"It's my fault," Connie said. She sounded different, suddenly. Quiet and upset. "They use me. If Mom or Kimberly don't go along, I'm the one who gets it. They don't want me getting wrecked, so they . . . keep cooperating. No matter what Wesley wants."
"You've gotta get the keys away from him," Kimberly said. Her hand tightened around my wrist.
"I will," I said. "Are you all okay, though? I mean, I know you're not okay, but . . ."
"We're fucked," Connie said.
"We're fine," Billie said.
"We are not."
"Our injuries aren't too serious," Kimberly explained. "Superficial stuff. We probably don't need a hospital, nothing that bad."
"I had you all figured for dead," I told them.
"Hate to disappoint you," Connie muttered.
"I couldn't find your bodies, though. I went back to where we had the fight. I thought . . . you'd all still be there. But when I couldn't find your bodies . . ."
"We gave up," Kimberly said.
"Thanks to me," Connie said. "My fault. I plead guilty."
"Wesley got her down," Billie explained from her distant cage. "You were already out of it, by then. Thelma'd clobbered you in the head with a rock. You never even saw it coming. Next thing I knew, Connie was flat on her face."
"I was still on the rope," Kimberly said. "By the time I got to the top, Wesley had a foot planted on her back. He was all set to kill her with a machete. We had to give up."
"Glad you did."
"You wouldn't be so glad," Connie said, "if you had to go through this shit."
"Rupert?" Billie asked. "Do you remember all our talk, those first few days, about Wesley's motive? How we figured he wanted to kill everyone?"
"Yeah, for the money."
"We were wrong. It didn't have anything to do with money. He wanted us. The three of us. He had this fantasy about trapping everyone in a remote place, killing the men, and keeping us as his prisoners."
"He admitted it?"
"Yeah. Told me all about it. He had me alone -- Thelma'd wandered off somewhere -- so I started asking questions. He happened to be in a talkative mood. Real pleased with himself. He'd just finished . . . having a fine old time with me. So I found out a lot. For starters, we were all together the first time he met Thelma. So right from the beginning, he knew what we looked like. Me, Connie, and Kimberly."
"Three hot babes," Connie muttered.
Billie said, "He told me that he'd never in his life scored with anything but bow-wows. Women like us would never even think about going out with him."
"'Cause he's a fucking loser," Connie threw in.
"From then on," Billie said, "everything was a set-up. He started by going after Thelma. She was easy."
"Being also a fucking loser," Connie added.
I half expected Kimberly to speak up in her sister's defense, but she kept silent.
Billie said, "What Thelma didn't know is that he only wanted her as a way of getting at the rest of us. He figured he would have plenty of access to us if he married her. Then -- surprise, surprise -- it turned out she was as kinky as he was."
"A match made in Bedlam," Kimberly muttered.
"Both of 'em a couple of fucking sadists," Connie said.
"Was Thelma in on everything?" I asked.
Billie answered. "She sure didn't know her loving husband had the hots for every other woman in her family. He kept that to himself. Along with his big plan to blow up the boat and maroon us."
"He knew the cages were here," Kimberly said.
"He did research," Billie explained. "My God, he hadn't even gone on an actual date with Thelma before he started studying up -- trying to find just the right place for his little caper. He thought about cabins in the mountains, ghost towns, abandoned factories, warehouses, barns -- every sort of place he could imagine where nobody'd be likely to get in his way. Where he could keep us for as long as he wanted, and do anything to us that suited his fancy."
"Fucking degenerate," Connie said.
Billie ignored her. "It wasn't long before he realized that an uninhabited island would be perfect. You're cut off from everyone. You've got the run of the place, so you don't have to keep your prisoners hidden away. Nobody around to hear them scream. And it's tough for them to escape."
"Tough, all right," Kimberly said, her voice low. "Look what happened to Dorothy."
"Who?" I asked.
"Their mother. Dorothy. She made a break for it -- Christ, just a few nights ago -- but they ran her down and nailed her."
"I heard about it," I muttered.
"Those poor children," Billie said, keeping her voice quiet, not wanting Alice and Erin to hear her. "They've been through worse than any of us. They've been in the cages for almost a month. They've lost their mother and father. And . . . Wesley and Thelma do such awful things to them. My God, they're only kids."
"Kids with tits and . . ."
"Knock it off, Connie," Kimberly snapped. In a softer voice, she said, "Billie, go ahead and finish what you were saying about Wesley looking for an island. Rupert oughta hear this."
"Yeah," Connie said. "So he can put it in his fucking journal."
"You still keeping it?" Kimberly asked me.
"I ran out of paper."
"Aw, ain't that a shame," Connie said.
"Finish it after you save us," Kimberly told me. "And put in how Wesley planned it all, how he picked which island, and everything. It'll help show he had premeditation."
"Like he's ever gonna stand trial," Connie said.
"However it all turns out," Kimberly said, "it'll be a good thing if Rupert has a detailed record of the whole situation. It might be the only way anyone ever finds out what happened here."
"If I'm dead anyhow," Connie said, "I'm not exactly gonna give a rat's ass."
"Billie, go ahead and tell him the rest."
"Okay. Let me see." She was silent for a few seconds, then said, "Wesley decided an island would be the perfect sort of place, so he started doing research. At first, he thought mostly in terms of islands in places like Wisconsin and Michigan. You know, on lakes and rivers. He concentrated on the Midwest. Probably because he was raised in that area. Grew up near Chicago. The minute he broadened his horizons, though, he realized that the Bahamas would be ideal. Beautiful, tropical islands with great weather. Conveniently located off the coast of Florida. Handy airline service. The best part was, he found out that there're hundreds of uninhabited islands in the area."
"He didn't pick an uninhabited one," I pointed out.
"That's because he read about the cages. He ran across an old magazine article . . ."
"Erin and Alice told me about that."
"When he saw the bit about gorilla cages . . ."
"Thought he'd died and gone to Heaven," Kimberly said.
"In case you haven't noticed," Connie said, "we're in Wesley Heaven."
"Everything seemed to be falling into place for him," Billie explained. "It was almost uncanny. First, he finds the absolutely perfect place for fulfilling his nasty little daydreams about us. On paper, anyway. Then, it turns out that Andrew and I are about to have our twentieth wedding anniversary." With mock eagerness and an edge of bitterness unusual for her, Billie proclaimed, "Why not celebrate it with the whole family aboard a rented yacht in the Bahamas?"
"It did sound great," Kimberly admitted.
"It was great . . . until . . ." Billie stopped speaking. I heard her start to cry.
For Andrew, her husband. That's what I figured. Or maybe she was crying because of everything. Not only had she been made a widow during her twentieth anniversary celebration, but she and her daughter were locked in cages, kept like slaves for the amusement of a couple of demented perverts. She might've been crying for the others, too. Kimberly's husband had also been murdered, and Kimberly'd ended up in a cage. The twins, too -- Erin and Alice.
All five of them had lost people they loved. All five had been toyed with by Wesley and Thelma -- beaten, whipped, raped, and God-only-knows what else.
It's a wonder that they weren't all bawling their heads off.