The cart moved relentlessly forward for hours. Sarah didn’t notice if it stopped, though later she would realized it must have in order for the men to relieve themselves on the side of the road. Two of the women she shared the back of the cart with soiled themselves and seemed not to notice or care. When Sarah began to emerge from her self-induced dreamlike state, she was aware that it was nearly dawn. They had driven all night. Or, if they stopped, she had no memory of it.
It was her own need to empty her bladder that tugged her back to reality. When she found herself looking around the cart interior, she saw a pair of bright brown eyes watching her.
“If you need to use the loo,” the voice whispered in an English accent, “you just knock on the seat behind you. They’ll stop because they don’t want to have to clean up any messes.”
Sarah stared at her and licked her lips. Someone had pulled her gag down and it hung like a decorative scarf at her neck. She glanced at the other two women, who clearly could have benefited from that information earlier. They hugged each other tightly, their eyes sealed shut. Sarah assumed they had been taken together. She looked back at the woman with the big brown eyes.
“Why?” she croaked. As soon as she spoke the word, she was sorry. The last thing she wanted to do was talk about or think about what had happened, let alone what was happening. Immediately she held up her hand, palm out, and shook her head. “No,” she whispered.
But it was too late. The image of David came roaring back, blotting out every other sight or thought or sound. Sarah covered her face with her hands and a terrible, keening moan erupted from her throat. David all crumpled up and bloody, his eyes not seeing the sky or the ground. Her handsome husband. His wit, his crinkling blue eyes that saw everything so clearly. Dear God, how could it be possible? After everything they’d been through. After all the close calls, all the sacrifices…how was it possible to lose him now?
“Do you need to go?” the voice whispered again.
Sarah pulled her hands from her face. Her wrists chafed badly where they were tied but she didn’t care. She looked at the woman, who looked almost friendly.
“Why?” she asked again, this time with resignation.
“I overheard them talking,” the woman said, scooting closer to Sarah. “They’re hoping to ransom us to our families.”
Sarah looked at her like she was mad.
“We just need to sit tight,” the woman said, smiling shyly. “Not do anything to get us hurt in the meantime.”
“I have no family.” The pit of her stomach roiled as she thought of her husband lying in his own gore in their south pasture. A flashing image of John came to her and she felt a moment’s dread that these monsters might have visited Donovan’s place, but no, there was just the four women in the cart.
“Well, then whoever wants you returned, pet,” the woman said. “I’m Angie by the way.”
Sarah could see that Angie’s bonds were looser than her own. As she watched, the woman constantly moved her wrists and tugged at the fibers of the rope that bound her.
“Sarah,” Sarah said tiredly. Could it be that simple? Ransom? “How do they know where to go to find our families?”
Angie shrugged. “I’m just telling what I heard ‘em say.”
Sarah nodded and then reached up and tapped firmly on the wooden bench over her head to get her captors’ attention. She felt the cart slow and then stop. The tarp over the top of the cart, which had given them the impression of a snug little cave, was wrenched off, exposing them all to the wind and the rain. Sarah guessed it was late afternoon by the light, although she wasn’t sure she hadn’t been unconscious for part of the trip.
Involuntarily, she took in a hungry gasp of air, as if she’d only been breathing with a half a lung under the tarp. The face that glared at her from over the cart’s side was the young redheaded man who had helped drag David to the fence. He hadn’t pulled the trigger, but he had helped kill him.
His eyes looked at Angie, questioning, and his face seemed to soften.
“Oy,” Angie said, her voice softer and pleading. “We need to use the facilities.”
The man looked away and the leader joined him at the side of the cart. “Jesus!” he said. “Smells like you already did. What pigs! Come on, Aidan, get ‘em out. Blimey, what else would you expect from the Irish?”
“Jeff!” the driver called. “Take over here and let me do that, eh? You’ve had all the fun today.”
The young man called Aidan pulled the gate down in back and Sarah and Angie scooted toward the opening. They were stopped in the middle of the road, but Sarah hadn’t seen another traveler. Angie scrambled out first and Sarah watched the two men’s faces as she did. They must have been bored, she thought. They were enjoying the distraction. She looked into the face of the man called Jeff—the one who’d murdered David—and she carved his features into her brain.
One day. Some day. If not me, it’ll be someone like me. I’ll see you punished.
Before Angie was all the way out of the cart, Jeff reached forward and grabbed her breasts, pulling her all the way out. She squealed in pain as he wrenched her out of the cart and dropped her to the ground while the other men laughed.
Sarah’s heart pounded as the third man came around the side of the cart. He was homely, his face pocked with old acne scars. It’s true, she thought with her fear rising inside her. People born ugly will act ugly. She jumped down from the cart and went to stand next to Angie, who was glowering at Jeff as he climbed back into the driver’s seat of the cart and picked up the reins. Sarah looked around and then held up her hands.
