24 Hours

  “I could use a drink,” he said. “Bourbon. Kentucky bourbon, if you got it.”

  The bourbon was kept on a sideboard in Will’s study. Karen laid her jeans on the foot of the bed and went back up the hall, thankful for a chance to postpone what seemed inevitable. Had five other mothers submitted to this?

  In the study, she saw Will’s computer glowing softly. For a moment she considered trying to send a message to his pager via the SkyTel, but she had never used it before. And besides, what could she say? I’m about to be raped? If she did, Will would probably do something heroic and stupid, and get Abby killed. As she poured a shot of Wild Turkey, she realized that bourbon might accomplish what defiance could not. If Hickey drank enough whiskey fast enough, he might not be able to perform. It was probably a long shot, though. Karen thought the old saying about alcohol increasing desire but decreasing ability was exaggerated. Some of the best sex she and Will ever had was consummated when they were drunk. Of course, that had been a while back, when Will was in his mid-thirties. This thought disturbed the deep well of guilt inside her, but mixed with it was enough resentment to force the guilt down.

  She picked up the Wild Turkey bottle and walked back toward her bedroom. Unexpected images flashed in her mind, scenes from a film she had seen long ago and forgotten until now. It starred Nicole Kidman. She couldn’t remember its name, but Nicole and her husband had been blue-water sailing and had rescued a man in a life raft. The man turned out to be psychotic, and sailed off from Nicole’s husband with her aboard. To go back and save her husband, Nicole had to get control of the boat again. But the psychopath had the gun. Before long, he decided to rape her, and what Karen remembered about the film—what had stayed with her long after—was that Nicole had let it happen. She had known it was the wrong moment to resist, and she had endured the rape in the hope of surviving until the right moment came. And it had arrived, finally, proving her sacrifice worthwhile.

  As Karen neared the bedroom, words from her dead mother rose in her mind. A genteel woman speaking of rape in the language of older generations of southern women. The “fate worse than death,” they called it. But they were wrong. Pride had bred a lot of wrong notions, and that was one. Karen had lived long enough to know that. Rape could scar forever, but it was not death. Where there’s life, there’s hope, her father had always said. And whatever it cost, she and Abby were going to live through this night.

  Hickey was smiling when she stepped through the door. “Wild Turkey!” he cried. “I’ll be damned. Bring that here!”

  She crossed the room and gave him the bottle, then took three steps back.

  “Scared I’ll bite?” He unscrewed the cap and drank liberally from the wide glass mouth, then set the bottle between his legs. “I’ll tell you a little secret. I do.”

  She looked away.

  “Put your pants back on,” he said.

  What should have been a welcome command only made her more anxious. She went to the bed and slipped her panties on, then slid her jeans up and snapped them.

  “Look at me,” Hickey said.

  She looked.

  His black eyes seethed. “You know what a lap dance is?”

  Lurid images from HBO movies went through her mind. Scantily clad women hunching over bar patrons in chairs, wiggling their silicone-enhanced breasts in the faces of bachelor party boys and rheumy-eyed older men.

  “No,” she replied.

  “You’re lying. You know what one is. What you don’t know is, my wife had to do them for a living for a while. That bugged me, Karen. That she had to do that.”

  So why didn’t you get a decent job? she thought. But what she said was, “I’m sorry she had to do that.”

  His face went sullen. “All those bastards feeling her up, slobbering all over her. Your husband was probably one of them. She danced right here in Jackson.”

  “Will doesn’t go to those places.”

  Hickey’s eyes glinted. “Who you think you’re kidding? You think hubby never had a lap dance?”

  “No. At least I don’t think so.”

  “You’re living in a dream world. Ten to one, he’d have gotten one tonight on the coast, if this thing hadn’t come up. Hell, a weekend away from the old lady? Even one who looks like you do . . . a man needs a little variety.”

  “That’s your wife with Will right now?”

  “That’s right.”

  Every time Hickey confided another detail, Karen became more convinced that he didn’t intend to let her live through this ordeal.

