Staying hidden, I kept watch for a long time. Nobody appeared. No lights came on.
Maybe I had the wrong house.
Maybe this house had nothing to do with Wesley, and was simply deserted.
No, no. Our dinghy was at the dock.
This had to be the right house.
But maybe Wesley wasn't using it. He might've simply raided the place, taken what he wanted (including the man and woman who lived here), and returned to some secret base camp in the jungle.
If he wasn't here, I'd already wasted hours upon hours.
I suddenly couldn't stand the thought of waiting any longer, so I broke cover and dashed across the lawn. Nobody yelled. Nobody shot at me. Nothing happened. I stopped at the side of the house, near its rear corner. Leaning against the wall, I tried to catch my breath and calm down.
So far, so good.
I'll just walk around the whole building, I thought. Check to see if there are any lights on.
If the place is dark, I'll try to get in.
The Game
I was about to push myself away from the wall when a fluttery, dim glow seemed to drift out the window just to my left and hover in the darkness. The murky light was so faint, at first, that I wondered if it might be a trick of the moonlight -- or my imagination.
It grew brighter.
I gazed at it, stunned. For a while, I couldn't move. Then I forced myself to sneak toward the window.
I was afraid of what I might find, but I had to look. My heart slammed. My stomach trembled. My legs felt weak and unstable.
The fact is, I was shaking all over by the time I reached the window and peered in.
The room on the other side was lit by candles and several kerosine lamps with glass chimneys. Thelma, walking about with a candle in her hand, ignited more candles while I watched.
She wore a glossy, royal blue robe that looked like satin. It was too short for her. She had to reach high, now and then, to light wall sconces. Each time she did that, the lower half of her ass showed. Not a pretty sight. Her big buttocks, ruddy from a sunburn, looked dimpled and lumpy. They were bruised, too, and striped with red marks from being lashed.
Her legs also looked banged up -- a lot more so than they'd been the last time I'd seen her.
When she turned in my direction, I saw that her robe wasn't shut all the way. She was bare down her middle -- except for the loosely tied sash that crossed her belly. The opening was too narrow to let me see much. Only that she'd gotten a sunburn all the way down.
I realized she was coming straight toward me, so I dropped to a crouch.
Directly above my head, the window scooted upward. Thelma sighed.
What if she leans out!
She can't, I told myself. A screen's in the way.
I wondered if she could see me, anyway. Screen or no screen, she might be able to spot the top of my head if she looked downward.
Or she might hear my slamming heart.
No sounds of alarm came from her, though. Just that one sigh. A few seconds later, I heard her bare feet thumping away.
Up again, I put my face to the window screen.
Thelma seemed to be gone. The room she'd left behind was bright with tiny flames. She had lit perhaps twenty of them with her candle, but those twenty were caught and doubled by a mirror that stretched the length of one entire wall -- the wall way over to the left, not the one straight across the room from me, so I'd probably not been reflected in it.
Attached to that mirror wall, at about waist-height, was a wooden rail. It looked like the sort of rail that ballet dancers use during practice.
Dance practice would also explain the long, full-length mirror.
In one corner of the room stood a baby grand piano.
In another corner was a sound system. It appeared to have a turntable, radio, twin speakers, the works.
I saw light fixtures on the ceiling.
Lamps with cords snaking across the floor to wall outlets.
So the mansion came with electricity, after all.
I wondered if there might be a generator, somewhere, that had broken down on Wesley and Thelma. Or maybe they just didn't know how to work it.
Possibly, they'd made a choice not to use any electricity. Maybe they feared it would give them away, somehow. Or perhaps they simply preferred candlelight.
Most of the floor was empty. To give the dancers plenty of prancing space, I suppose.
The room was more than a dance studio, though. Apparently, it doubled as a reading room, or library. It had a few small tables, lamps, and some thickly padded chairs over near the wall to my right. A wall of floor-to-cefling bookshelves.
Movement in the mirror suddenly caught my eyes.
It reflected the doorway near the middle of the bookshelf wall.
I saw Wesley before he even came in.
If I can see him in the mirror, he can probably see me.
I ducked and waited, my heart hammering.
A few quiet sounds came: bare feet, wood creaking, a noise like a chair being scooted, the snick of a striking match. Then Wesley said, "What would you like if you win tonight, my dear?"
A voice murmured, "Nothing."
"Oh, you must want something." Wesley sounded very cheerful. "What'll it be?"
"As if she's gonna win, anyhow," Thelma said. "Hasn't got a chance."
"Of course she has a chance. There's always a chance."
"Yeah, sure," Thelma said. "There's a chance I'll get struck by lightning."
"Name your prize, my dear."
I eased myself higher until I could see in.
The girl stood with her back to me, facing Wesley. She was slender and several inches shorter than Thelma. She had blond hair in a ponytail. She wore a short-sleeved white blouse, a tartan kilt that seemed mostly green and blue, forest green knee socks, and no shoes. The mirror, off to her left, gave me a side view of her face.
I had never seen her before.
My guess was that she might be thirteen or fourteen years old.
Matt's daughter? Daughter of the lagoon woman with the rocks in her belly?
I wanted her to be Kimberly, Billie, or Connie. I'd come here to find them, not some stranger. Where were my women?
My mission wasn't a complete failure, though; at least I'd found my two enemies.
Thelma, off to the girl's right, was facing Wesley.
Wesley sat in a padded armchair, grinning at the girl. He wore a square white bandage on his chest. It reminded me of a pirate's eye patch, the way it covered only one side while his other boob bulged out, bare.
Because of how he sat deep in the chair, with one leg crossed, he looked naked. I'd had that glimpse of him in the mirror, though, while he'd been coming in from the hallway. He'd been wearing a belt, two sheathed knives, and some sort of blue bikini-style shorts -- briefs or a swimming suit, I couldn't tell which. The way he was seated, I couldn't see any of that.
Except for his bandage, he looked like an acre of bare, hairy skin. (He even had hair on the tops of his shoulders.) He had a dark tan.
Other than his chest wound, he didn't have any signs of injury. Nobody'd been whipping him, slapping him, punching him, kicking him, biting him. (I'm aware, of course, that he was sitting on a good wound. I couldn't see it, though.) Pinched between Wesley's thumb and forefinger was the long, silver tube of a cigarette holder -- but not the one I'd seen him using on the yacht. (That had been ivory.) A cigarette was plugged into the end of it. A thin, pale stream of smoke climbed the air in front of his face.
"Your prize, Erin?" he asked again.
The girl's shoulders shrugged slightly. A moment later, she muttered, "Doesn't matter."
Wesley seemed amused. "Of course it matters! Certainly! You must have an incentive. We can't have you giving up too easily, can we?"
The way Erin looked from behind, she had already given up.
"What would you like more than anything else in the whole world?" Wesley asked. "But no fair asking for your mother and father."
After a few moments, Erin said in a soft voice I almost couldn't hear, "Let us go?"
Thelma gave a snort.