“Can you untie us?” she said. “I can’t get my…my…” It occurred to her that she didn’t want to be anywhere near these animals when she had her pants down, but short of soiling herself, she had to try.
Aidan glanced at Angie again, then pulled out a knife and stuck it between the cords of Sarah’s wrists. Her hands sprang free as soon as they were cut and she quickly massaged them, but forced the automatic thank you that was on her lips back into her throat.
“Try anything and I’ll tie your hands to your feet for the rest of the trip,” he said, as he cut through Angie’s cords.
Angie and Sarah edged away from the road and into the ravine, where they lowered their pants and relieved themselves. She could hear the other two women whimpering and she guessed they were having their bonds cut, too. Before she was quite finished, the ugly one came and peered over the ravine at them. He laughed and then turned away.
Angie zipped up her jeans and rubbed the red marks on her wrists.
“They’re fucking animals,” she said, her face flushed with anger. “I’m not even Irish, nor you neither.”
Before she could answer, Sarah heard a scream from the road. She fastened her jeans and bolted up the side of the ravine. She saw that the ugly one had one of the other women down on the ground. Her scream had been silenced by the large, filthy hand that gripped her face. She lay motionless as he ripped at her skirt with the other and positioned himself between her legs.
“Old enough to be your mother, ya randy git!”
“I think this is his mother!”
“Nah, I’ve had her. She ain’t this fine.”
The men’s raucous laughter echoed down the empty road.
Without thinking, Sarah charged. She felt Angie’s fingers gripping at her from behind, but she shook her off and sprinted across the road.
By the time she reached the two on the ground, the oaf had obviously removed all obstacles to his goal as his naked backside was pumping vigorously. Before Sarah could reach him, an arm whipped out and pulled her off her feet and swung her away from them. When Aidan set her on her feet, he backhanded her full force into the side of the cart. Sarah’s head cracked against the wagon and all light and sound snapped out as she slumped to the ground.
When she awoke, her hands were bound again and the cart was once more moving. Either it was dark out or the tarp was covering them with no gap, and Sarah could barely make out the forms of the other three women with her. She ran her tongue over her teeth and found at least three loose ones. Her head ached badly and her arm felt on fire. That must have happened when they’d reloaded her unconscious body back into the cart, she thought.
“You awake, Sarah?”
Sarah turned to see Angie’s anxious face next to her. “You scared the shit out of me,. Why did you do that? That was crazy.”
Sarah’s eyes tried to adjust to the dark and see the woman who’d been raped. She sat where she had before, holding the younger woman and staring where the opening in the tarp had been, as if hoping to catch a glimpse of the scenery.
Sarah looked back at Angie and closed her eyes. She was definitely seeing double, so she guessed she probably had a concussion.
“You gotta stop that shit, Sarah. They are gonna bloody do what they’re gonna do. Just let ‘em!”
Sarah opened her eyes and saw that Angie looked genuinely distressed.
“Trust me, they’ll do all of us before we get where we’re going. You want to live to escape, you gotta pick your battles.”
Sarah knew she was right. She had been foolish this afternoon, with no plan or weapon beyond her horror and anger.
If I get killed, I’ll never see John again.
As if reading her mind, Angie reached out to touch Sarah’s hand and Sarah saw that she was tied again, too. “You really don’t have any family?”
Sarah took a long withering breath and willed the emotion to stay in check. Her voice was a whisper. “A son.”
“Is he young? Young enough to need his Mum?”
Sarah looked at Angie and forced the tears not to come. “He doesn’t think so,” she said, and tried to smile.
“So see? You gotta stay in one piece, however you need to do that, for his sake.”
Sarah nodded and then shifted against the cart. Some of them must be asleep, she thought. Normally she could hear voices from the front. Two on the cart front and one—Gareth, she thought they’d called him—riding point on a green gelding.
“How about you?” Sarah asked.
Angie’s face relaxed but she shook her head. “Not yet,” she said. “But I aim to live long enough to do it some day.” She shrugged. “I got a boyfriend.”
Sarah looked away and felt the terrible agony of the day close around her like a vice she couldn’t escape from. She wasn’t even sure it was her voice that spoke, but it must have been. “I had a husband. A good man. A loving father. My dearest friend…” She put her hands to her face and a terrible keening wail came from deep inside her. She could hear one of the drivers, either Jeff or Aidan, knock hard against the side of the cart. “Shut up in there!”
Angie’s hand squeezed Sarah’s. “Shhh, Sarah,” she said. “Keep it in, petal. Keep it all inside for now.”
Sarah took a shuddering breath and nodded. Using every inch of strength she ever possessed, she shoved the desperate, bottomless, grief deep inside her.