  “What’s going on in that little head of yours?” he asked. “Trying to think your way out of the box?”

  “Your wife doesn’t see anything wrong with kidnapping?”

  “She doesn’t see anything wrong with anything I do. And if she does, she keeps quiet about it. Get the picture?”

  “I think so.”

  He took another slug of Wild Turkey. “We need some music. You got a stereo in that TV cabinet?”

  Karen walked over and switched on the CD player. “What do you want to hear?”

  “Something with a steady beat. You need a good beat for a lap dance. Not too fast, but not too slow either.”

  With a growing sense of unreality, she scanned the CD rack. Will collected everything from classic rock to country and New Age. There was music here that made her feel sexy, but she didn’t want to taint it by being raped to its accompaniment. At a loss, she finally chose a Best of the 80s compilation. The first song was “Every Breath You Take” by the Police. The bass and drums began to pulse sinuously from speakers Will had mounted in the ceiling. When she turned, Hickey was nodding to the beat.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Yeah. Come over here.”

  She took a step closer to the ottoman.

  “Dance.”

  She would have laughed, were the situation not so desperate. It was like the old Westerns her father had loved so much, where the black-hatted gunfighter said the same line to the frightened homesteader.

  “I said dance,” Hickey repeated.

  Karen began to sway to the music, but she felt awkward. She had never been a good dancer. Will claimed she was, but she knew she lacked the effortless grace of some girls she had known growing up. Longlimbed creatures who, through some physical alchemy, absorbed sound waves and transformed that energy into purely sensual motion.

  “Closer,” Hickey said.

  Karen danced nearer the chair, but jerked back as Hickey’s hand reached toward her.

  “It’s just money,” he said.

  He was telling the truth. In his hand was a folded one-dollar bill.

  “Come over here.”

  She danced closer, and he stuffed the bill into the front pocket of her jeans.

  “That means you gotta take something off,” he said, as though explaining the rules of a game.

  She hesitated, then slowly unbuttoned her blouse until it hung from her shoulders.

  “Shake it off.”

  She did. Goose bumps raced across her back and shoulders.

  “Those aren’t half bad,” Hickey said, staring at her bra.

  Karen focused on the wall and kept swaying to the music, but her mind was spinning. How fast could the Wild Turkey dull his senses? How long could she distract him from what he really wanted?

  “Lean over,” he ordered.

  She bent slightly at the waist, and he rose up and stuffed a dollar bill into her bra.

  “You know what that means, babe.”

  She unsnapped her jeans, but Hickey shook his head. “The bra. The bra next.”

  She almost stopped dancing. Part of her—the part that took no nonsense from anyone, man or woman—wanted to scream, If you’re going to rape me, just get it over with! But a wiser part of her knew that would be a mistake. Anything could happen between now and the moment he actually forced himself on her. Miracles could happen. Her bra hooked in front. Dancing a little more enthusiastically, she reached up and undid the catch, then threaded her
fingers under the shoulder straps and slid off the cups with exaggerated sensuality.

  “That’s better,” Hickey intoned. “Jesus, you look good. For a mother, I mean. You ought to get some implants, though.”

  I don’t want any damn implants! she screamed silently. But she let the music penetrate further into her, and gave more of herself to it.

  “Yeah,” he encouraged, holding up another bill. A five this time. She danced closer, close enough for him to slide the five into her pocket, but he shook his head.

  “Lean over. And don’t use your hands.”

  It took her a moment to figure out what he wanted, but it was simple enough. She bent over and used her upper arms to bring her breasts together, creating a soft niche for Hickey to stuff his five-dollar bill into. He immediately made use of it.

  “Now the jeans.”

  She unzipped the jeans but left them on. As she spun slowly, he took another slug of Wild Turkey and stared mesmerized at her chest. The effect was almost comical, one that Karen had never really understood. Men stared at naked breasts the way LSD trippers stared at the sun, as though mammary glands held the secret of the universe. As Hickey stared, she saw that his dazed fascination gave her a certain amount of control. Instead of removing her jeans, she licked her forefinger and brought it down to her right nipple, then traced a small circle around it. When it responded, Hickey’s nostrils flared and his eyes widened. He took another long pull from the bottle.

