. Pressed against the base of the skull, once triggered, it would shoot a bolt, as long and as thick as a man’s finger, through bone and soft tissue and into the brain.

Maggie looked away, fixing her eyes on the wire wrapped around her wrists. The raw red rings left from where she’d fought against her restraints. She thought of the woman she’d heard earlier—her terrified screams, the keening wail of them suddenly cut short—and knew how she’d died.

Maggie had bowed her head and began to pray. Out of practice, she fumbled the words before she found their familiar rhythm. Her palms flat against the man’s chest, she could feel the shallow rise and fall of it. How close he was to dying.

Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope, to thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve …

She didn’t know how long she prayed but when she finally raised her head, she looked up to find that the man beside her was watching her. As soon as she made eye contact with him, she tried to look away. She didn’t like what she saw there.

“You please me, Margaret,” he said to her, reaching for her hands before she had a chance to pull away. He led her across the room, toward the door. Relief sapped the strength from her bones, causing her knees to buckle slightly, and she stumbled to keep pace with him.

He’d take her back to the room he kept her in. She’d sit in the dark and wait quietly. She’d be good. Do as he said and he’d keep his promise. She’d get to go home soon.

But he didn’t take her back and he didn’t keep his promise.

Instead he reached for the screen that stood across from the door. The one she’d seen when she came in. Thinking of what she saw behind it, she jolted back, yanking on the grip he had on her. Ignoring her protests, he simply jerked her forward before folding the screen back to prop it against the wall, giving her a full view of what she’d only caught a glimpse of before. It looked like a sawhorse, the kind you’d find on a construction site. Harmless—until you noticed the leather straps.

Like the bolt gun, she’d seen this thing before too. It was a breeding stand. Dog fighting was prevalent in the area and so was the brutal, disgusting practice of forced breeding. She knew without asking what he intended to do with it.

She pulled against the hold he had on her. The wire bit deeper, chewing at the sensitive flesh of her wrist. “You promised,” she said, digging her bloodstained heels in to the cement floor, even as she started to shake her head. “You said if I did what you wanted, you wouldn’t hurt me.” Her voice climbed an octave, taking on the same hysterical edge she’d heard in the other woman’s screams. “Please, you promised. You can’t—”

He hit her, his closed fist slamming into the side of her head. Stars exploded across her field of vision. She crumpled to the ground, stunned, a high-pitched peal sounding between her ears, making her nauseated.

“I did no such thing, Margaret,” he said, bending at the waist to lift her to her feet. The sudden shift knocked her off balance and she tilted forward, gagging on the oily roll of her stomach as she pitched forward again, her shoulder hitting the floor with another dull thud. “I said I wouldn’t hurt you—yet.” He sighed as if exasperated and gave up on trying to stand her up. He settled for dragging her to the stand instead. “Unfortunately, suffering is a part of the process,” he said, lifting her again but only far enough to sling her over the back of the bench, looping her bound hands around the hook set at its top. “I hope you understand this gives me no pleasure, Margaret.”

He lied about that too.

–––––

She could hear him through the stout metal door, his voice penetrating the dark cocoon she’d wrapped herself in. He was talking. The rise and fall of his tone said he was speaking to someone else, but there had been no one. She’d screamed for help and no one came. Strained and tore against the leather straps he’d used to keep her in place. The only person she’d seen had been the man who lay dying in the corner of the room where he’d hurt her. Listening to him talk now, she slipped away. A final thought came before the dark pulled her under.

He isn’t alone.