  She raised both arms and began swaying to “Hold Me Now” by the Thompson Twins. She thought she must look like a go-go girl in one of those hanging cages from the sixties. Hickey was nodding in time to the beat, gripping the bottle by its neck and drinking from it every few seconds. His eyes looked darker than before, if that was possible. No longer bottomless pools, but flat disks of slate. Shark’s eyes. No knowledge in them, only hunger. A vast, insatiable appetite.

  “Come on,” he rasped. “Let’s see the goods.”

  She didn’t want to take off her jeans. The vulnerability she had felt without them was dehumanizing. But she couldn’t afford to make him truly angry. Then she would lose any semblance of control. She had to keep him drinking, convince him that she was going along. She let the jeans ride down her hips, then lifted her knees one at a time and kicked her feet out of them. That she managed this without falling on her butt was a miracle in itself—she hoped not the only one of the night.

  That thought evaporated as Hickey slid down in the chair so that his legs were fully extended, his hips and thighs stretched like a bridge between the chair and ottoman. “Stand over me,” he said. “Then you sit down and dance. That’s called a sofa dance.”

  Sofa dance?

  “Hurry,” he said insistently. “Right here.”

  He meant his lap. Karen was nearing the limit of her tolerance. She stepped over his outstretched legs but did not sit down. She could no longer dance in any real sense, only sway from the waist up. But Hickey seemed content for the moment.

  “Turn around,” he said.

  She thought she detected a slur in his pronunciation. She stepped over his legs, then back over them so that she was facing his feet. She had never been more thankful for underwear. She focused on the “L” of light that was her almost-closed bathroom door.

  “Damn,” Hickey said softly. “That’s a work of art. Bend over. Slow.”

  Karen shut her eyes and bent toward his feet, knowing she was fully exposed now, terrified that he would touch her.

  He did. But with paper, not his hand. Another bill. This one slid between her panties and her skin. She shuddered with disgust, thinking of where that money might have been, who might have touched it. Then she realized that her disgust was not even a fraction of what she would feel when he violated her.

  “Turn around again.”

  She obeyed. To her horror, Hickey had laid a hand in his lap and begun rubbing himself. Her stomach turned a somersault. She was thankful she hadn’t eaten in a while. Or perhaps it would be better if she had. She’d heard that vomiting was a good defense against rape, but she’d never understood how you could do it at the right time. If Hickey touched her now, though, she just might manage it.

  “That was a twenty,” he said. “Twenty for the panties.”

  She couldn’t do it. She could not remove the last barrier between herself and total nakedness. “We’ve got all night,” she said. “Don’t rush it.”

  “Sit!” Hickey commanded, as he would a dog.

  Karen tried to steel herself to obey, but it was no use.

  He took hold of her hips with powerful hands and yanked her down against him. In the first instant of contact, a torrent of emotions raced through her. Terror first, because now it was real. Whiskey wasn’t going to keep this man from performing. Nothing was, except death, and if she somehow managed to kill him, Abby would die, too. With the terror came dazed disbelief. She had not felt any other man but Will in that place for fifteen years, and only two before him. To be touched there by someone she had not chosen was an affront to her most secret self. But most deeply she felt guilt, for allowing it to go this far. Even though logic told her she had no alternative, her insecurity said there had to be one. One that a braver or more moral woman would have seen without thought. But the only alternative she could see was death for Abby.

  As Hickey groaned in rapture, a cold certainty crystallized in Karen’s brain. No matter what Nicole Kidman had done in the movies, she could not endure being raped by this man. By any man. For any reason. Her answer to the eternal female question—would I fight or submit?—was an unequivocal fight.

  Hickey groaned again, and this time the sound pierced her to the marrow. Will sometimes made exactly the same sound during sex. The thought that there was any connection between her marital lovemaking and what was happening now nauseated her. But of course there was. Will was as human as any man, and he wanted sex all the time. Much more often than she did, anyway. And not just lovemaking. He wanted physical sex, an outlet for his drives and frustrations, and she resented that. There had been a time, just before and after their marriage, when she had felt a powerful urge to make love. But that had slowly faded with time. Not that she loved him less. But after she was forced to give up medical school, her desire flatlined. She couldn’t voice the reason to Will, but the fact was that submitting to his sexual desires seemed the ultimate expression of the terrible sacrifice she had made. Because it was sex, at bottom, that had made that sacrifice necessary. And just because Will got an erection every morning and night was no reason she had to wait at his beck and call like some nineteenth-century hausfrau—

  “Get up!” Hickey ordered. “That’s enough fore-play.”

  She practically leaped off him and retreated toward the TV cabinet.

  He thrust himself to his feet and carried the bottle of Wild Turkey to the bedside table. Then he walked back toward her, pulling off his Polo shirt as he came, revealing a pale, wiry torso. Only his neck was tanned, and his arms from the elbows down. A farmer’s tan, her father had called it. When he reached for his belt, Karen looked at the carpet.

  “Watch,” he said, his voice full of pride.

  She took a deep breath and looked up as Hickey’s khakis hit the floor. A tingling numbness began to creep outward from some place deep within her. The act would be bad, she knew, but the anticipation was worse. The knowing—while you were still intact—that absolute suffering was inevitable. That the place you had protected all your life was about to be violated. That no help would come. There was only Hickey. And Abby. Abby hanging over her head like a sword, enforcing every command he gave.

  The numbness continued to spread through her, and the temptation was to let it come, like a freezing person giving in to the cold. Let it penetrate into my bones, she thought. Into my heart and soul, so that whatever happens will be unfelt, a crime committed upon another person, an insensate body. A cadaver. And yet, if she let the numbness that far in, could she ever get it all out again?
r />   As Hickey stared at her with his stupid schoolboy grin, something stirred deep within her. Not quite a thought, but the seed of one. A tiny spark of awareness, smoldering and darkly feminine. A ruthless, chthonic knowledge of male vulnerability.

  Her moment would come.

  EIGHT

  Huey sat across from Abby on the linoleum floor of the cabin, whittling slowly. He had dragged an old saddle blanket in from the bedroom and set her on it, so she wouldn’t have to sit on the bare floor. She clutched the Barbie in her little hands like a talisman.

  “Do you feel better now?” asked Huey.

  Abby nodded. “A little bit.”

  “Are you hungry? I’m hungry.”

  “Kind of. My tummy hurts.”

  A knot of worry formed in Huey’s stomach. “What do you like? I got baloney. You like Captain Crunch? I love Captain Crunch.”

  “I have to eat Raisin Bran.”

  “You can’t eat Captain Crunch?”

  “No.”

  “How come?”

  Her lips puckered and moved to one side as she thought about it. “Well, when you eat, the food puts sugar in your blood. And you’ve got stuff in your body to make the sugar go away. But I don’t have any. So, the sugar gets more and more until it makes me sick. And if I get too sick, I’ll go to sleep. Sleep and maybe never wake up.”

  Fear passed into Huey’s face like a shadow falling over a rock. He rubbed his hands anxiously across his puttylike cheeks. “That happened to my sister. Jo Ellen. I wish I could give you some of my blood to make your sugar go away.”

  “That’s what’s in my shots. Stuff to make the sugar go away. I don’t like needles, but I don’t like being sick, either. It hurts.”

  “I hate needles,” Huey said forcefully. “Hate, hate, hate.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Hate needles,” Huey reasserted.

  “There are big ones and little ones, though,” Abby said. “My shots have the littlest kind. Some shots have really big ones. Like when they take your blood. And sometimes my dad has to stick people in the back. In the spine cord. Or in the nerves sometimes. That hurts the worst. But he does it to make a bigger hurt go away.”